The Guttersnipe Journals

That's what Skinny Paul calls us. He will always use the word `ghosts' rather than say `homeless'. Because, he says, we are creatures without form or substance and very few people ever see us. Those that do, he adds, are invariably scared of us.

`Be careful though,' Paul said, after I'd been chatting to him about his hostel for ten minutes. `Hostels. You get all sorts. Not all friendly ghosts, I'm afraid.'

`Really?'

`Just keep your wits about you, mate. It'll be fine.'

Then he went on to tell me that one of things he really liked about getting a place in a hostel was the chance to wash and shave every day. It was then I noticed probably for the first time that Skinny Paul was clean-shaven. This made him quite a rarity amongst his fellow ghosts. It was also evidently something to which he attached some importance. He liked being clean-shaven and why shouldn't he take some pleasure from it? It's not as if we have a lot else going for us.

Skinny Paul liked to shave every day - well, good for him.

We sat in silence for a few minutes while I reflected upon what he'd just told me. Some ghosts have standards; some ghosts have vanities - it's just that on the street these vanities tend to be subverted somewhat. Ghosts don't have traditional vanities - we have to dig them out from somewhere or create new ones. We can't boast about our influence or our importance or our possessions or our beautiful wives or our brilliant children but instead we take a little personal pride in something like shaving every day.

I thought about my own little quirks and wondered if I still had a single conceit or a vanity that had not been beaten out of me by the previous months. The dirt and the filth that is part of sleeping rough is just the wallpaper of our lives; we know it's there, it's probably always been there, we just don't pay any attention to it. But it prevents you worrying too much about having clean hair or healthy skin or white teeth.

But then, I thought, there is one thing.

A good few of us Canterbury ghosts beg for money in the underpasses beneath the ring road, it's a daily occurrence and some do quite well I've been told. Actually, some friends of mine beg there fairly regularly, I've even seen Jaz there on several occasions. But the thing is, personally speaking, I just can't do it. I can't physically bring myself to do it. I've gone down there a few times, even on a day when I've been really hungry, starving even, but I get as far as the underpass and I just turn around and walk away. Maybe that's my vanity, the last residue of some sort of pride instilled in me God only knows when but I can't shake it off. I can steal a BLT sandwich from a supermarket but I can't beg.

I wonder what that says about me.

I told Skinny Paul about this and he smiled. I took this to mean that he understood. He then told me that a place in a hostel might be the right thing for me.

`Thing is,' he said slowly. `I can't quite see you as a long-term ghost somehow.'

I didn't know how to take this. `Really?' I said glibly.

`That's the thing with hostels. It's a kind of connection between the two worlds; the realm of the earthly and …' He paused for effect, `and the realm of the ghostly.'

One day, I thought, I would really like to buy Skinny Paul one of those brilliant old fashioned razors.