Bin Man

I have just come home from Sainsburies. It was a quarter to closing and the shop assistants were running round the shop putting reduced stickers on everything. I, like the rest of the soul sold middle class vultures was flocking around them around putting bargains galore in my basket. Lamb chops, hummus and poppy seed loaf. I am a fan of this time of day. Why pay full price when you can race in a most undignified manner against a sock sandeled man to the last pot of 85p guacamole? It is such fun.

I managed to score us some good grub for tea and was walking home listening to PJ Harvey swinging my leeks as I went, when I turned into the street that leads into ours. The sun had gone down, and the light was the sort of twilight that plays tricks on the eyes. So when I saw something moving in the corner of my vision, I didn’t pay it too much attention. But when I heard a rustling beyond the bushes I lifted my head to see a man, with a shaven head and combat boots on eating from a bin.

He look startled to see me (it is a quiet road) and I thought I saw a flicker of embarrassment on his face, but he wasn’t going to turn down food and he kept on eating. It was pizza. The box was soaked through with last night’s grease and the piece he was eating had somebody else’s ketchup on the crust.

I nearly burst into tears then and there. This kind of thing is to me like a body blow. Some people can block it out, some can look the other way. I can’t. I’m not saying I do anything much about it, except occasionally give guilt money for the big issue and the occasional cup of tea. I thought about the lamb chops in my bag, eight for only seventy five pence, and nearly gave them him. But, I thought, what good would raw meat be for someone who probably hasn’t even got a fork let alone an oven? I wondered about cash, to tell him to go and get a real pizza but I had none, and if I had run to the cash machine and given him a tenner, we wouldn’t have been able to go out tonight. So I just walked on by.

It is so wrong that someone, anyone, has to eat leftover food out of a bin, ever.

It is doubly wrong that in a city like York where people queue around the block for overpriced cucumber sandwiches at the numerous tea shops there is a man who for whatever reason can’t feed himself and we all look the other way.

And it is wrong, so terribly wrong that when I got home, I spread my guacamole on my poppy seed loaf and half an hour later had forgotten all about him.