Friends of God - reblogged

Trying hard to find something positive to say, I have been thinking back to what was probably the happiest time in my life, as a project worker in homelessness charities in London from 2000 to 2005.

Someone said I would learn more from my clients than they would ever learn from me. He was right.

 They were aged from 18 to about 50, criminals, many ex-prisoners, thieves, liars, alcoholics, drug addicts; the feckless, the unloved, the lovely.

Friends of God, all of them, religious, many Catholic, lapsed, but prayerful, with a sometimes skewed morality all of their own, best illustrated by example. All names have been changed.

 Wain: “My room-mate was a thieving bastard. He stole my coat, so I couldn’t go out. And it was mine – my girl-friend nicked it for me.” 

Wain had been raped at the age of 12 and infected with HIV and potentially fatal hepatitis, as had his 9 year old sister (it was on his records). The rapist was his mother's new boyfriend, who, when her pregnancy deprived him of sex, despoiled her children.Wain had ambitions to give up heroin, get a job, get married, have children, and be a good husband and father. He had perhaps 10 years to live. He prayed, injected, stole. So would I probably have in his position.

Augustus, seeing me getting on my bike to go home coatless in the pouring rain: “Chris, have my coat til tomorrow. I’m not going out, so I don’t need it." (St Francis and the cloak). I gracefully refused, of course, saying it was against the rules.

Abdul, a Somali, who had seen a project-worker hit his head on the corner of a cupboard, came to see him an hour or so later to make quite sure he was ok.

The Muslims (I love Muslims, though not Islam) fasting from dawn to darkness through Ramadan only to find the kitchen and dining room closed by order of the manager, when it was dark and they could eat and drink. We got round that and quietly cooked halal chicken for them.

Clients helped each other continually, and fought like tigers when honour had been transgressed. Two were fighting, facing automatic eviction, when I caught them. The cassus belli was a nearly empty plastic lighter whose ownership they disputed.

Being 60 years old, I could stop any fight by getting in between them. No heroism. They were gentlemen and would not hit an old man.

I always carried extra lighters and cigarettes, so confiscated the nearly empty one, gave them a new one each, and asked them what kind of people they were to force me to lie that they had not been fighting. All fights had to be reported, and eviction was inevitable. They were perfect Christian gentlemen and apologised.

If you did them a kindness, however small, they remembered.

They were full of beautiful surprises. One of our duties, in pairs, was to search clients’ rooms for drugs, under the pretence of health and safety checks. I remember the floor of one room covered in potting compost with cannabis growing under bright lights, strictly business, of course. The tenant wouldn’t touch the weed. He was a crack addict.

On the wall, besides the usual ikons, the client had a portrait reproduction of a black man in 18th century dress, with a powdered wig. I asked who it was of.

"Dr Johnson’s black servant (Francis Barber),” came the reply. "Samuel Johnson was a good man, a real Christian and left him his money when he died." How many English people know of this?

 A scholar, a Christian gentleman, and a crack-addict.

How I miss them – God-fearing, pious, lovable – villains, rascals, disreputable, as God knows we all are, if we examine our consciences honestly.

Sorry! No, not you of course.