Spare some change please
By the Tate Modern at the south end of the wobbly bridge I talked for a minute about dogs with one of those ‘spare some change please homeless hungry’ young men. He was with a friendly mongrel, said he’d owned her since she was a few weeks old, she’d been the runt of the litter, they were never apart. Don’t know if it was true, I’ve heard that the dogs do the rounds, but she was a playful creature, brown and shapely, joking about with bone-shaped biscuits, a paid-up member of the human race. The young man had soft brown eyes, a Liverpool accent, matted hair, looked dangerously thin and yellow and as if he was about to die. I asked if it made him feel safer, having the dog. He said she hid behind him if there were altercations in the night.