stellauk
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'So take a look at me now
There's just an empty space
But to wait for you is all I can do
And that's what I've got to face...'
Phil Collins
'STELLA!!!!!!!'
Vauxhall Bridge Road earlier this morning. I'm cycling back from Hyde Park and am not that far from the one way system that takes the traffic coming down from Buckingham Palace and Westminster round Victoria and south east towards the Thames.
A figure in a dark grey suit standing outside an office with a cigarette. Clean white shirt. He's looking at me.
'WTF?'
Not a shadow of a doubt. It's Timmy. You can't mistake Timmy. He's about 5ft 7ins and the spitting image of Joe Cocker. Even the same weathered look in the face. But he's also similar to Spike Milligan, same Irish ancestry, same sense of humour, same sharp wit. Where Timmy stood out was that he could draw. A cartoonist.
Last time I saw Timmy, well I can't remember when. But it was on a park bench in the churchyard at St John's, Hackney, and he was angry. He'd been evicted from the hostel and was definitely back on 'the sauce'.
This goes right back to that time in the hostel for the homeless. Well, even further back. Christmas 2005 and the CRISIS Open Christmas at the Rough Sleeper's Centre.
Timmy is but one of the characters or if you listened to the hostel staff the 'usual suspects'. There's Timmy, Phil, me, Dean or 'Wheels', Michael, or 'Pops' and Graham. We were among the twenty or so selected - the lucky ones - who managed to get places in the hostel in Hackney, East London. Some were luckier than others. All except me and Graham got places when the Rough Sleeper's Centre closed. Graham and me arrived a week or so later from the secret extension shelter just north of Brixton. Hazel came later, as did Trish.
To shrink the world even more Phil and me go way back but never discovered this until the hostel in Hackney. We spent our teenage years in Bradford, same streets, even the same friends, different schools.
Michael or 'Pops' goes back the furthest, back to the Sixties, Soho and the Krays. His journey through life took him through a short career as a bus driver up to the point of a bus crash, prison (a life sentence for the killing of a serial rapist) and three short marriages aborted by domestic violence, one to Hazel's coousin. See how small this world can be?
Dean is a short Jamaican who was a dealer. He got the nickname 'Wheels' over when he was evicted. The Area Manager for the hostels was a cyclist, Dean as we know was a dealer. The Manager was making a visit to the hostel, unknown to Dean who was trying to get money for a deal. Dean walks into the hostel carrying two bicycle wheels. The Manager comes out of reception and asks 'Are those my wheels?' Caught red handed.
Graham was the fifty year old bum who never worked but hitchhiked around Europe with a guitar busking. He was repatriated from Norway, somehow lost his shoes on the way, got feisty with both the police and a magistrate for which he spent a week in Wormwood Scrubs prison en route to CRISIS.
His eviction was the strangest. At the time his guitar was in Cash Convertors, he was well and truly in the 109 Club - those in this club have a special relationship with cheap white cider a litre of which costs £1.09 - and on that evening he was busy sleeping off four litres on the sofa in the communal area. Sitting in the area was Timmy, Hazel and me, chatting. It was Hazel I think who asked, 'Can you hear running water?'
.
Hazel notices first, as she was almost facing Graham. Her jaw drops. Timmy turns and collapses in hysterics, I just stare. Graham is there, eyes closed, apparently asleep, his tall frame spanning the entire width of the sofa, his penis hanging out, peeing. This went on for some time, the pool getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Graham belches. Hazel gets up to go to reception to get the staff. I sense what's coming and move towards the sofa avoiding the lake. Timmy is wiping away tears.
Staff arrive in the form of Ambrose, a large very laidback Nigerian who takes one look turns back and comes back with mop and bucket. He wakes Graham up. Asks him to get up and clean up. Graham isn't having any of it and he starts 'kicking off'. Graham isn't violent, just temperamental and cantankerous. I try to reason with him. So too does Ambrose, and Timmy. Graham 'goes off on one' walks over to the pool table and with the dexterity of an Olympic weightlifter upends it. Broken slate and balls everywhere. No choice, Ambrose disappears and calls the police. Six of us and four policemen spend two more hours trying to reason with Graham. Graham continues ranting, bends the arm restraints and only calms down when the Irish copper threatens to bring in the heavies.
The main characters here are Timmy and Trish. Timmy is a former postman who just lost it after divorce, hit depression and felt he had nothing to live for. Twice through the system and twice evicted from council flats.
Trish turned up from another hostel. Short, thin, black haired, beautiful but emaciated and wasted from years of addiction to crack and heroin.
Five days Trish is in the hostel and it's love at first sight, mutually, and Timmy and Trish. Only Trish at the time had a boyfriend, a major drug dealer with his own patch in the triangle between Hackney, Dalston, and Stoke Newington. This also explains the bruises and cuts Trisha had.
The penultimate night and turning point came one night a few months later in a back street in Hackney near the railway viaduct. A drug deal goes wrong, two guys in hospital, stab wounds and one loses an eye. Trish and boyfriend disappear. Timmy is upset, but determined.
A week later Timmy gets word from someone in Dalston that both Trish and boyfriend are in police custody. A few days later Trish returns to the hostel, tagged, on bail. Timmy is like a dog in a meat shop. Only it gets worse.
Boyfriend ditches Trish but implicates her in what happened. She comes back, still tagged and on bail. There's a month to the trial but a very good chance that she'll take the rap and go down for a long time. Undeterred Timmy is there by her side, every day, they are inseparable.
The trial comes up at Southwark Crown Court. Timmy goes down to see the trial, be there for Trish. The rest of us are in the communal room, waiting, hoping, praying.
I cannot remember the terms but Trish took the rap, not just for dealing but for grievous bodily harm and from what I recall it amounted to several years of consecutive sentences. Timmy's world turned upside down.
He hit the sauce hard, attempted suicide three times, twice almost successfully. When another resident set on him Timmy defended himself but was evicted as a result.
I know, it's long, some of this is stranger than fiction. This is the background.
Today we caught up. Timmy is in a well paid office job and has a flat in Dalston. He's living with Trish who was released from Holloway some time ago. He lives not far from Michael, 'Pops' who's married for the fifth time and a retired former gangster. Trish and Timmy sometimes go to the church in Tottenham where Hazel is about to become a preacher. It's a happy clappy church. Dean has his own flat in Notting Hill and is a music producer for 'toons' and a new generation of reggae and rocksteady artists.
At some point in the New Year Timmy and Trish are getting married. Graham has said he will fly in from Belgrade with his Indian lawyer wife. They own their flat and Graham runs his own TEFL language school and music venue on a boat on the Danube.
This is a piece of my life, these are real people, their lives are real, and they are people not much different from you and me. Yes this is a story with people who've been involved in stuff like drugs, crime, destitution, but here I have to ask, are they any different from you and me? We all make mistakes.
'Cos if you don't have faith in what you believe in, it's getting you nowhere...'
Phil Collins 'Two Hearts'
This is a song which today's conversation with Timmy brings to mind, not just for him and Trish, but thinking of the film 'Buster', also Pops. Pops today is doing community work talking about his life and on his own personal mission against 'gangsta culture'.
In my life I'm a graduate of the school of hard knocks and Street Corner University. But there's a few things I've learned along the way..
Never ever give up on people, doesn't matter if it's someone close to you or you yourself.
I've met a lot of people in my life, but I've yet to meet anybody who's resistant to the sheer force and gentle strength of unconditional love.
Some people come into your life for a reason, others leave your life for a reason, what is important and what I feel we often forget are what is the most important - the happy memories that remain and live on.
But it's those bonds - love and friendship - which remain in hearts irrespective of time and distance. Being at the wedding will be nice and special in itself, especially for Timmy and Trish, but what is also going to be special is that familiar feeling which we all shared in the communal room in the hostel in Hackney years back in different circumstances.
I'm sharing this for a reason. I'm sure that there's those of you out there who can tell a similar story.
This includes those of you who have like Timmy and Trish taken a dream and pursued it, against all odds, right to the point where it becomes reality, some of you couples who came together against all odds.
Then there is love and that what brings us together, things which are independent of time, circumstance, even of distance.
There are those at the very beginning, who have nobody, nothing, not much more than the keyboard, mouse and monitor in front of them, who are hurting, isolated, lonely, forgotten, abandoned, struggling for work, for money, for somewhere to live, for their basic health.
What about you? What is your 'against all odds (take a look at me now)' story?
If anything I'd like this to be a thread for Christmas because this is a time when we all remember other people in our lives and think of them.
One which where it doesn't matter whether you are surrounded by the people you love, you are separated and many miles away from them, or you have been left alone - I'd like this to be a source of warm fuzzies and inspiration.
What is your story about defeating the odds and turning things round in your life?
Care to share?
_____________________________
Usually when you have all the answers for something nobody is interested in listening.
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Against all odds (take a look at me now) - 
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