King’s Cross station at 10.30 p.m. is not a happy place. Most commuters have long returned to their centrally heated homes, leaving the concourse free for the homeless to roam randomly in search of a few coins from stragglers.
I was there to catch a late train to Potters Bar last week and almost missed my Cambridge–bound service due to the numerous men and women who approached and asked for money. Some looked dishevelled, disturbed, miserable; others were polite and seemed resigned to rejection. I keep thinking about one man in particular. He said he was an ex-soldier — a ‘veteran of conflict’, as he put it — and that he had not eaten all day. It was chilly but he was wearing shorts and had a soiled blanket over his shoulders.
I said, piously, that I gave to charity in a number of ways and that in any event I did not have any spare change.
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