I have met 2 famous people this week

I have met two 'famous' people this week. Earlier this week I was standing in the queue at the checkout in Morrisons Streatham. There was an old lady in front of me. I said "Are you Cynthia?". She laughed and said yes. I said that I had seen her around but never met her.

Cynthia Payne was in all the newspapers years ago, accused of running a brothel. Men paid with luncheon vouchers, which was a cause of some amusement in the media. A couple of films were based on her life. I could have made a joke about luncheon vouchers at the till but I'm glad I didn't because she's probably sick of people mentioning them every time they meet her. The brothel she ran, where she held sex parties, was quite near to Tooting Bec Common, where a different type of prostitute used to work.

Yesterday I was on my way home on the bus passing through West Norwood and I saw someone I recognized out of the window. It was Jessie the Clapham Tranny. She starred in the hit TV series 'The Fried Chicken Shop'. I had never spoken to Jessie before but I had recognized her from when she used to go to Tooting Bec Common and hang out with the crack addicts.

I got off at the next stop and walked back. I said "Are you Jessie?". We had quite a pleasant conversation about different things including some of the street girls we both used to know. We talked about one girl and I hadn't known that her nickname was 'Frenchie'. Although I don't think that she's French. She's the one who sent me two pieces of writing about her life that I put on my blog but later removed at her request. There are things I could tell you about her that I can't put here because she wouldn't like it. I want to respect her privacy. But I could tell Jessie.

We also talked about the other girl I have mentioned not that long ago on my blog. He has seen her too since her days on TB Common. He said that she's very selfish and only interested in herself. I know that's how she used to be, but I'm hoping that she's off the drugs now and a better person. Sometimes I wonder what I would be like if I was an addict, I'd probably be going round stabbing people.

I asked her if she is living in West Norwood now - I had seen her there a few weeks ago - and she said she is. So I don't think we can call her Clapham Tranny any more, perhaps West Norwood Tranny.

Jessie, the West Norwood Tranny?

one day in the life of a street girl

I have had a terrible nights sleep. Been shaking and not feeling very well. I wake up to breakfast. A 10 bag of heroin. This will make me well enough so I can go out and make some money. If I haven't had to luxury of buying a 10 for the morning I will cook up all the used filters I have from previous fixes. (When you inject heroin you add the brown powder to water and boil it up. You add citric and you will put a filter in it. You will suck all the juice through the filter so you filter the bad stuff out of it.) So when I don't have money I will recook all the filters I have saved. Its not as effective but it will get me out of trouble if not for a short while. I found it difficult to inject this morning. I was shaky and trying my best not to miss the vein. I'm not hungry, but I eat a few pieces of chocolate to get some energy. I get dressed with the idea of trying to make money. My first idea is ask if I can borrow some money to get me through the day and then later I can earn money prostituting and can repay the money. Due to lack of credit I'm unable to ask anyone. I go shop lifting during the day. I walk into Croydon and try and get whatever I can. There is a friend I have who will take anything I get. He pays me a quarter of the value price and he sells it on at half price. Today I got 12 pairs of shoes from Next and after I got that I walked into Argos and they had on display Lawn Mowers. I got 1 of them too. All in all in made £70 this morning. I have to pay back £30 I borrowed from my friend. With the remaining £40 I plan to get crack and heroin. You can get crack and heroin in 10 or 20 bags. Some dealers will sell you a 20 rock and a 10 bag of heroin for £25. To them this is still profit because once you have your first hit of crack you won't want to stop. Their gear from these sort of dealers isn't top quality. I prefer to get my white (crack) in powder form and wash it myself. Washing meaning washing it up with bicarb to turn it into crack. Its a simple process. The cocaine powder will be on a spoon. A small amount of bicarb is added as well as a few drops of ammonia. (Please do not think I am trying to teach anyone how to do it because I wouldn't encourage anyone to live the life I lead). This mixture is then heated and stirred slowly. The crack with harden against the cold metal implement used to stir the mixture. I'm unable to buy the powder form right now because I don't have enough money. I stick with getting a 20 rock and 10 brown for 25 and also buy an extra 10 brown for later. With the remaining £5 I buy some tobacco and 4 energy drinks. There is a well known crack house in Croydon that I can buy gear from. I make my way there. Crack houses are not glamorous places and I wouldn't wish this environment on anyone. I walk in, its cold, people are sitting on the floor. It doesn't smell particularly nice and all eyes are on me. I'm under the illusion I may be the only person who has cash right now. Everyone is asking me for a roll up and I'm happy to share. I'm looking forward to my buzz so I'm not really concerned. I'm a bit shaky and not feeling great at the minute. My poison is given to me from my devil. I always carry my own equipment with me. My crack pipe, my pins, my syringes, clean tissue and sterile wipes. I smoke the crack first and then my heroin. My one and only love. I do start to feel better but I'm craving more crack now. I take a walk to my friends house who lives just behind Surrey Street market. She's a prostitute and works from AdultWork. She takes crack and smokes heroin. Luckily she never progressed to injecting. She has some crack and we have a smoke. On the promise that I will help her when she has nothing. My friend sells her body to feed her habit. She charges £150 for an hour and £100 for half an hour. She offers extras such as anal, BB (bareback), CIM, OWO and facials. Today she has a particular kind of request. The gentleman wants 2 girls for watersports. She said I had come at just the right time! She calls the client back and he takes the details and will arrive soon. While we wait she let's me use her shower and I freshen up. I give her an energy drink and we relax watching Loose Women waiting for him to arrive. He soon arrives. He has agreed to pay 250 for half an hour with 2 girls including watersports. She will pay me 100 for joining in. He's an Asian man, in his fifties. He's in a business suit and has arrived in a nice car. He seems nervous. I feel for him. It must be intimidating for him to come alone. He's entering someone else's house so he must be feeling nervous. My friend goes away to count the money so I chat to him. My friend soon arrives and we get down to business. He wants me and my friend to kiss to turn him on. We oblige. He touches us for a short while and soon he starts to wank. He says he will come soon. We move him into the bath. He lays down in the bath and continues to wank. While he is doing that me friend and I urinate on him. He soon cums and asks to have a shower. He leaves shortly after. With the money I have made I decide to buy more drugs. I go back to the crackhouse. I also buy some credit for my phone. The day progresses like this til evening. This is when I start to prostitute. I am free to take punters to the crackhouse. They don't mind and as long as I am still buying drugs its ok. If I am lucky I may get another call from my friend and work with her if not I have to work on the streets. The chemist that I get my clean syringes from also gives me condoms for free. On this particular night I'm not waiting too long for a punter. I jump in the car and the man explains that he wants to insert his tongue into me. He offers me £20. I am happy for him to do this. Its quick and pretty painless. By this time I buy a 20 crack and use my 10 brown that I have saved from earlier. Soon after I am back on the street and I am approached by a man standing at a bus stop. He says he wanted a blow job. I asked him for £40 but he is only prepared to pay 30. I accept his offer. I gave him the condom and performed my service. I still know I need at least 1 more job to get enough gear to see me through the remainder of the night and one for the morning. The last punter is a young man. He's probably early 20s. He asks can I come back to his house and have sex in his shower. He will pay me £50 for 15 mins. He lived in Purley. We drove to his house and we got into the shower. He covered me in shower gel and asked could he wash my hair which he did. He started to play with my clit and asked what turned me on. Soon he picked me up and we had quick heated sex against the wall of the shower. I was happy I had made £50 and he gave me a lift home. I gave a call to a dealer and he arranged to meet me outside my home. I got my gear and I went indoors. I relaxed and watched some TV. Before bed I had my last little treat. My heroin. Ready to do the same again tomorrow. not forgotten

life of a street girl

I always remember being happy as a child up until I was about 12. My mother and father separated when I was about one and I lived with my Mum and saw my Dad regularly. I lived in a nice house. My Mum drove a nice car.

My Mum started work in a cafe. She met a man who was a heroin addict. He came into the cafe one day with his son and didn't have any money to buy food but had explained he was hungry. The type of person my mum is, she gave them food. A relationship started and everything changed.

Violence started almost immediately. My Mum one day came to collect me from school and I noticed she had bruising on her face as well as little cuts. I also noticed we got on the bus instead of in my Mum’s car. I could only have been about nine but I remember my Mum telling me what he had done. He tied her to a chair and was mentally torturing her. He took out an injection he used for his heroin and started to stab himself violently in his arm. This is all I can remember about that particular beating. She wasn't badly hurt. The beatings would become worse.

I remember my mother at this point was starting to become depressed. I remember her seeing a doctor and sitting behind her listening to her telling the doctor how she was sexually abused by a neighbour when she was young. Her drinking increased dramatically and I remember her crying a lot.

He was then sentenced to prison for stabbing a man. I remember my Mum got better while he wasn't there. Not crying so much not drinking so much. My Mum had lost the car and we had been handed an eviction notice from our landlord. My uncle had a 2 bedroom flat not far away. We moved in there.

Shortly after moving in Mum’s boyfriend was released from prison and almost immediately moved in. I would sit in my bedroom watching movies while he would take heroin and crack with his brother and my Mum in the lounge. I hated being there. I would go and stay with my auntie to avoid going home. When I did go home, Mum would have a black eye and the place would be really dirty. Empty beers cans would be all over the floor. My Mum would stay in her bedroom lights off with a black eye. If she was unlucky she would have two black eyes and a split lip.

I would sometimes stay at home thinking I could protect her. I was wrong. He would still beat her and he would do the same to me. He would also touch me indecently and rub himself against me. While they were high I would regularly hear them having sex.

I would continually say to Mum please let's leave. She wouldn't. She would say this is my home. I begged her continuously to leave. Eventually I stopped asking.

It was at this time when I was about 15 that I started to leave the house when the beatings started. A road near to me used to be littered with prostitutes and drug dealers. After a while the girls would talk to me because they would see me so often. They would ask why I'm out so late. In general everyone was pretty nice to me.

I knew what the girls did for their profession and I know it was to feed their drug addiction but I was used to drugs at home so I wasn't so affected by it.

I was planning to go abroad with my Dad, his wife and my sisters. My Dad said I should being a hundred pounds for spending money. I knew I could not get the money from Mum. I decided I would sleep with someone for a hundred pounds. A lot of money I thought. I wasn't selling myself for next to nothing. I was going to do it for one hundred British pounds. I didn't go about it the same way my friends on the street did, I went onto a dating site on my phone and asked “Does anyone want sex for cash?”. One man replied. My Mum was in her room. I opened the door and let him in. I made sure he used a condom and the experience was pretty painless and quick. He lay on top of me and grunted for a short time.

To me, I thought easy money! My pride has not been affected with me having to see Dad without the hundred pounds. From then on whenever I needed money I prostituted myself. At this point I started to take cocaine. At first I was snorting it. It made me feel good. I was an adult. I didn't have to go home and listen to my Mum being beaten. As long as I had cocaine I could stay out and up all night and I could forget everything.

One difference was, my friends didn't snort they smoked cocaine. Eventually I was to try it. It didn't affect me straight away. It made me high but I didn't chase the buzz.

Mum was at home one day and for whatever reason her boyfriend decided he wanted to kill my Mum. He had a good go at it. After one of my benders, smoking crack all night and drinking brandy I went home. My Mum was lying on the floor, face down. The floor was completely covered in blood. My Mum was unrecognisable. He ended up going to prison for attempted murder. Luckily Mum didn't die.

The things that happened that night affected me and still do. I started to smoke crack more regularly. To try and take the images out of my mind of what he had done to her. I also started smoking heroin. I loved the sensation of crack. It was an upper. It had a fantastic buzz. But the problem with it is you feel an anxious nervous feeling while you are coming down. The only thing you can think to take that feeling away is have another hit. But then you are spending so much money. This is when I would use heroin. Heroin is a downer. It makes you a bit dopey, sleepy. This is good because when you smoke crack you stay awake. Heroin will make you tired and take away that anxious feeling.

After smoking heroin for a few days your body starts to need it. When you don't have heroin you become ill. Vomiting, diarrhoea, cramps, sweats. In order to get rid of that you have to medicate yourself with more heroin. Not before long, smoking doesn't take away these symptoms and you have to inject. Currently I am injecting. Not always. I am on a methadone programme and it is only when I'm feeling weak and I buy heroin do I inject myself. I smoke crack all day long.

When I do inject I have to inject into my groin. I regularly work as a prostitute to fund my habit and still I don't make enough. Currently I'm on a methadone programme and awaiting for funding for rehab. I will detox for 4 weeks followed by 3 months rehabilitation.

Elise Langham - missing girl

I have been going to Soho for years and two or three times I noticed a scruffy ill-looking girl in the street, usually in the company of other people. She looked like an addict but I don't know if she was a 'street girl'. She never propositioned me. I wouldn't have gone with her, even though she was quite pretty. I would have talked to her though, and maybe bought her something to eat.

Then just recently I saw something in the window of the police office in Peter Street in Soho. There were pictures of several people, their names and details of the ASBOs they had been given. I recognised one of the photos. It was the girl I had seen. I'm pretty sure it is the same girl.

It said that she had been given an Anti-Social Behaviour Order for drugs offenses and prohibited from entering the West End or Camden for 5 years. It said this was to 'protect residents and businesses from further anti-social acts'.

I looked up the name on Google and there are several articles from newspapers from a few years ago talking about a missing girl. She had left home and people were looking for her. I got the picture below from a BBC news site.
Poster appeal for missing Elise

Police searching for a "vulnerable" 16-year-old girl are putting up posters in an attempt to find her, a month after she disappeared.

It seems strange to me that the authorities thought that the best way to deal with her was with an ASBO. Isn't there some better way of dealing with girls like this than just banning them from where they live for years? If she breaks the terms of her ASBO she will go to jail.

It could be that something radical has to happen before she can turn her life around, and the ASBO might be it. Maybe she is back in her home town or with her family and she needs to know her old way of life is no longer open to her. I doubt that this kind of approach to the problem will work though.

The little poster in Peter Street did not say she was a thief. I don't think she had been stealing from local 'residents and businesses'. So I think that to say she was anti-social and that the community needs protecting from her is just wrong. It's just another example of how police are misusing Anti-Social Behaviour laws to stop people from doing things that they don't like. If it helped them it wouldn't be so bad. But this naming-and-shaming zero-tolerance attitude isn't intended to help people and probably won't.

bleak future for street girls

I like to read the PunterNet forum and sometimes I contribute. There has been a thread recently called 'Street girls'. I was going to make a contribution but I didn't get round to it and now it has been closed. There were a lot of snide remarks and it dealt with issues that have been dealt with before by myself and others in previous threads, so it wasn't a high priority for me. It was interesting how much hatred some people have for men who have sex with street girls. I think there were contributors who were not involved in prostitution but were either extreme feminists or religious.

Extreme feminists and religious people have a lot in common, although they would not like to admit it. They both take an ideological approach, see everything in black-and-white terms, and don't want to learn anything because they think they know it all already. Ideological approaches always end up harming the people that they say they want to help. They are all hypocrites because if they really wanted to help they would first try to understand what the problems are.

Now it has been decided that there will be no more discussions on the PunterNet forum of the subject of the street scene. I predict that this will make the PunterNet site less credible in the eyes of the general public. Many people will have thought “They discuss prostitution but at least they are willing to show the dark side as well as its more acceptable side”. Now they are not willing to discuss the dark side. They want to make out that it is like Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Hiding the truth will not make anything better.

There were many points raised in this thread that I would like to address. I am no longer able to contribute to the thread because it has been closed. I am no longer able to start a new thread because the subject of the street scene has been banned. So I have to do it here. There were 2 points that I thought were the most important. I will address them both in this posting and then if I can be bothered I can address other points in later postings.

Someone made the point that street girls have enormous problems and that people like me are adding to them. It is not me who is adding to their problems, it is people who want to ban things and drive them further underground.

I have mentioned Amanda Austin, the local resident who campaigned for prostitutes to be removed from Tooting Bec Common. Now it seems that she has achieved her aims. I have only seen 2 prostitutes there this year. This is probably more due to the activities of Harriet Harman and Jacqui Smith than Amanda Austin.

According to Amanda Austin the Common was awash with used condoms and drugs paraphernalia. This was a lie. Tooting Bec Common is a big park and the prostitutes restricted their activities to one small area of the park. The only used condoms that could be seen were in particular areas of the undergrowth. The only drugs paraphernalia I have ever seen in several years of going there was an improvised crack pipe. It was there for many weeks, which just shows that what rubbish could be seen was an accumulation of many weeks-worth.

I often wonder if Amanda Austin and her fellow campaigners ever thing about what has happened to these women, as I do. Perhaps they think that they have all given up drugs. I don't think they care, there seemed to be a lot of hostility to the women from residents, although of course they are always willing to shed crocodile tears if it helps them get their way.

When I first started going to the Common about 9 years ago, there were many women there of different types. I would say 3 different types. There were women who occasionally went to the Common when they had rent to pay or a bill, or because of delays in getting benefits. There were other women who drank or took some drugs but were not addicts, or who would not have considered themselves addicts but recreational users. The third group were the hardened drug addicts who came to the Common because it was a safer and easier option for them than getting into cars at 2 or 3 in the morning in New Park Road or Brixton Hill.

What has happened to these women is different in each case.

The first group will be having even more problems because of the economic downturn (caused by Harriet Harman and her chums) and they will be getting evicted or sitting in the dark or not having gas to cook their children food (Ms Harman is getting 'evicted' soon).

The second group will be shoplifting and committing other crimes. Perhaps the men in their lives will have to do more burglaries. Or maybe selling cocaine to kiddies (there has recently been a big rise in cocaine use among young people). So if Amanda Austin gets burgled and her teenage daughter gets a cocaine addiction like Daniella Westbrook it should not come as a big surprise.

And then the third group will be getting into cars at 2 or 3 in the morning in New Park Road or Brixton Hill and maybe sometimes never be seen again. They are likely to face injury. So I wonder if Harriet and Amanda and their fellow campaigners are proud of themselves about what they have achieved.

Another possibility is the more attractive and more organised women in groups 1 and 2 decide to become full-time prostitutes. Which I'm sure is not what Harriet Harman and Jacqui Smith originally intended.

The woman who made the posting that I am replying to finished by writing 'maybe it's time to go away and rethink your moral standards...?'. Ethics is a branch of philosophy that has occupied the minds of some of the most intelligent people for centuries. They have not come to any conclusions but they always stick to certain rules.

People should base their morality on thinking instead of emotion. They should be informed about issues and be willing to share information and discuss facts and opinions, without being sarcastic or insulting. They should not try to shut people up, either by intimidating them or trying to stop their contribution to the debate.

They should try to understand the consequences of their opinions and actions. If they can see that the consequences of their actions or opinions have increased human suffering then they should not continue to claim that they are altruistic. They should realize that they are not altruistic, or that they are not altruistic enough to be willing to spend a little time listening to others who know more than they do and to think about things a bit. If they are unwilling to see the consequences of their actions, as I think is the case with Amanda Austin, then they are immoral people.

How is it that so many women can be happy to bring so much misery to other women?

The other post that I want to reply to today was made by a man whose contribution was well intentioned but misguided. He said that in a job he had he encountered a street girl who told him that 'she felt that she was worthless and would never amount to anything more in life so took drugs to numb the pain she felt'. This is the sort of thing that drug addicts say to make people feel sorry for them.

The fact is that if you take a drug like cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin or crystal meth you will like it and want more. You are likely to become addicted. It has nothing to do with self-confidence or feelings of worthlessness or whether you spent your teenage years in a children's home or were abused as a child.

People think that addiction will not happen to them. They think “Well, I never lived in a children's home and I don't have feelings of worthlessness, so I'm not going to end up as a street girl”. This is a fatal (often literally fatal) error of thinking. If you think that street girls are only a certain type of unfortunate individual then you are missing an important truth.

Last year on the Common I met a woman in her thirties (I guess) called Alison. She was from Dublin. I asked her if she took crack and she said she did. I asked her if she took smack and she said she did, but only smoked it, not injected it. She said that she used to run a restaurant in Ireland. I told her that I had never taken drugs. She said don't, if you take it and you like it it can change your life. This is the sort of thing I have seen again and again in the years that I have been going to the Common. I have never seen a 'teen runaway'.

The author of this post also said that he would have liked to help this woman but she would not consider rehab. There is a reason for that. The reason for that is that the life of a crack addict is a life of much pleasure as well as pain. You may not want to believe that but people who know about drug addicts know that they are getting too much out of it to give it all up. That might sound like a crass thing to say but it is an important truth to understand. They want to party all the time.

In any case psychological opinion is changing about drug addiction. I had a CBT therapist who had worked with drug addicts. She did not see them as victims. I told her about my involvement with street girls, and that some people see me as an abuser. She could not understand this. She did not see me as an abuser, and none of the street girls have seen me as an abuser, so why should I pay any attention to dickheads?

Of course there are abusers on the street scene. Just like in any kind of prostitution or in any sphere of life. There are men who like to have women under their control and to harm them. But I have always listened to street girls and tried to help them. Just because I fuck them (occasionally) doesn't mean that I can't care about what happens to them. You might say that I am pretending that I am benefiting them and am deluded, but it is not me who is pretending to have their best interests at heart and is deluded.

There will be more abuse of street girls now. Read this from this site http://www.scot-pep.org.uk/

Since the kerb-crawling legislation came in, nobody’s drug dependency or rent arrears or benefit delays have magically cleared up overnight. Women are still working on the streets, but with many of their regular clients avoiding the scene for fear of legal repercussions, they are seeing a greater proportion of unpleasant and violent clients, with a rise in requests for sex without a condom and services at insultingly low prices. Some are resigned to being out all night, since business is slow, they still need to make money, and in some cases they haven’t a hope of meeting their curfews in homeless accommodation. Clients want them to leave their traditional areas and meet them elsewhere, so that the clients won’t be targeted by police; as a consequence sex workers are working in greater isolation with a significant threat to their personal safety.

thoughts about Trina

If things had worked out between me and Trina and I had become a regular client I would have let her take a shower at my flat. If she had been hungry I would have given her something to eat or given her a cup of tea. If she had needed to talk I would have listened. If I had a washing machine I would have been willing to wash her clothes.

I would have been willing to do this for a girl. If someone is homeless or living in a squat then this could have been important to her. But I would never have let one stay in my flat, not even for one night.

Men have an attraction towards young women. That doesn't stop when you get older. I have had an attraction towards young women since I was a child and that is not going to change. Men also have an instinct to look after young women. You may not believe that but it is true. You may want to be cynical and think that it is just about lust.

There are plenty of people - especially feminists - who want to see things in black-and-white terms, with women as victims and men as predators. Reality is more complicated than that. You can't even begin to help people if you don't want to understand reality. Men who use prostitutes are not always as bad as they are made out to be, and people who are drug addicts are not as innocent as they would like others to believe.

encounters with women with problems 2

A strange thing happened. A few weeks after encountering the almost comatose woman near where I live, I encountered another almost comatose woman. I went to have a look at the New River park near Islington. I saw a young woman looking at one of the information boards. She was leaning over it and slumping on top of it. At one point it looked as if she had gone to sleep.

I went over to her and asked if she was OK. I said she could come and sit next to me on a park bench and we could talk. She said that her name was Zoe. I learned that she took drugs and lived nearby with other people but was not happy where she lived. She offered me a cigarette.

She does have sex with men for money but there was nowhere that we could go to. There was no point in me taking her phone number because she lives in a different part of London to where I live. She said that she was there to meet a friend in a different part of the park and asked me if I wanted to walk with her. I thought this might not be such a good idea so I said no. I didn't know if she was going to meet a man or a woman.

As I was walking away I noticed a woman who looked as if she might be waiting for a punter. I didn't go and talk to her. It makes me wonder is New River park is a place where street girls go to pick up men.

Last week I was walking along Charing Cross Road in central London and I saw a woman I wrote about in a previous post. She had told me her name was Langdon but I don't know if that is her real name. I went up to her and said hello. I was expecting her to not to want to talk to me, as happened the last time I spoke to her.

Instead she was quiet friendly. She asked me where I was going and I said I was going over the road to the Subway fast food place. I asked her if she wanted to come with me. She said yes. I asked her if she wanted anything to eat but she just had a soft drink and I had a coffee.

She seemed to be better dressed than before and looked OK. She didn't want to speak much. She spent a lot of time staring out of the open door, presumably looking at the passing people. I watched her face and sometimes it seemed as if she had remembered something or was thinking deeply about something. I asked her if she needed anything from the shop but she said she did not.

She wanted to know where I was going that afternoon. I asked her if she knew that there was a lovely park near here called Phoenix Gardens. She did not know it and was willing to go with me. When we got there I showed her the sculpture of the horse's head in the foliage and the banana tree. She wouldn't sit down and she put up her umbrella even though it was neither rainy or very sunny.

I asked her if she had been here before and she said no she had not. I asked her if she would like to see the pond. She said she had already seen it but I said there is a much bigger pond over there. We went to see it and I pointed out the shoal of tiny fish. I sat on a bench and she stood there a long time just looking at things.

She wanted to know my address and phone number and she copied them down carefully. Then she went back to looking at the pond, just standing there. After a while I said to her "Would you like to give me your address?" This was a mistake as she looked a bit embarrassed and then said that she was going. Perhaps she did not want me to know that she lived in a hostel. There is a hostel at the northern end of Greek Street, where I have seen her twice.

I am glad that I introduced her to Phoenix Gardens. I hope that she goes there often from now on. Much better than walking the streets. I felt that I had done my good deed for the day. I thought about telling the people working in the gardens about her so that they can look out for her. Perhaps I will see her the next time I go to Phoenix Gardens.

It may surprise you to learn that I like the countryside. I often walk ten miles across open countryside. Sometimes I encounter horses. I like to try and get them to come up to me. Sometimes I think that they will come to me but then something happens and they go away. I get the same feeling from some of the women that I meet in different circumstances.