Day 10b

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On the tube to the train station that would take me home. There was a man in his early 20s, looking undernourished and begging with a cardboard cup. He apologised for asking, saying he genuinely needed twelve pounds for...something or other. At first no one gave, then I put some coins from my pocket into the cup, then a woman sitting opposite followed suit, and a few others.

He and I got off at the same stop, and I saw him board the train going in the opposite direction, as though he were travelling backwards and forwards until we gave him enough.

On the next train, there were two men standing a metre away from me, smiling like they were delighted simply to be in each other's company, casually hugging and kissing. One was a tall nordic looking man of about fourty, the other a shorter, slim, mousey man of around twenty - oriental, probably Japanese. They looked like they were in the first flushes of love.

There was a woman begging in the corridor leading to Waterloo station. I'd seen her before - thin and haggared, with long grey hair that looked two decades older than her face, staring into space while holding a cardboard sign saying "Hungry and homeless".

I gave her the other half of the coins in my pocket, and she thanked me fulsomely in a Scottish accent. Sometimes beggars who sit really are beggars, and sometimes they're part of London's drug distribition network, accepting a "donation" of GBP20 in return for a small bag of powder passed by slight of hand. Which was she? I'm not sure.

On the escalator, there was a couple - a man and a woman, both in their late twenties, dressed in conservative business suits, engaged in a long kiss, eyes closed and oblivious as the moving stairs carried them down.

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