Sweet Charity

I have a genuine question this week for you. It’s not a Smart Alec question like “What disease did Cured Ham originally have”, or “Why do dogs get annoyed when you blow in their faces yet the first thing they do when you take them for a drive is stick their head out the window?” Important though these riddles may be, there is something much more pressing in my world.

This is a question I’m genuinely troubled by and I hope you can help me. There’s no hidden agenda and no trying to get a cheap funny line (unlike the paragraph above). I’ve been grappling with this question for a few weeks and I don’t know the answer, so I’m looking to you for guidance.

What do you do if you regularly buy the magazine for the homeless called The Big Issue from someone, or frequently give a few coins to a beggar who appears every week on your train home, and then one day you spot them talking on their mobile ‘phone?

Do you carry on giving money because you feel that what these people do with your gift is their own affair and if a mobile phone is more important to them than a bed for the night then so be it? Or, like me, do you start to have doubts? That’s the moral maze I’m trying to navigate this week.

I’ve always felt that selling The Big Issue is a respectable and honourable way for the homeless to raise enough money to feed themselves and raise them from the twin dangers of lack of respect and sleeping on the streets, ensuring they get a roof over their heads and safety. So am I mean or wicked when I find myself perplexed? I have found my feelings a bit uneasy as I wonder how they can afford a monthly tariff or pay as you go mobile, and then I get even more uncomfortable when I wonder whether it’s any of my business anyway.

So, do I give as unthinkingly as before or do I now question myself and their motives and cut back what I give? I ask because this has happened to me with two different Big Issue sellers in the past month, both of whom have had my money regularly.

The first bloke gets on my train home once a week and comes through the carriages holding one, battered copy of the magazine. He is very polite and his spiel never changes. “Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I’m not trying to sell you this magazine but just asking for money so I have somewhere to sleep tonight”.

This is all fine, but a couple of weeks ago he stood beside me at my station on his phone arranging to see his mates later in the pub. “I’ll get the first round”, he said. Now I don’t know how I’m supposed to react to that but when he gave his rehearsed, polite speech later on the train I refused to hand over my change. Was I wrong?

The other Big Issue seller is a very nice, polite lady who sits on an upturned box outside our local bakery shop and, again, I’ve bought the magazine from her in the past. Yesterday she was sitting chatting away on her mobile and I walked past without buying. Again, was I wrong?

There’s an old expression from the Wild West where someone who gives a present but expects something in return was called an Indian Giver. The cowboys didn’t understand the customs of Native Americans where it was traditional to give a present and then get one in return. If nothing was forthcoming then the present was taken back. Is that what I’ve become, an Indian Giver? I don’t expect a present in return but am I expecting someone who gets a donation from me to let me know how it will be spent or I’ll take it back?

Perhaps the idea is simply to go with your conscience at the time and, unlike me, not to think too much about it.

It is a genuine question I’m asking this week but I fear that there are no correct answers.