See, you’ve got to know your enemy if you’re going to lick him, and I know my enemy. I’ve observed him, and what I’ve observed is this. A lot of these dossers get together in twos, threes and fours and stick together. They might separate in the daytime – one might have to go to the DSS or somewhere – but at night they huddle together for warmth or protection or whatever. And of course you’d have to be barmy to approach ’em then, and I’m not barmy. By golly I’m not. No. Loners is what you look for in my line of business. Singletons. So I’m going to watch my laughing boys, and when they separate we’ll see who has the last laugh.

The last days of January were a swine. I nearly went back to Vince. I mean it. It snowed every day so the pavements were thick with slush, and nothing gets inside a pair of trainers like slush can. Ginger and I lurked in subways and doorways as much as we could but our feet were constantly wet and freezing just the same. Night after night, frost turned the slush to grey iron and crept into our damp bedding to stiffen footwear and make sleep impossible. And if you think it’s bound to make the punters more generous with their change, seeing kids wet and shivering, forget it. It had the opposite effect. Everybody slogged grimly by and their hands never left their pockets unless they were wearing gloves. Nobody stopped. Maybe they thought they’d die if they stopped, like explorers at the South Pole.

We grew hungry. Really hungry. The cold seems to settle in your bones when there’s nothing in your stomach. You can’t shift it. We tried everything – stamping our feet, running on the spot, blowing into our hands, huddling together in the subway. It was no use. All we could do was keep moving through sleepless nights and days that merged into one another till we no longer knew what day it was or whether it was morning or evening. One time, Ginger borrowed a marker pen from an old newsvendor and printed a couple of placards which read, NON-ALCOHOLIC HOMELESS, PLEASE HELP. He said you had to put non-alcoholic because people seldom give to winos. We sat in a subway somewhere with our feet and legs in our sleeping-bags and the placards on the muddy tiles, but he might as well have put EVIL, SHIFTLESS BABY-KICKER, AFTER YOUR DOSH for all the good it did us.