The GiveWell Voucher

I get the tube a lot, I get the train a lot, I walk the streets a lot, and like everyone else I am tired of people asking me for money, a lot. Not because I don't want to give it to them, but because I feel powerless to do so. Our popular wisdom tells us the worst thing you can do for these guys is to give cash, we are constantly warned it will be injected, snorted, spent on Bad Things. And so we keep our £2.32 to ourselves when that guy comes on to the train begging for it, as he limps on crutches, with legs swollen, bloodied and bruised; we keep that worthless shrapnel to ourselves as he spiels on about the roof it would buy, the warm bath he would receive, the fresh of clothes. But if we knew otherwise, if we were guaranteed that the money given would actually be spent on shelter, that it would bring them out of the cold and wet, if we knew this, then how many would refuse? And so there becomes, indeed already exists, a set of people who want to help, who yearn to give aid, but refuse through distrust and jaded experience, people who sit side by side by those to distraught to deny, who give in blind faith and take the risk.

So here is my idea. Do you remember Luncheon Vouchers? Companies used to buy them for their staff and give each worker an allowance of say £5 per day. They could then go to wherever they wanted and buy lunch; cafes, McDonalds, plush restaurants, whoever was participating, they could spend this voucher. Well, what about a voucher for the homeless, a book-token for the down-and-outs?

The GiveWell Voucher is worth £1, and is sold in books of 5, 10, 20. These vouchers sold in various outlets, HMV, the body shop, post offices, charity shops, basically any shop that wants some good PR, and to be seen to be helping. Vouchers can be redeemed at various locations for their face value, ie:

• Shelter Hostels, Youth Hostels, these places that the guys tell us they just need an additional £3.20 to get in to.
• Participating food outlets; Subways, Pret, Benjy's, places that want to be seen to be helping the problem but don't want to get involved in just handing out freebies, or old food.
• The Big Issue; the money from big issues sold is used to buy more big issues to sell... What about using these vouchers to also buy copies of the big issue to sell.
• On the back of each voucher is a list of various ways it can be used, the outlets it can be redeemed in etc, thus reassuring the giver and informing the receiver.
  

We package the ability to give money, we create a way to give to these guys, on the street, in a helpful, constructive way, that cannot be used so readily pissed away, that gives the giver a sense of making a difference. In addition it raises the plight and visibility of the problem, generates PR for all those involved, and everyone feels just that tiny bit better about themselves... so make it happen.

Lights Out

I’m tired of people looking into my eyes, the windows to my soul, I'm tired and I want to draw the blinds. At work I lie, I lie with the honesty of a saint, I tell them I'll lie, I tell them I'm going to lie and all the while they stare into my dark pupils, right into the black holes in my head they glare at me. I hate the attention, I want to hide and hold back. I’m giving it away in my deception and they'll be a price to pay. And now when I walk in the street or I sit on that tube train, I don't want these strangers peeping at my depths, I don't want the unknown to have access to this part of me, this unguarded part of me. I want to cover it from them, to conceal myself beneath glasses and hide away. So I have spent more money and bought shade, and I shall wear them not merely in times of sunshine, but for moments of majority, the quiet shy moments, and I shall keep the inside for myself.

Shut Eyes

I'm in a fresh patch of insomnia... three hours sleep I consider to be a good night. I am caught in the mechanics of shut eye, the 'how do I' of fall asleep. Is there a moment? a spilt second between wake and sleep, or is it a gradual thing, a fade out over the titles. I want to learn to trigger it, to become narcoleptic at will. It drives me crazy that I sleep so badly, my eyes hurt, they are sore and heavy and everyone looks the same, deja vu occuring at every gig, the world appears to have a cast of ten, bit part characters playing all roles. I have no focus, no concentration, I'm in a bubble, so very very tired. Last night I did my hair, it didn't work, I did it again, it didn't work, I did it again but by now there was a mass of congealed wax, gel and mousse lodged in my locks and I couldn't go on. I stepped into the shower to wash away the products, and as water cascaded over me, I noticed that I happened to be fully clothed. In the shower. With ten minutes to go. At times like these an amused dislocation sets in, and I sat in my front room, toweling my hair off, water dripping from my soaked suit, shirt and tie, watching the Simpsons, letting the couch get steadily wetter and wetter, not so bothered that people may have to wait longer than usual tonight for their card tricks.

Shrapnel

Have you ever thrown money down the drain? You should try it sometime; it's very underrated. On a rainy day I've found it to be quite a satisfying alternative to all sorts of mindnumbing occupations and television. Listening to the tinkle of loose change as it tumbles out of circulation, it lightens the load, so to speak. There are some who would say it's wasteful, sure there are some, but then I don't drink, smoke, drive, shop, date or dine, so there's very little to spend my money on. Apart from drains that is. And I like them just fine.

Snapshots of the City

(bang) I stand on the train. The girl opposite me has a light blue top, a low, diving v-neck, the pale skin of her chest displayed, three lines, three birds, the simple lines of a child's drawing tattooed onto her white skin. (bang) A bum sits on the pavement in Knightsbridge, surrounded by sleeping bags and carboard. He swigs Verve Cliqout from the bottle. (bang) Brompton Oratory, a woman, forty, sits, weeping silently into her thick brown curled hair, shoulders shaking, body quaking. (bang) A man steps on the train, Joe Pesci with brown hair, tightly coiled wiry brillo pad hair. He looks nervous. (bang) A small child dangles from his hand gripped tightly by his mother as they watch a brown-toothed brown-coated thin-haired grey-man play saxophone to amped up muzak. The boy swirls his thin floppy blonde hair and his mother bites her lip. (bang)

In Poverish

Grace treads lightly on sinner's toes
She slips the socks off and bathes the soles

Life Is Too Short

The picture is nailed to the wall, a drab English landscape secured against all odds of theft. I hardly know where to look. They've run out of space and I'm left in a women's ward. The woman opposite has lost most of her hair and passes the time flicking through magazines and taking the occasional phone call. I go for a shower and the water's brown. They give me a doctor who needs to practise his English. He terrifies me with his attempts to assure. He repeats the same speech three times, his eyes clouded with bewilderment at these new surroundings, until the silence between us becomes too much and he leaves. Down the corridor an elderly woman is in the final throws of death, groaning inhuman sounds and moaning for her dead. An alarm goes unanswered. I want to pull the wires and fluids from me, to walk out the door and into the light, my bare feet on cold concrete, but I am powerless, I have submitted, and once again the strength flows out of my arms and I drift to sleep.

I heard it so it must be true

The ticket inspectors have shiny shoes. All of them. Shiny shoes. It's the bribes they take, the money they pocket, folding away their crispy incompleted forms as penitents slip currency into their waterproofs. The briber goes unreported and unblemished, the bribee spends the pocket money on fancy shiny shoes. That's how you can tell the under-cover ones; they're the riders with no bags and shiny shoes.

Spider Boy

Whilst at university, during my second year of neglecting to study, I went through a period of three months in which spiders would continuously drop out of my hair. I could be having a perfectly normal conversation with someone when one would leap from my head to the table, have a look around and scuttle off. Needless to say this tended to put a bit of a dampener on the small talk, strangers would look at me in disgust, make their excuse and leave. One time during a very heated discussion with our landlord on the state of our kitchen (over the Christmas break they'd decided to "renovate", and we returned to find a room stripped down to the plaster with nothing but a solitary wire dangling from the ceiling and a cement mixer where the table used to be. Oh yeah, and rain blowing in because there was a wall missing), a spider evacuated my scalp and bounced in the middle of this table, and blinking, gazed around. There was a sublime pause as everyone stopped to look at our eight-legged newcomer, before a friend broke the silence by shouting in alarm 'if you're here, who's looking after the kids?!' The mystery was finally solved when I dropped a sock down the side of my bed, and as I pulled the bed out to get to it, spiders poured out through a hole in the wall. Turns out I'd been sleeping with my head next to the nest. Nice.

I wanna live forever

Drama school can be a little odd. Just watch Fame. Last year, during a particularly abstracted movement class, my wonderful teacher took us through the various colours of the rainbow. She'd shout one out and we would move accordingly, embodying the shade in whatever motions we saw fit. Blue, red, green, slowly we began to lose ourselves in the exercise, stretching like cats or undulating like charmed snakes; it's amazing what a group of usually self-respecting twenty somethings will do when trapped in an unlit rehearsal studio. We come to yellow, incidentally my favourite colour, and as I'm in the middle of this particular hue, stretching my arms up to the sun and imploding like a daffodil, I hear a voice shout 'No John! Yellow!!'

No Smoking

I've given up.
You can tell can't you?
I'm a quitter.
The slow wild eyed desperation in these washed out eyes of mine.
Soon I'll have the look of a non-smoker;
That clean, iceberg lettuce fresh look.
I'll pronounce my consonants cleanly, and drink nothing but water.
And Green Tea.
My fingers itch.
My itchy, twitchy yellowed fingers,
No longer afforded the justification of those little white deathsticks.
Any non-smokers in tonight?
What about non-quitters?
I much prefer you guys.
I admire your willpower,
To stick with it no matter how sick it's making you;
Come hacking cough and stuffy nose,
You'll drag your way to oblivion.
God bless you.

You wanna know how I quit?
You want my advice?
Here it is:
Don't think about it.
Find something else to occupy your mind,
Dwell not on that pure crisp white paper
Those leaves of dry, brown, gold,
Lying there ready to be ignited,
To be slowly sucked on,
To glow red in delight as the pleasure is drawn gently out,
And the two of you lay spent on the ashtray arm in arm.
Don't think about that.
Avoid the sputtering of matches,
The sucking of gas lighters,
The flipping and zipping of zippos.
Avoid people who smoke.
Avoid people who look like they smoke.
Avoid people who look cool enough to smoke.
Avoid people.
Whatever happens,
Don't give up.

I rather feel very sick

I've just eaten a whole bag of fat free marshmallows. Does that mean they don't contain any fat, or they just don't charge you for it?

Everybody's Favourite Stranger

It's lonely making friends for ten minutes. But as a magician, and a close-up one to boot, that's what I do. I charm and woo strangers into love with me, they worship me like Gandalf but without the beard, they rejoice in my incredible company as I dance like a little table monkey beside them. But as I leave, walking off a little more financially viable than when I arrived, I forget them with a snap of the fingers, I drop their faces from my conscious like a cold stone. If we should chance to meet again, I will not remember them much to their disappointment, I'll stand there giving them a wary, guarded, hunted look as they produce signed cards and memorabilia as proof of our interaction. I have become an expert in forgetting people, best friends for ten minutes, strangers the next, and it puts a strain. I no longer enjoy being this close to my audience, I want to put some distance back, I'd like to get back on stage again, maybe do some more stand-up, leave the magic behind. I've always thought that going from magic to comedy is like a hooker becoming an escort; you talk more and do less tricks. My ego can't take the ups and downs of magic much longer, tonight I went from one group who had come in to see me specifically, they laughed, clapped and cheered as I put cards in bottles and bottles through tables, to the next table of three containing an American woman who halfway through my second trick said 'I think you're delightful, but you need to stop now.' Ouch.

Catch 22

The problem with denial is, if you deny you're in it, you're in it.
And if you admit it, you're still in it.

The New Order

Last night over dinner I committed a bowdlian slip. It's a pretty difficult thing to do. Oh sure, anyone can commit a freudian one: Hello, I rather admire your arse... I mean your sportsbra... I mean your face. Not that difficult to accomplish, but a bowdlian slip? Well, first you have to invent the term. Thomas Bowdler was the guy who became famous for making Shakespeare a little easier to stomach, expurgating references to Ophelia's self-obliteration and generally pissing on the grave of the greatest writer of all ever. Basically his mother told him to clean up his language and he took it a bit far. Henceforth this practise became known as bowdlerisation, and Tommy B had his own word! Yeah baby, I'm gonna bowdlerise it up! What are you up to tonight Thomas? Oh, you know, a bit of low key bowdlerisation and a spot of chess. What a dude. So in his honour here is my Bowdlian slip... In my best and politest voice I asked the pen-poised waiter if I could please have the Chicken Bread please. There was a pause and my subconcious looked up, caught guiltily in the act of erasing my lecherous thoughts and cleaning up my dirty, dirty act. The waiter looked at me like a crazy man, by that I don't mean he started dribbling, I mean he raised an eyebrow and signalled for backup. Breast, I said, breast! I'd like BREAST! No, wait! chicken breast! Not an actual breast! a chicken's Breast! I mean- Aww crap.