I came out of Charing Cross station yesterday and walked along the Strand. As I do. And for some reason, that entire area is ‘wino central’. Tramp District. Every doorway filled with waking, or still sleeping, homeless people. Its tragic, but after a (very long) time, you almost become immune to it. Which may sound a bit heartless but you can’t help everyone, particularly those who don’t want help anyway. They just want oblivion.

There was a man in a doorway, but he was quite respectable looking by relative standards. And in front of him were two half bottles of whiskey, one full, one nearly empty. And a bottle of coke. And he was pouring whiskey into the coke bottle. Itself odd because most street people drink either cans of extra strength lager or bottles of very cheap wine. More alcohol for your buck.

But oddly, my first thought on seeing this man, at about 9.30 in the morning, engaged in his preparations, was: ‘that coke will kill you!’ Real coke. Red coke. The real thing. 37 spoons of sugar in every glass. Surely, from a purely health perspective, if you want to drink whiskey for breakfast, drink it neat. And assuming (quite a fair assumption, I feel) that this drinking pattern would probably be repeated all day, I was more concerned about that coke than about the booze.

Homeless people are the mark of a civilised society.

You wouldn’t see them in Moscow. They’d be there, but swept aside, locked up, shot. Especially if any state visit was forthcoming. ‘Clean up the city’ has a different meaning in many places.

The best homeless in the world are in San Francisco. Walk round Union Square (if you absolutely have to) and you’ll be accosted by dozens of ‘bums’. But these do not sit there in a boozy haze with an outstretched McDonalds cup. No. These guys walk along with you and, in a wonderful, eloquent and charming way, make a perfectly logical and compelling case for helping those (war veterans, down on their lucks, reformed whatevers) who are deeply in need. But, like, ‘only if you’re really comfortable with that, Sir’.

And why are there so many ‘bums’ in San Fran? Because the city allows them. Whereas many US cities don’t. If Americans did irony they’d perhaps question where you send a homeless person to in order to get him off the streets. But that’s what they do. You can’t sleep here. You can’t stay here. We don’t want you here.

God bless San Francisco.

God bless London.

Happy Friday

A xxxx