When Is a Good Samaritan Not a Good Samaritan? When He's a Bloody Idiot. Discuss.

On Saturday afternoon I saw someone I knew begging outside of Brixton tube. If you’ve been paying an unhealthy amount of attention, you will know him too. His name is Neil Stores, or, as he was known as a young hoodlum, Storesy. I went to school with him, and caught up with him again after 13 years or so at the school reunion just before Christmas. On Saturday he was sitting in the drizzle in Brixton High Street, cross-legged like some denim-clad, thuggish Yogi, rocking back and forth like a loon.

As I walked past, I glanced briefly at him then away. When recognition came after a second or two, I stopped and turned around. Then I moved on for a few more steps, hid myself in a doorway and watched.

His begging technique – if indeed he was begging – was a mess. It consisted of sitting in the street and looking simultaneously pitiful and terrifying. I guessed that he was there because of one of three things: a) heroin, b) crack, or c) large scale mental breakdown brought on by heroin or crack.

He didn’t notice me. After a while I said his name. When he didn’t look up, I entertained the possibility that it wasn’t him at all. Then slowly he moved his face in my direction. When our eyes made contact, he recognised me and – again very slowly – said, ‘Elbows’. As he did so, something akin to a smile crept across his face like a urine stain.

I resented his use of my school nickname. I didn’t think he’d really earned the right to carry on using it, rocking back and forth as he was in the street, in the drizzle, with obscenities tattooed on his knuckles. But I let it slide.

‘What happened to you, man?’ I asked.

He just shrugged and looked over my right shoulder. ‘Nah,’ he said, as if that in any way answered my question. ‘You couldn’t spare me a couple of quid, could you?’

‘A couple of quid?’ I repeated, a little scandalised. ‘Not really. I could get you something to eat though, if you’re hungry.’

We ended up in the Prince of Wales and in the hour we were together, he went through three pints of lager and I think 12 packets of crisps. He wouldn’t eat anything more substantial, which was a shame because I’m sure that something more substantial wouldn’t have stuck in the gaps between his teeth as repugnantly as crisps did. Also, bits kept flying out as he talked. It wasn't pleasant. We must have looked a right pair, sat there. Him with his tattoos and scars, spitting crisps everywhere. Me with my bag of elbows.

There was good news however, in that Storesy isn’t addicted to heroin and he isn’t addicted to crack. There is also bad news however, in that Storesy is addicted to cocaine, which as far as I am aware, is a good deal more expensive than heroin and crack, and quite possibly more addictive. But I’m no expert.

Storesy lost his job as a security guard just after Christmas. Now I don’t mean to be an awful snob or anything, but exactly how inept do you have to be to lose a job as a security guard? Surely, all you have to do is turn up in a uniform and wander around once or twice an hour, looking vaguely attentive, and maybe tick a few boxes on a blank sheet. The rest of the time you’re sitting with your feet up looking at a couple of monitors and reading poor quality tabloids. How on earth can you manage to get yourself fired? Well, Storesy got fired for not turning up. He was apparently too busy borrowing money for cocaine so that he could drink like a seahorse and talk rather loudly about not very much late into the night.

A week after he lost his job, apparently, his girlfriend kicked him out of their flat in Dartford. I got the impression that her brothers may have helped remove him. After which, it was only a few weeks on various friends’ couches and suddenly he was headed to London where the streets are paved with begging junkies.

I’ve never really seen the appeal of cocaine. Recently I saw it referred to as ‘wanker powder’, which I think just about sums it up. I’ve had friends who’ve become quite heavily involved with coke, and it made every one of them much less pleasant to be around, to the point where I stopped being around them.



It’s odd because with other drugs I’ve encountered, I can understand some of the appeal. They tend to make people more playful or vivacious or good fun to be around. Coke just seems to turn people into dull, shouty boors. In my experience. Also, as I discovered on Saturday, it also gives you a permanent head cold and a forehead full of spots.

Despite all this, the truth was, I felt sorry for Storesy. I felt sorrier for him than I had for my own friends in the past, because they had no excuse. Which is to say – and sorry again for the snobbishness – they had sufficient intelligence to know better. Storesy isn’t the brightest star in the firmament, bless him. He isn’t even the juiciest plum in the punnet. And I can’t help feeling that it isn’t really his fault that he’s weak enough to become addicted to coke and booze and tobacco and whatever else he’s addicted to. I simply can’t find it in my patronising heart to blame him. And I really can’t help feel for him. And yet, when he hinted that maybe he could stay with me for a while, I didn’t jump at the chance to have him as a house guest. In fact, I completely and wholly unsubtly changed the subject.

Unfortunately, just as I was making my excuses to go, he came out and asked me directly: ‘Can I stay at your house for a few days?’ Just like that. The bastard.

I have trouble saying no. Which of course is what he was banking on. Even though the prospect of having a desperate ex-con who used to bully me sleeping on my sofa as a houseguest makes me want to run into oncoming traffic, I still have trouble saying no.

On this occasion though, I said no. I told him that, to be frank, I couldn’t trust him. He seemed offended. I asked him if he would trust him if he was me. He said that he would. He said that he’d never stolen anything in his life. I reminded him of the time he spent in prison for robbing a shop. He pointed out that that was different. A branch of Currys is not the same as an individual. He would never steal from an individual. He then added that if he took so much as a pint of milk, all I had to do was tell the police. This was true, but it wouldn’t get me back my DVDs.

In the end I gave him my landline phone number and said that if he didn’t get himself sorted out within a couple of weeks, he should give me a bell. So far he’s left two faux upbeat, really quite pitiful messages, making me feel really, really bad.

It’s apparently going to be minus two at the weekend. There has even been talk of snow. Snow! And here I am indoors with the heat on all day. How hard would it be to give an old schoolfriend somewhere to stay for a week or two?

I really want to play The Good Samaritan. But I don't want to be exploited, abused and ripped off by someone who is obviously very unstable and potentially deeply irritating.

I’m in two minds.

Anyone have any thoughts?