Sometimes you can’t just walk past the homeless

Tara and George are rough sleepers in Spitalfields. I’d seen them sitting on the doorstep of a Georgian house in Fournier Street belonging to the iconic art duo Gilbert & George. Sometimes this couple in their late forties would be drinking coffee made by the artists. Mostly they’d be downing strong, cheap cider from a big plastic bottle.

I live around the corner and I’d always say hello to Tara and George, and sometimes talk. But two years ago I sat down beside them and began recording our conversations. I wanted to know what led them to a life on the streets and what kept them there. And why, as George told me, sleeping inside was “not my cup of tea, darling”.

With someone to listen to them, Tara and George shared confused glimpses of their pasts, revealing chaotic upbringings and troubled teenage years. Their stories were often contradictory: time can be fragmentary for them and memory often unreliable.

Although Tara can seem scary — she is deaf in one ear, so she shouts — she has a tender side, and people in the Spitalfields community look after her and George. They are their “family”. Apart from Gilbert & George, there’s the designer Marianna Kennedy, the rector of Christ Church Spitalfields, Andy Rider, and others.

Tara and George is now a six-part radio series. It takes a slow, steady gaze at a life lived on the pavement. The reaction has been astonishing. Apart from becoming engrossed in the twists and turns of the narrative, people have told me it has changed the way they look at those living on the street. Listening to Tara and George open up slowly has made them do so to the less fortunate. “I’ve started talking to the rough sleeper near me.” “I now look people sitting on the pavement in the eye and wonder what their story is.” And more.

According to government figures from the autumn of 2017 there are about 5,000 people sleeping rough each night on the streets of England alone — the majority are in London.

Yesterday I saw a man lying on the pavement, his trousers undone and hanging so low you could see his bum. His little bag was open, his passport visible. He was out for the count. I asked one woman for help — she hesitated, then told me to “call someone”. A young guy with a top knot came out of the estate agent’s that shared a pavement with the man. “He’s just a homeless,” he said. “He’s always here.”

I shouted “Wake up, mate” three times before the man roused a little. “Hide your passport and your bag,” I said. He looked at me and muttered: “I’ve got nowhere to hide it.” He zipped the bag up, rolled over and went back to sleep.

I left wondering what his story was. Like Tara and George, he wasn’t asking for anything. He wasn’t “just a homeless” — and sometimes you can’t just walk by.