Stuart Read Online Free PDF

pay-phones that they’re doing what ordinary people suspect them of doing on their mobiles: ringing their dealers. Stuart never uses anything but public phones for that sort of call.
    Water: Stuart receives a hardship grant from his water company, and has a number of slow-paying arrangements that are taken off his dole cheque at source. As with Latinate medical names, he is an expert at these pathetic calculations–much more in control of them than I am of mine. They are part of what is unpleasantly termed ‘life skills’. Not unreasonably, a person sleeping rough must display ‘life skills’ to his support workers if he is to be found a flat, otherwise he’ll simply fall into arrears, annoy everybody and get evicted.
    â€˜On the street you get the same money as you get on housing, but now it’s half-grant, half-loan to furnish your flat,’ he explains, and gives the curry an encouraging prod. ‘You could be £15 a fortnight down paying back the loan. So, instead of £102, it’s now about £85. The water was fucking £26 a month before they remitted all me fines when I had the meter put in. And that was without electric and the gas and my TV licence. So out of £85 a fortnight I was paying £9 TV licence, £20 in electric because it was winter, £14 food minimum. Then you’ve got all your toiletries. I was making £49 outgoings go into £42.50. Even on pay day, your money don’t do the bills because as soon as you cash your giro you just want to go out. So first thing you do if you’ve been on the street is fuck the bills. The only thing I made sure is that I had leccy. Spices?’
    â€˜How can you live on that, even without the bills?’
    â€˜That’s the point. I don’t.’
    Stuart rattles through the shelves above his draining board: economy tomatoes, economy baked beans, economy corn flakes–everything, except the beer, in white packaging with blue lines. Economy raisins, economy powdered milk, economy spaghetti; finally, at the back, Sharwood’s high-expense, in-a-glass-jar, multicoloured-label Five Spice, essential for Chinese cookery. He empties in all of it.
    Court fines–imposed for drunkenness, driving offences, and refusal to pay previous fines–he disregards. ‘Just go back and get resentenced, won’t I? Do three/four months inside to wipe them off. At the minute, me head’s that off-key, I could actually do with going away for a bit.’
    Stuart also has the ex-con’s mathematical knack of immediately calculating release dates. ‘Alright, Ruth got a five,’ he says, dipping his finger in the sauce and licking thoughtfully, ‘but it’s John what I feel really sorry for because he got a four. Anything under four years and you only got to serve half before you automatically get released. If the judge had made it one day shorter–three years, 364 days–John could be out in two years. The extra day is the next bit up. It means he’s only up for parole. He could get the full two-thirds: two years and ten months. Look, Alexander, if you want to do something useful, why don’t you wash up some plates?’
    His kitchen is a bombsite. Environmental health should close it down. I am committing an offence by not reporting it. The slats suspected of containing microphones are above the sink. The sink is invisible. Its rough location is marked by a swarm of dishes trying to escape down the plughole. Disgusting.
    The purple sauce burps and splatters. Stuart does not like hot food himself. The first time in his life he ever sat in a restaurant was when he and I and another campaigner, Cathy Hembry, went to Leeds to berate Keith Hellawell, the Labour Party’s ‘Drugs Tsar’. Stuart ordered a chicken tikka masala, which, he claimed, pushing the plate away and fanning his mouth, was ‘kuu-aaah, un
eat
able!’ That night in Leeds, he also stayed at his