The World According to Bob

we agreed to see each other again in a few weeks’ time.
    ‘Look after yourself, Jamie,’ he said.
    The station was still busy. It was the back end of the rush hour. I had a few magazines left in my satchel so decided to try and shift them before heading home. I found an empty pitch outside the railway station and was soon doing pretty well.
    Bob had a full stomach and was on good form. People were stopping and making a fuss. I was just weighing up whether to spend the money I was making on a takeaway curry when trouble reared its head again.
    I knew the pair were trouble the moment I set eyes on them heading across the road towards the main entrance to Victoria Station. I recognised one of them from my days selling The Big Issue in Covent Garden. He was a wiry, grey-haired guy in his mid-forties. He was wearing the distinctive, red tabard but I knew he wasn’t a legitimate seller. He had been ‘de-badged’ a long time ago for various misdemeanours. His mate wasn’t familiar, but I didn’t need to know him to be able to tell he was a rough character. He was a big brute and was built like a sack of potatoes.
    I immediately worked out what they were doing. The smaller one was waving a single copy of The Big Issue around, stopping people, collecting money but never handing over the magazine. They were running a scam called One Booking, in which vendors used a single, out-of-date magazine to generate a string of sales. Each time someone handed over some money, the seller would come out with some sob story about it being their last copy and being in particularly dire straits. It was begging, basically. There was no other word for it.
    I was always amazed that anyone fell for it. But there were always a few gullible – or maybe generous – souls around.
    I was worried that they were heading in our direction. Sure enough, they were soon outside the tube station entrance, with the smaller of the pair approaching travellers on the edge of the steps. It was blindingly obvious he wasn’t an official seller. The tabard was ripped to shreds and looked like it had been pulled out of a dustbin. It was also missing the official badge that legitimate vendors wore on the left hand side of their vests.
    As his mate went about his business, the bigger of the two made a bee-line for me. He was every bit as aggressive as he looked.
    ‘Oi, you, get lost, or I’ll kill that cat of yours,’ he said, sticking his big red face close to mine. There was a trace of Irish in his accent and his breath stank of booze.
    Bob, as always, had spotted the danger and was hissing at him already. I knelt down and got him to climb on my shoulders before there was any trouble.
    I wasn’t going to be intimidated and stuck my ground.
    ‘I’ve got a right to sell here and I’ve just got these few magazines to sell,’ I said. ‘You know what you are doing is wrong. You are nothing but a leech, you are forcing him to beg for you.’
    He didn’t like this and warned me again.
    ‘You’ve got two minutes to pack your stuff up and f*** off,’ he said, temporarily distracted by his mate who was waving to him for some reason. He then pushed his way into the crowds.
    People were flooding in and out of the station, so I lost them for a few minutes. I knew the score. They were both drug addicts and were only running this scam until they had enough money to head off and fix themselves up. I was hoping that his mate’s signal indicated that they’d hit their target and were going to disappear. No such luck.
    In hardly any time, the big guy reappeared, looking even angrier than before. He was literally frothing at the mouth and spitting out expletives. ‘Didn’t you hear what I told you?’ he snarled.
    The next thing I knew he had hit me. He just walked up to me and punched me on the nose. It happened so fast, I didn’t even see him pull back his arm. He just jabbed a giant fist into my face. I didn’t have a hope of deflecting the blow.
    ‘What the hell?’ I said, back-pedalling, Bob hanging on for dear life.
    When I drew my hand away from my face I could see that it was covered in blood. It was gushing out and my nose felt like it had some broken cartilage in there.
    I decided it wasn’t a fight I could win. There was no sign of the Police so I was on my own against a pretty nasty pair of individuals.
    Working on the streets was risky, I knew that. But there were times when it was downright dangerous. I’d heard stories of Big Issue