Street Scene

Ugly people offend me. And when that ugliness is combined with outstretched hand asking for handouts, I find it practically intolerable.

Picture the scene. I was crossing the street in a Brooks Brothers chalkstripe suit with a 3/2 roll, monk shoes, and BB repp tie, tall, muscular, elegant, due to meet colleagues for lunch.

A heavy-set black-haired European-American woman with tanned, weathered face and chapped lips, appeared 50 but probably 35 or so, approached me with a small plastic bucket and polite request for a donation.

I cut her off. "A donation for what?" I asked.

"For people recovering from drug and alcohol addiction," she replied.

"Not today." I walked away.

In point of fact it was the chubby urchin who should have given me money. For, as you know, I am addicted to wine and codeine. But you won't find me on the streets begging for dosh like a common miscreant. I actually work to fund my addictions.

It's a lesson lazy, fat-arsed Americans should take to heart.

In the shadow of the darkening horizon it is the everyday encounters that continue to test my patience.