Every city has bums begging for change – fact. Sometimes I give and sometimes I don’t. There’s no hard and fast rule for me in dealing with bums other than to try and momentarily work out if this person is really in need of help or just a lazy bum who has dropped out of society. How does one go about actively becoming a bum anyway? I have often fantasised about turning up one day in an unfamiliar city and just sitting on the pavement amongst soiled chewing gum, rolling up cigarettes and slowing growing one big flat dreadlock.

I do give change to drug addicts – and yes, I know they will buy drugs with it. All judgement aside, here’s a guy begging for change in the rain under an ATM machine. There’s no dignity here and his life is evidently far, far shittier than mine so I can spare a few coins to ease my own guilt if nothing else.

We’ve all heard the same stories before, and you may begrudge this bum some change for a meal or a bed for the night, but would you begrudge him a dump? With public toilets in London now charging between 20p – 50p, where does a homeless man take a crap? I may not care if this guy starves to death or sleeps in a bus shelter but I don’t want him having to take a shit in a multi-story car park. Come on, give the guy a break and give generously. When was the last time you had to take a shit on tarmac?

DT

Where do pens go? Is there a lost island of biros somewhere?

In the days when I had a regular office job, I could never keep the same cheap black biro pen for one week straight. I’m like a smoker with a 20 a-week habit, only instead of bad breath and yellow fingers I’ve got half a dozen black plastic pen tops on my desk. Wherever they go they obviously don’t need their tops.

I went through a stage of thinking the cleaning lady was taking my pens and squeezing out the black ink to use as hair dye (why else would she need 20 pens a week?). I then worked out that pens, just like gossip, must do the rounds of the office, and surely – according to some natural law of lost stuff – they will end up back in my hand eventually. I secretly marked my pens but they never came back. Eaten somewhere by something that lives in a dark corner of the office at night!!

Is stuff ever even lost anyway? It’s lost to us and found to other people. Everything has to be somewhere, so where are my pens?

DT