A Street Cat Named Bob: And How He Saved My Life by Bowen James

Author:Bowen, James [Bowen, James]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2013-07-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Number 683

My head was spinning for the next few days. I felt a real mixture of emotions.

Part of me was still angry at the unfairness of what had happened. I felt like I’d lost my livelihood simply because a few people had taken against me. At the same time, however, another part of me had begun to see it might have been a blessing in disguise.

Deep down I knew I couldn’t carry on busking all my life. I wasn’t going to turn my life around singing Johnny Cash and Oasis songs on street corners. I wasn’t going to build up the strength to get myself totally clean by relying on my guitar. It began to dawn on me that I was at a big crossroads, that I had an opportunity to put the past behind me. I’d been there before, but for the first time in years, I felt like I was ready to take it.

That was all very well in theory, of course. I also knew the brutal truth: my options were pretty limited. How was I now going to earn money? No one was going to give me a job.

It wasn’t because I was stupid; I knew that. Thanks to the IT work I’d done when I was a teenager back in Australia I was fairly knowledgeable when it came to computers. I spent as much time as I could on friends’ laptops or on the free computers at the local library and had taught myself a fair bit about the subject. But I didn’t have any references or relevant experience in the UK to rely on and when a prospective employer asked me where I’d spent the past ten years I couldn’t exactly say I’d been working for Google or Microsoft. So I had to forget that.

There wasn’t even any point in me applying to do a training course in computing because they wouldn’t accept me. Officially I was still on a drug rehabilitation programme. I was living in sheltered accommodation and didn’t even have an O level to my name. They wouldn’t − and probably couldn’t − touch me with a bargepole. All in all, I was a non-starter when it came to getting a normal job. Whatever normal is.

I realised quickly that there was only one realistic alternative. I didn’t have the luxury of being able to wait for something to turn up. I needed to make money to look after myself and Bob. So a couple of days after the court hearing I set off with Bob for Covent Garden − for the first time in years, without my guitar on my back. When I got to the piazza I headed straight for the spot where I knew I’d probably find a girl called Sam, the area’s Big Issue coordinator.

I had tried selling the Big Issue before, back in 1998 and 1999 when I first ended up on the streets. I’d got myself accredited and worked the streets around Charing Cross and Trafalgar Square.

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