Ooh - Aah!

For a small city, Bath has an inordinate amount of homeless people. Coming from Southampton, a larger city, this surprised me. I was used to the occasional sightings, usually in the form of a furtive hand protruding from a sleeping bag. There was something bashful about them; they were all so ashamed that you were aware of them, and so apologetic in their whispered pleas, “big issue…big issue.”

If the Southampton bum is the silent voyeur, then the Bath bum is the clown, demanding your attention. They have a way of making their presence known; you’ll be walking through the Sainsbury’s car park when through the hedge you hear them roar like pirates, “Argh!” and then amble into view, leaning heavily on each other. In no other city have I seen homeless friends before, bound together by circumstance, or some common interest to be loud and drunk.

There’s a sort of locked-in-time quality to Bath’s bums. I think it’s their West Country accents. It reminds me of the food stall owners you hear in medieval films, “Get your apples!” Except they’re probably not saying ‘apples’, they’re saying ‘Shit!’ and they’re not so much selling them, as they are throwing them.

Bath Bums are also the most jolly of bums; their reckless smiles seem to mock the taxpayers, the family unit, the uniformed hoi polloi. They seem to be energised by their sense of freedom, their devil may care way of life. There’s something Zen about their directionless existence; the lack of ties to a place and family, their forced liberation from materialism.

That being said, I have noticed certain homeless hotspots. Places where they accumulate and gather. I don’t know how they decide on these places. One in particular is a series of benches which overlook a grotty stream peppered with sewage. The place offers no shelter and could best be described as ugly and depressing. Do they feel some sort of affinity with this area? Do they see something of themselves in those dirty depths? What do they think when they see their murky reflections, besides, “I could do with brushing my teeth”?

What is it that keeps drawing them back to this place? Does it have mystical and sacrosanct qualities? If they dip a bird bath into it, and retrieve the soiled water, does it act as a sort of Mirror of Galadriel, a Mirror of Gazza, from which visions are played, and once they return to consciousness, words of an elusive meaning burn brightly in their mind, “Special Brew – £5.99 –Tesco”?

I often wonder when watching them, staring into those depths, do they feel some sort of kinship with the water? I imagine they think, if all water ends up in the sea, and all old people end up in Bournemouth, where do we homeless end up?