“STONE COLD” BY ROBERT SWINDELLS
Quotations you may wish to use in your Critical Response:
“I’m invisible, see? One of the invisible people. Right now I’m sitting in a doorway watching the passers-by. They’re afraid I want something they’ve got, and they’re right.”
“We’re living proof that everything’s not all right and we make the place untidy”.
“We were a family you know – as happy as most, till Dad ran off with a receptionist in 1991, when I was fourteen”.
“That’s not why I ended up like this. No. Vincent’s to blame for that. Good old Vince. Mum’s boyfriend.”
“when good old Vince moved in and mum started changing it was Carole who made life bearable for me.”
“I’m sure Mum would have supported me till I found something, but it wasn’t long before Vince started on about living on his money…It was Mum’s money, but he went on and on, getting nastier and nastier, and one night when I’d been out with my mates he locked me out of the house.”
“And so here I am sitting in this doorway which is now my bedroom, hoping some kind punter will give me a bit of change so I can eat”.
“In Bradford I was getting moved on every hour or so …People up there haven’t got used to beggars yet. They’re embarrassed.”
“You’re going to find yourself living among hard, violent people, some of whom are deranged. You’re going to be at risk every minute, day and night… There’s nowhere you can run to, because nobody cares.”
Shelter – “Hundreds of scruffy blighters, lying around making the place manky.”
Shelter - “but I can clean up the garbage, can’t I?… By golly I will”.
“Carole and Mum put their money together and got me a sleeping bag… but it said something to me. It said they thought of me as a dosser…it hurt like hell.”
“I was dead green see? A babe in arms”.
“I’ve tramped the narrow little streets of Soho and the boulevards of South Kensington from morning till late at night”.
“I was now one of them now – poised at the top of that downw...
