Street life
From Mr Robert Easton Sir: I was pleased to see that it is our very own Spectator and its columnists who are keeping my street neighbours in the Tottenham Court Road in their supply of smokes.
Your No Life correspondent Jeremy Clarke (24 March) missed one of the more picturesque afternoon spectacles of this part of London, when the clan of street people go for their afternoon smoke, pockets jangling with the change from kinder-hearted passers-by than myself, such as Mr Clarke.
At around teatime, you can see them — the Scots girl with the strident voice from outside Sainsbury's, her lugubrious boyfriend from outside Hart's, and sometimes up to half a dozen more — being led by a jolly pied piper of a fellow dressed in black with a base ball cap. He has a plump, cheerful, dark face, and it gladdens my heart to see the expectation on their pale, sunken, spotty cheeks as they bob around him with their blankets and sky-blue sleeping bags billowing gaily. Their sad faces twist and turn anxiously, hoping that their little treat will not be interrupted.
Finally, the pied piper gives them something to smoke and they retire to the telephone boxes outside my window, and with the comforting help of a punctured Cokecan — the poor man's briar pipe — collapse into the well-earned oblivion of the smoke so generously provided from the expenses of your correspondent.
Robert Easton
London WC1
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