Big Issue vendors aren’t lepers

Last Saturday was one of those ‘maintenance’ days – get new tyres on the car, get a haircut, get a few things in as we had guests staying etc. So, hungry, at about 10am I nipped into Sainsburys on Sloane Avenue for a sandwich, not my first choice for fresh and tasty sustenance but I had a lot on. On exiting I noticed the regular Big Issue guy offering The Big Issue outside, like many vendors he was smiling and polite standing a sufficient distance so’s not to encroach on anybody’s personal space.
The reaction that I noticed to him though was quite upsetting. The response he got to his gentle offerings ranged from a complete head-down blanking rushing away to mothers ushering their children past him with such panic that they could only have assumed that he was offering their princes and princesses heroin.
We were due to sit down to dinner that evening at 8pm and I had to nip back to the store for a lemon about 7.30, guess what, he was still there. He’d been out there for 10 hours with only  a few short breaks. I asked him how many copies he’d sold and he told me 10 or 12. That’s less than £1 per hour, shocking in anybody’s money and on a Saturday. Homelessness is a disease, it can happen to any of us, on average most people are 3 pay cheques away from loosing their homes.
Buy the Big Issue today, keep on buying it too, it’s a great read. Even better try to find out a bit more about the excellent work that  the Big Issue foundation does, in fact why not volunteer?