1st of April 2020

Down and out in Highbury and Islington. 

It really struck me tonight how badly homeless people are taking this crisis. Councils have been asked to get people off the streets into housing to keep them safe and prevent the spread of disease. But it’s clear that’s not happening, definitely not in the borough of Islington.

My shift started at four. It was a stressy evening right from the train ride in. A boomer down the carriage was hacking away, and I had enough of it, so I yelled “why are you on the train if you have a cough?” He got very shouty, came over to me, far too near, ranting about heart medicine. I told him to get away from me and eventually he did, but not after going on and on. And on. And on.

On getting the scooter (double box again, the flat’s still not fixed and the two decent scooters were missing, turns out one was being used by another store and I got it back later, and one of the other riders took one home, which I might also start doing) out I noticed we’d had a borrower, a gentleman of the road staying in the bike garage. I’d noticed the bottles of strange tawny liquid around the place and assumed one of the other riders was on an electrolyte drink based health regime or something, but now they were multiplying it was clearly piss. I was the only person who’d been there since the night before and it wasn’t how I left it, I didn’t leave an improvised foam mattress for example, or half eaten sandwiches and heroin cooking paraphernalia. I often found odd things in there, but put it down to eccentric colleagues. Later on I had the pleasure of meeting our guest, his name is Christopher. At the moment I’m the only person who really uses the garage so I took the executive decision to let him stay, more on that later.

Things started off quite mundane. I swapped the shift with the ex gun toter, so I took his responsibility of taking cash to the bank, however this Tuesday afternoon around 4:30, all the branches were shut, I went to three.

Back at the shop a guy was working who I hadn’t seen in a while, big Greek guy. I like him a lot but he’d been moved to other stores because managers find him annoying, he complains too much (I think the right amount), and avoids doing long deliveries. When he’s not doing this job, he works in night clubs entertaining punters with card ticks, which thankfully, due to my ADHD, I can’t follow. He has a magic ace of spades taped to the back of his helmet and a big bushy beard. In summer he goes back to his native Aegean island and works at a restaurant, welcoming and entertaining customers. In winter he’s back in the UK delivering pizzas. Things have been hard in Greece, so he hasn’t had a lot of options, but he was looking forward to “getting out of this fucking shithole country” but his flight was cancelled because of the virus. He’s booked another in a month’s time but has no idea if he’ll make it back. Smart dude, speaks bits and pieces of five languages.

He filled me in with some of the nonsense that went on in my week off. Apparently the new chef who came in and coughed all over the pizzas wasn’t a new hire. She had been sent over from the store in Chelsea which shut because someone there tested positive for coronavirus. First of all she just said she had had a sore throat for a while but it was nothing, then she said she was allergic to flour. The manager did nothing so the two riders walked out. On one of the shifts the orders were coming in way too fast to deal with, but the person on front of house wouldn’t stop them, so he just unplugged the computers. He also told me the three owners of the business were all self isolating, but expecting us to carry on as normal. They could furlough all of us and give us 80% of our wages paid by the government, but that would mean shutting the shop and losing profits. His theory is if we all walk out, they’ll keep the shop open by outsourcing deliveries, which they occasionally do when it’s really busy, and will worm out of paying us our due. I think he’s probably right. The other thing is we’re not getting payslips because the company who do them is in India and they’re on total lockdown over there, no one out at all.

His defiant Greek rebel fighting spirit is evident. His Thermopylae is a dodgy little pizza shop; nevertheless, last night he took a stand. I was vaguely aware of his political views because when I first met him he asked me if I was Greek (my surname sounds very Greek but it’s not, although coincidentally I am part Greek). I said no, but I was reading Yanis Varoufakis’ book Adults in the Room about his struggles with the European Central Bank, Commission and IMF Troika during the Greek debt crisis, and he told me Yanis was the only one who wasn’t too much of a coward to speak the truth. My suspicions were confirmed last night when he roared, “fuck this pizza place, you don’t need them, they need you!” A sentiment I shared, and ill advisedly often used to promote at the ad agencies I worked at. On this occasion my contribution was to demand a pay rise. After shouting at the manager, he turned and gave me a wink. 

The catalyst was the fact the usual third rider wasn’t booked, or didn’t turn up, which meant we’d have to take up the slack. Our Greek hero’s response was an unofficial work to rule decree. This meant he’d stick rigidly to speed limits, and call every customer before he left letting them know their order will be about an hour late and ask if they want a refund. He took his time over every order, which meant I was racing around to get stuff done. I totally respect his decision though, and am considering doing something similar.

It’s very hard to work for a company who so obviously don’t give a hoot about your safety. I’m wondering about contracting some of that covid 420 and calling in sick for three weeks. I saw most of the restaurants that were doing take away only are now shut, including Pizza Hut.

The shift manager agreed with my demand and could see we’re all under a lot of pressure, and that the company is making good money. There are fewer of us working, and there are more orders, the boss even bragged about what an opportunity this was for ‘us’. No idea who that us is, but to me it just seems like more of an opportunity to get ripped off. Anyway, he called the boss and said they need to start paying us more. The boss replied, why, I put in the hand sanitizer!

Out on the road it was same old really. Between four and 11 I counted 24 ambulances and easily four or five times that amount of police cars. The odd thing was, when it got dark, the police disappeared, after 8:30 I hardly saw any. The air was much clearer. From up in Dalston and Stoke Newington, the sky scrapers in The City were crystal clear. And there was a beautiful sunset occasionally visible between the buildings on Highbury Hill. But it got cold.

I really had the feeling I was in a horror film, the strange peace and yellow sunlight added to that impression. Don't know if anyone's read Greybeard by Brian Aldiss, but it reminded me of that, an old, sterile, senile world slowly dying in the late summer. This job is always quite strange, I’ve been to some very odd places, in the middle of the night, but last night I walked out of an elevator in an apartment building to find the roof had been replaced with the gloaming dusk sky, in perfect silence apart from quacking geese flying overhead. Then suddenly I was back on the Seven Sisters Road.

One place I delivered to, a street over from my harrowing experience a week before, where I’m sure the customer was dying, seemed to be cordoned off with tape.

No tips apart from one guy who gave me a fiver. The most I’ve ever received in one go. People aren’t that bothered about thanking me now. In fact, one person asked for another pizza because they said theirs was over cooked. I shared half my tips with homeless people. I couldn’t not really. One guy in the street looked desperate when he asked for change. At first I said I didn’t have any, but I couldn’t cope with lying to someone in that situation so I went back and gave him a quid. Another person was manic, maybe high, asking for money on the train home, there wasn’t really anyone around so I doubt he got much. He said he just got out of prison and didn’t know what to do and just hoped he didn't have to spend the night on the streets. I wanted to be hard hearted, because I’m not exactly flush at the moment, but I couldn’t.

A lot of the little shops, corner shops and convenience places are shutting now, and even the petrol station where I filled up on Holloway Road had mostly empty shelves. Late that night, on the corner of Seven Sisters and Holloway Road I saw someone with a duvet bundled over their head asking for money at car windows, but there was only one car there, which drove off and left them like a hungry ghost.

My DBS check just arrived, and the good news is I’m not a criminal. I applied for another job at the field hospital at the ExCel Centre. I decided I don’t think I could cope with being a porter, because I think that will mean moving dead and dying people around, but I think I would be a good distribution person, so I applied for that.

At the end of a very tiring shift (I only got a ten-minute break in seven hours in which time I wolfed down a pizza, I joked the other day that I wanted to put on loads of weight and get really into dungeons and dragons, unfortunately that seems to be coming true), I wrote a note to the homeless guy who was sleeping in the garage. I couldn’t turf him out, he’s no different from me, and I would want somewhere sheltered to sleep. And my logic is he can get in anyway, better to be a bit kind to him if he’s going to sleep there anyway, rather than risk him taking a revenge shit one of us will have to clear up. So I just asked that he cleared up after himself, the bottles of piss etc.

When I opened the garage door, there was a scared bloke huddled in the corner. I said I wrote him a note, and he said, oh you want me to leave… I had a bit a chat with him, he said he heard the council’s trying to sort out beds but he hadn’t got anywhere with it yet, so we agreed he could stay in the garage if he folded his bedding away and cleared up the piss and needles etc (I didn’t mention the needles because I didn’t want to embarrass him, but it was implied). When I dropped the key off in the shop I saw an unsold pizza under the heat lamp so I sneaked it out and gave it to Christopher.