Down and Out Today: Notes from the Gutter - Softcover

Small, Matthew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1785079964 ISBN 13: 9781785079962

Verlag: Paperbooks Publishing Ltd, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

'Enlightening and startling... The world needs more writers like Matthew Small.' Charlie Carroll

'Brings into sharp relief the realities of poverty... inspiring and uplifting.' Tracy Shildrick

'A fascinating insight into what it feels like to live on the streets of the UK and India today.' Joanna Mack

Poverty stretches across all of humanity and by travelling East, Small encounters the raw faces of poverty in India’s slums; he works in a leprosy community, and joins the Sisters of Mercy on the smoggy and exhilarating streets in Calcutta. He then returns to the UK, to Bath, to see what the passing of three months means to those who are scarred by one of the most unglamorous of all humanities’ ills, being poor.

Small engages with different community members who are living with poverty, to answer these long standing questions: What’s keeping them down? What’s pushing them out? And how can we move forward?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Matthew Small is a writer and freelance journalist, currently living and writing amongst the limestone city of Bath in South West England. Matthew has travelled through many parts of the world exploring different cultures and societies across five continents. In 2012 Matthew embarked on a trip to the Holy Land to further his political understanding of the area, which is documented in his debut book The Wall Between Us.

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Down and Out Today

Notes from the Gutter

By Matthew Small

Legend Times Ltd

Copyright © 2015 Matthew Small
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78507-996-2

CHAPTER 1

As the train's steel wheels screamed to a stop in the limestone city I was met with a view to material wealth. Opposite Bath Spa station is the Southgate shopping centre, built on the site of a previously demolished complex with the buildings constructed with a Bath stone façade, in keeping, if not meticulously so, with the honey-coloured dress of the city. There are restaurants with menus perhaps out of a poor person's sights (I have to look away from most) as well as the familiar golden arches whose marketing won't let us forget that We're loving it!, along with an array of other fast food outlets. There are clothes shops, phone shops, department stores, a market stall selling relatively cheap fruit and veg – call by at the end of the day and they're practically giving broccoli heads away – there's a flower stand and the street performers who are usually found strumming their guitars and beating their drums at the end of Stall Street, playing to the consumers as they march on by to spend, spend, spend.

Running along the eastern edge of Southgate and away from the train station is Manvers Street; home to a few shops, cafés, nightclubs, and a wonderful old second-hand bookshop, George Gregory. There's also the council building and city police station with Manvers Street Baptist Church next door. The Julian House night shelter and Bath Foodbank operate from the basements of the building and it is not uncommon to find a group of the charities' 'clients' sitting on the steps outside the church's café, or leaning against the stone wall around the police station car park. They're a diverse bunch; a thirty-something man with the top buttons of his shirt undone to display the outstretched wings of the tattoo across his chest; an elderly woman with her tired face often covered by the dreadlocks that fall out from beneath the woollen hood she has pulled up over her head, despite the warm September sun, along with others whose clothes are frayed and cheeks somewhat pale.

I observed this group as I walked along the pavement and a voice inside my head said, Poor. But do they see themselves in this way? Julian House uses the phrase 'socially excluded' to identify the people it comes into contact with. I looked back over my shoulder, questioning. Most were holding bottles in their hands, sipping at whatever was inside as they talked (the bottles were not labelled so I cannot say if they contained alcohol). Most would be deemed as scruffy in comparison to the tourists, commuters, consumers and students walking past them on the pavement and, standing huddled in a group with the rest of the city swirling by, they would likely be identified as being in poverty. But what does that mean?

I arrived in the city two days ago and, financially speaking, I guess I could also be placed on some statistical chart as being poor, although this I do not feel or identify with. I can, for the time being, buy enough food to meet my needs and even go to my friends' coffee shop and sit checking emails with a cappuccino beside me. This is where a part of the complexity of understanding poverty begins; it is primarily recognised aesthetically. Sitting at the brew bar at Colonna & Small's, tapping at my laptop and enjoying my drink made from beans grown on a remote farm in Ethiopia, I, in most people's eyes, would not look to be poor. But in truth I have around £140 in my bank account and £350 cash on my being. Before arriving in the city, a quick search online told me that the average starting price to rent a room in Bath is around £300 to £350 per month, normally requiring a deposit of £200. I do have a part-time job in a local inn but my first wage slip won't come until the end of October, one month away, and the only other immediate income I can expect is the advance I'm due for my previous book, The Wall Between Us, which would also not be enough to cover a room.

If I was forced to rent somewhere, with unforeseen bills and council tax to pay, then I would quickly find myself in a situation faced by many millions across the world: struggling to exist. That's why I'm writing this from a small, slightly mouldy and altogether little bit poorly caravan, situated at the bottom of a sweet lady's garden on one of the hilltops surrounding Bath. I've promised to give it a lick of paint and Clare, my landlady, has let me stay rent-free. I don't have electricity, running water or even a toilet (although Clare is happy for me to come into the house if nature calls). I am incredibly fortunate, even if I don't presently have a desk where I can write. I think most writers go through the same thought process when they move into somewhere new; the owner might be pointing out the light coming through the window but we're only interested in where we're going to be able to sit down and write.

After finishing work last night and locking up the inn around midnight, I walked through the drunken city which is now inebriated most days of the week, with students falling over each other after having knocked back trays of cheap shots, and hindered further by the school ties knotted together around their legs as they take a pub crawl to mean just that: crawling. I carried my sleeping bag under my arm, crossed a footbridge over the River Avon and began my walk up the long hill to where the caravan and my new home awaited. My first night was spent using John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath as a pillow. It's not a thick book, more's the pity. What this has shown me is that without the graciousness of another, I would have had to stay in a hostel until my money ran out, or on the street with only my sleeping bag and Steinbeck to fend off the chill and my vulnerability. It showed me how close we can come.

CHAPTER 2

My work at The Griffin Inn mostly entails pulling pints, cleaning glasses and engaging with whoever decides to drink at the bar. In days gone by, the inn was the drinking den for locals, pub brawls, dominoes and singing songs. Occasionally an old timer will call in and tell me a story or two about 'the old days' when there was an Alsatian sat at the door, eyeing up limbs of the punters on entry, and a pool table which was where most of the brawls broke out. It was the type of establishment where you'd be hard pushed to pick out the landlady and landlord from the punters, stood smoking at the end of the bar and as drunk and merry as the rest of the inn.

"It was a little bit like EastEnders, that sort of thing," a man at the bar told me one autumnal night, his fingers tobacco-stained and his skin weathered. He and his wife had called in to see what The Griffin had become after holding onto many memories from two decades prior. He sipped at his pint of Griffin Gold and his wife a Bacardi and Coke. "It's the first time me and the missus have come back into town, like. If the landlord and lady ever went on holiday then we'd run the place for them while they were away."

"Was it very different back then?"

"I'd say so," he replied, now leaning on the bar.

His wife smiled as she looked towards the window which dislodged a view to yesterday. She turned to her husband.

"Remember that Bath Rugby lot, doing their dares when they'd get here?"

"Course I do."

"Dares?"

"They'd do silly things," she continued. "There used to be an aquarium in the window, just over there. They dared one of them to eat a fish. He walked straight over and stuck his hand...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Paperbooks Publishing Ltd
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1785079964
• ISBN 13: 9781785079962
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland