Джеймс Боуэн - The World According to Bob

I was sitting on a bench with Bob on the extra-long lead I’d made for him when he suddenly spotted a grey squirrel.

Princess spotted it too and soon the pair of them were bounding towards it. The squirrel, quite sensibly, scampered up the nearest tree, but Bob and Princess weren’t deterred.

I watched them as they worked together trying to work out how to flush the squirrel out of the tree. It was like watching a SWAT team trying to winkle a bad guy out of a safe house.

Princess would let out a bark every now and again to try and rattle the squirrel. Every time the squirrel appeared or made a move, the two would adjust their positions. Bob was covering one side, leading back on to the open space towards me, while Princess was covering the squirrel’s other potential escape route at the back of the tree.

They carried on with this for twenty minutes before eventually giving up.

I’m sure some people must have thought that I was ever-so-slightly mad. But I sat there grinning and giggling away, engrossed by every captivating minute of it.

Another summer was on its way and the midday sun was already blazing as Bob and I settled ourselves in a shady spot outside Angel tube station. I had just got out a bowl and filled it with some water for Bob when I saw two men approaching.

They were both dressed casually, in jeans and jumpers. One was in his late twenties while the other was, I guessed, a decade or so older, probably in his late thirties. Almost in unison, they produced badges from their pockets showing they were police officers, members of the CSU, Community Safety Unit for Islington.

‘Hello there, Sir. Can you tell me your name?’ the older of them asked me.

‘Erm, it’s James Bowen, why?’

‘Mr Bowen, I’m afraid we have had an allegation of assault made against you. It’s a serious matter so we are going to have to ask you to accompany us to the police station to answer a few questions,’ the younger guy said.

Plain-clothes policemen were a fairly frequent fixture on the streets and I’d encountered my fair share of them. Fortunately, unlike some of their colleagues, who could be a little aggressive and anti- Big Issue vendors, these two were perfectly polite.

When I asked if I could take a minute to pack up my pitch and sort Bob out, they told me to take as much time as I wanted. They then told me that we were going to walk towards their HQ at Tolpuddle Street.

‘Shouldn’t take us more than a few minutes,’ the younger officer said.

I was surprised at how calm I was. In the past I’d have started panicking and would probably have protested, possibly even violently. It was a measure of how much more controlled and together I was these days. Besides, I hadn’t done anything. I hadn’t assaulted anyone.

The police officers seemed pretty chilled too. As we made our way to the station, they were walking along quite happily in front of me and Bob. Occasionally one would drop back to walk with us. At one point, the younger of the two asked me whether I understood what was happening and whether I knew my rights.

‘Yeah, sure,’ I said.

I knew I hadn’t been charged with anything and that I was just helping them with their enquiries. There was no need to call a lawyer or anything like that, at this stage at least.

Obviously, my mind was churning away, trying to work out who might have made this ‘allegation’. I had a few thoughts already.

The most obvious explanation was that this was someone just trying to muck up my day. Sadly, it was pretty common. I’d seen it happen to other vendors and buskers over the years. Someone with a grudge or just an evil streak would make an accusation which the police would be obliged to check out. Sometimes they’d do it simply to get the person away from their pitch and then claim it for themselves. There were a few people around who, I knew, didn’t like the fact that I’d made the tube pitch a success and would love to have taken it over. It was nasty, but it was a fact of life, unfortunately.

The other, more sinister, possibility, was that it was someone trying to undermine my book. By now pretty much everyone in The Big Issue community knew about it. More newspapers had picked up on the story and several vendors had made comments, positive and negative.

I’d been told by one of the co-ordinators that someone had been putting it around that I shouldn’t be allowed to sell the magazine any more. I knew this already because one vendor in central London had made his objections plain and to my face. He had also called me ‘a f***ing hippy poser’, which was rather charming I thought. Stupidly, I’d imagined that I was doing something positive for the magazine. Instead, it felt at times like I’d turned into every vendor’s Public Enemy No 1.

By the time we got to the station both of the police officers were on first name terms with Bob. They seemed really smitten with him, so much so that he was their first priority when we arrived at the station.

‘Right let’s get Bob settled before we take you into the custody suite,’ the older officer said.

We were soon joined by a blonde, uniformed female PC in her late twenties. She immediately focussed on Bob, who was still wrapped around my shoulders, trying to take in the unfamiliar scenery.

‘OK, is this Bob?’ she said, reaching up to him and giving him a stroke. He seemed to take an instant shine to her and was soon rubbing his face on her hand, purring away as he did so.

‘Do you think he’d mind if I picked him up?’ she said.

‘Sure, if he will come to you then go for it,’ I said, sensing that he was already really at ease with her.

As I suspected, he let her scoop him up.

‘Why don’t you come with me and we can see if we can sort you out with something nice to eat or drink?’ she said.

I watched as they headed behind the main reception desk to an office area with desks and photocopiers and fax machines. Bob was fascinated by all the red lights and buzzing machines and was happy in there. So I left him there as I headed off with the officers.

‘Don’t worry, he’s safe with Gillian,’ the younger officer said to me as we went through a set of doors into the custody suite. I felt certain he was telling the truth.

As we headed into an interview room, I suddenly felt butterflies in my stomach. It had been explained to me that I was being questioned about one of the so-called ‘trigger offences’. These were offences in which drug users or dealers committed crimes like shoplifting, robbery and assault in order to buy drugs. So as a result of this, I knew that I would probably need to be tested for drugs as well as fingerprinted.

How times had changed? A year or so earlier and I’d have been seriously concerned about this. But now I had no qualms at all as they conducted the so-called Cozart test and swabbed my mouth for traces of heroin or cocaine. I knew I was clean. I told the officers this but they said they had no option.

‘It’s regulation now I’m afraid,’ one of them said. Once that was over, they sat me down and asked me some questions.

They asked me whether I’d been in a location somewhere in Islington a day earlier. The address didn’t sound at all familiar. They then mentioned the name of a woman.

Years earlier, at the depths of my drug addiction, when I’d been arrested a couple of times for shoplifting I’d learned to simply answer ‘no comment’ to any questions like this. But I knew this was really irritating for the police, so I tried to be co-operative.