BECOME HOMELESS

You what? I hear you say. The homeless, those dirty smelly failures who litter the main streets of our beautiful cities.
Yes I do. Go back and read the previous sentence. Notice how you agreed with every word. Okay, I’ll ignore the liberal-minded supporters of Shelter and just hang loose with the rest of you. You see, I bet you are struggling to remember the last time you saw a homeless person. Wait one more moment. Ah, you’ve got it. That one beside the Strand tube station. But what day was that? Tuesday, or Monday, or was it Friday? And what week, month, year? I could go on. If a camera had been following you since that moment you would have passed a couple of hundred of them and not noticed.
A recent survey found that there was precious little sympathy with tramps and other homeless people. Those surveyed blamed these men, women and children for the plight they were in. Always nice to feel so sanctimonious when there’s a roof over your head, heat in your house, food in your belly and work five days a week. Aren’t you the clever one? Wait a few years until the boss starts downsizing, the wife kicks you out and or even something bad or tragic happens to you and your life.
You see, the beauty of this plan is that the homeless are invisible. They walk the streets of our towns and cities day and night, sleeping when allowed to in shop doorways or corners of public parks. Hardly any of us expects to be attacked by them but we give these people a wide berth because, horror of all horrors, not only have they not bathed that day but they probably have not washed for months. Therefore, they smell. And that smell might be catching.
There’s also the little thing about begging. How dare they ask us to give them money for nothing. Do we get given money for nothing? No, we do not. We have to work long and unsociable hours under great duress to earn our pay. And so what if we take home bonuses worth large detached central London houses. We used our brains to earn that, no matter what the newspaper wingers may say. Even if we are just on a couple of hundred thousand a year, most of that goes in tax, housing and education costs, horses and paddocks and the running of a BMW, a Mercedes and a sports car of our choice.
The tramp might be up before dawn but at least he or she can promptly turn over in their doorstep, pull the cardboard, which probably came from one of our own purchases, across their face, and fall back into a deep slumber. Oh bliss.
So, if you want to escape the marauding hordes come GW Day then become a member of this invisible group. About the smell – get used to it. Either that or you’ll be smelling out the neighbours with your decaying body. That is, assuming the neighbours have not joined you in the pit.