One of my few genuine talents is my ability to add two and two together and make five.Here is an example of that talent.
We bought our first house in Twickenham in the early nineties. It was just off Twickenham Green and it was really great. Our years there were simply wonderful and I remember them as being eternally sunny and peaceful.
The Twickenham Tramp moved about on the periphery of my consciousness for a long time. I would see him heading down to the Thames on my way to work, or encamped in a shop doorway across the street from the bus stop.
He had a long beard and a long rain coat and he was a tramp. I should have noticed more about him - I fancied myself to be a writer back then too – but it was busy times and I didn’t.
My focus on him began one day in the local supermarket. He wasn’t actually there but there was a neatly-written notice about him on the local announcements board. It had a little cartoon picture of him – beard, coat, and smile – and it said something like, ‘Look after our Trampy Joe, please make sure he has enough to eat.’
I liked that, I felt like I was living in a real community, who might watch out for their homeless residents as well as everybody else. That little notice brought Trampy Joe firmly into my radar, and I started to look at him more closely.
He was not your run-of-the-mill tramp. For starters, he didn’t drink, he was always shy and reserved and sober. He had a shopping trolley on which he kept his worldly goods and these goods were stored in large, expensive, steel camera cases, five or six of them, all neatly stacked. It was almost as if Trampy Joe was wheeling his way through an airport concourse and off on a flight to Nairobi to film cheetahs.
Trampy Joe was the first ‘two’ in my equation. (see line one above). The second ‘two’ came while I watched a documentary about the original line up of ‘Fleetwood Mac’ on TV one evening. The band members were all discussing the brilliant Peter Green who had set the world alight with his playing until he then suffered schizophrenia, electro-convulsive therapy and finally resorted to living as a tramp in the Richmond area of West London. Most memorably Mick Fleetwood remembered how me met Green one day and noticed a piece of food in his beard then met him a year later and noticed the same piece of food…. This programme got the mental arithmetic going in my head…
Two…
Richmond was just up the road from Twickenham…
…plus two…
... expensive camera cases, reserved, quiet, notices in the supermarket about him.
..equals five!
Peter Green was living as a tramp on my street!!
There was no internet then, or if there was, I certainly didn’t have it. So I couldn’t just click and see a picture of Peter Green. I had to go to the library and look him up. All of the photos were of Green as a young guitarist. Could he be Trampy Joe? Yes he could.
I watched him now with fascination and told many people who he was but I didn’t ever speak to him. My bag may not have been quite as expensive as his but I too was shy.
Whenever Trish went away for work, I was in the habit of indulging in some serious junk food. One Friday, I was facing into a solitary evening in, I had some videos in my bag and a yen for some fried chicken (go figure). Trampy Joe was parked outside the entrance to KFC, looking a bit mournful. I drummed up some courage and spoke to him for the first time.
“Can I get you anything?”
He looked up at me from the pavement. “Eh?”
“I’m going inside. Can I get you anything?”
“Well… if you are treating me to something…,” He stated this formally, in a gentle voice, rather as if a contract was being drawn up between us.
“Yes, I am.” I said.
“In that case, I would like three breast pieces, a portion of large chips, corn-on-the-cob, beans, large coffee, three sugars and two creams… thanks.”
I stumbled to the counter in the restaurant and started my order. I didn’t get very far.
“… three sugars and two creams,” the restaurant guy intoned, “For 'him-outside,' is it? We know that order pretty well…”
I had a fillet burger and a coke, it was all I could afford.
Trampy Joe thanked me very politely and I left him to his meal.
Some months later, the famous rock guitarist Peter Green re-emerged on a festival stage in Berkshire, fragile but well. He wowed the audience with his playing just like the old days.
It was not my Trampy Joe, he was still down the main street, no doubt eating chicken.
But I don’t begrudge Trampy Joe his chicken feast. I know that I didn’t buy it for him because he was a famous rock superstar, down on his luck.
I bought it because he was Trampy Joe and that was enough.
