a wee bit of prose for a friday afternoon...

I once stepped on a poem.

It happened as I was walking past Stephen’s Green. I looked down and noticed my clumsy size twelve had landed on the letters ‘t’ and ‘r’. When I moved, I saw the full word. It was ‘tread’.

Then as I read further, that wonderfully memorable line by WB Yeats revealed itself: ‘tread softly for you tread on my dreams.’

I looked around to see whose dreams I’d so carelessly trodden upon. And there he was, sitting behind his poem - his statement to the world, etched on a piece of plastic - with a paper cup by his feet and a look in his eyes that said two things. One: I really need a few quid. And Two: Gothcha!

It’s true. I was got. I couldn’t now walk past this man without paying him his due. After all, in one split second he’d taught me more about poetry than twelve years in school had ever done. It may as well have been Willie B himself sitting there, the lines were so apt.

I reached down to the paper cup and dropped some change into it. I didn’t have much. I remember wanting to give him more. ‘Thanks’ he said.

‘No problem,’ I replied and added, ‘you’d want to keep them dreams safe now.’ I regretted the words immediately. They sounded crass and came across with an uninteded arrogance. I should’ve taken my lead from his approach and said nothing.

As I walked on I started thinking. That man, I thought, was clever…very clever. Not only had he made me give him money, he’d actually made me feel bad about not giving him more. And he had done this without accosting me, without asking me, without even writing his own sales pitch for crying out loud. Let’s face it, he’d had the audacity to let the greatest poet this country has ever seen write his marketing speel for him! Now that was good.

What this man had done was quite simply genius. He had extricated himself from the somewhat shunned occupation of ‘begging’, and landed himself squarely in the realm of ‘art’.

Perhaps, I thought, he should set up a consultancy, or a training course – ‘the financial benefits of taking a more creative approach to begging’ or something along those lines. In the current climate and with a few more budgets of the type we’ve recently been lashed with, he might find he gets more applicants than he expects.

Now, the thing is, I’m someone who actually does give change to people sitting on streets looking a bit worse-for-wear and often genuinely appreciating the few meagre cents they receive. I’m also one of those people who gets really annoyed with the self-righteous-tosser-brigade who say things like ‘ooh you shouldn’t give them money coz that only encourages them to do it more, you should give money to the recognised charities instead, you know the ones that help them off the streets, blah, blah, blah.’

I have two problems with these people. Firstly. They are, as mentioned above, self-righteous tossers. And secondly. Would they hold those principles in the same high regard if it was they themselves who were homeless, hungry and feeling more than a bit ‘trodden upon’? Hmm, never mind, I guess they have a point. What bugs me though is the way they make that point so apparently convincingly and then pop into Brown Thomas to spend an average week’s wages on a bottle of perfume, or some other ‘necessity’. You see, I don’t think it’s a principle on their part really – just an excuse. And I don’t like excuses.

By the way, in saying I give money to people who beg, don’t let me give you the wrong impression. I’m not someone who indiscriminately launches rounds of 20 and 50 cent coins at anyone with a cup in their immediate vicinity. For me, the mere possession of a cup, and its appropriate positioning, simply doesn’t qualify as a sufficient stimulus to engender the appropriation of one’s hard earned cash. I don’t, for example, offer money to people sitting in cafés on this basis.

No, when it comes to begging with a cup, a little imagination can go a long way. I once saw a guy sitting on the street with five cups arranged in a semi-circle. ‘Pick a cup, any cup’ he offered as people walked past. Much more original than the old ‘Got any change?’ cliché. This approach led to a level of engagement with the customer that could simply not be matched by a standard one-cup method – and a level of engagement that was further enhanced by the fact that each of the five cups had been plucked from a different coffee-selling establishment. When I pointed this fact out to him, he told me that O’Briens was the most popular – in terms of people’s coin-tossing choice – and that Starbucks was seriously crap. It was an interesting, if unscientific, survey.

Oh yes and let’s call them customers by the way - the people like you and me, the target audience. You see a service is genuinely being offered. It’s called the ‘feel-good-about-your-own-charitable-nature’ service. And it’s a very important service. My only worry in calling it a ‘service’, and us the ‘customers’, is that such terminology may be used by the powers-that-be to adversely legitimise the trade of begging. With every one else now subject to a levy on their income, why, the government might argue, should beggars be treated any differently. I can already see the suited civil servants, with nothing better to do, walking city streets and measuring out the required share of coins from cardboard cups, old hats and caps and even the guitar cases of those free-loading, tax-avoiding buskers – the cheek of those guitar-wielding youngsters eh, creaming the system for all it’s worth and only offering an out-of-tune rendition of ‘The Fields of Athenry’ to us hard-working tax payers in return!

But budgets and busking are subjects for another day. Let’s return to the art of begging and examine a fine example of just how it should be done – one that doesn’t even involve the use of a prop. One morning last week as I walked into work, there was a middle-aged, wiry looking man sitting on the ledge of a shop window, a battered cardboard cup and a very docile German Sheppard in close proximity. I’d seen the guy plenty of times in this spot before – often talking to passers-by, often sitting with other people – and invariably appearing quite happy with life. This morning he was on his own – concentrating on his career, you might say.

‘A’wight mate’ he offered as I came within earshot – an obvious cockney accent, which surprised me for some reason. This was accompanied by a friendly wink.

Strong approach already, I thought. ‘How ya doin?’ I said back. It would have been very rude not to say anything.

He grimaced a little. “Not so good, ya know mate - see that pigeon over there…’

I stopped and looked at the pigeon. And then back at the man.

“ That bastard’s been been eyeing me up all morning - and look at the bloody size of him…”

I laughed

Quite loudly actually.

I had already missed three calls on my mobile, I was running late for work, I had just had the pleasure of being handed a phone bill and a gas bill at the same time by a grumpy postman and my car had been very, very slow to start – hence the running late for work bit. But hey, at least I didn’t have to contend with the unthinkable – an overweight pigeon sizing me up for a fight!

I put a two euro coin in the guy’s cup and was still smiling when I got into the office. Some folk have the knack I guess. It’s just a shame they’ve somehow managed to get themselves into the situation they’re in. I bet for the most part, they really, really don’t deserve it.