The World According to Bob: The further adventures of one man and his street-wise cat (27 page)

at Waterstones, Islington Green, London

on Tuesday 13th March 2012 at 6pm

Bob looked at it and tilted his head ever-so-slightly. It was, again, as if he recognised the image of the pair of us.

I stared at the scrap of paper for what must have been a couple of minutes, lost in my thoughts.

I’d been wrestling with the same old questions for so long now. Truth be told, I was thoroughly sick of them. But tonight had brought them to the fore again. How many more times would I have to put myself and Bob in the firing line? Would I ever break this cycle and get us off the streets?

I flattened the flyer out neatly and folded it away in my pocket.

‘I hope this is the answer, Bob,’ I said. ‘I really do.’

Chapter 18

Waiting for Bob

It was barely 9am but my stomach was already churning away like a cement mixer.

I’d made some toast but couldn’t touch it for fear of being physically sick. If I felt like this now, I asked myself, how on earth was I going to feel in nine hours’ time?

The publishers had organised the signing, thinking it would be a good opportunity to generate some London publicity, and maybe attract a few people to buy a copy or two at the same time. As well as handing out flyers down in Covent Garden I had even detoured via Angel a couple of times. We still had a few friends there, thankfully.

Waterstones in Islington had been the obvious venue. The store was part of my story in more ways than one. Not only had the staff there helped us when we’d had nowhere to go a year or so earlier, they even featured in one of the more dramatic scenes in the book. One weekday evening, I’d run in the front door, desperate and panic-stricken, when Bob had run off after being scared by an aggressive dog at Angel tube station.

In the days running up to the event I’d started giving interviews to more newspapers but also to radio and television. To help me get used to this, I’d been sent to a specialist media trainer in central London. It was a bit intimidating. I had to sit in a sound-proofed room having myself recorded and then analysed by an expert. But he had been gentle with me and had taught me a few tricks of the trade. During one of the first recordings, for instance, I’d made the classic mistake of fiddling with a pen while talking. When it was played back to me all I could hear was the sound of me tapping the pen against the desk like some manic rock drummer. It was incredibly distracting and annoying.

The trainer prepared me for the sort of questions I could expect. He predicted, quite rightly, that most people would want to know how I’d ended up on the streets, how Bob had helped changed my life and what the future held for us both. He also prepared me to answer questions about whether I was clean of drugs, which I was happy to do. I felt I had nothing to hide.

The pieces the newspapers and bloggers had been writing were almost universally nice. A writer from the
London Evening Standard
had said some lovely things about Bob, writing that he ‘has entranced London like no feline since the days of Dick Whittington’. But he also upset me a little by writing about the holes in my jeans and my ‘blackened teeth and nails’. He also described me as having the ‘pleading manner of someone who is used to being ignored’. I’d been warned to expect that kind of thing; it went with the territory and the bottom line was that I knew I was ‘damaged goods’ as that same writer called me. It wasn’t pleasant though.

The signing had been scheduled two days ahead of the official publication date, March 15th, which also happened to be my 33rd birthday.

I hoped that wasn’t going to put a hex on everything. Birthdays hadn’t exactly been a cause for celebration in my life, certainly not since my teens.

I had spent my 13th birthday in a children’s ward at the Princess Margaret Children’s Hospital in Western Australia. It had been a miserable time in my young life and had only accelerated my downward spiral. Not long afterwards I’d started sniffing glue and experimenting with marijuana. It was the start of my long descent into drug addiction.

Fast forward ten years, to my 23rd birthday, and I’d been on the streets of London. I might have spent it in a hostel, but I could just as easily have been sleeping rough in an alleyway around Charing Cross. At that point my life was at rock bottom and I had absolutely no recollection of it. The days, weeks, months and years had all blended into each other. The chances are that, if I had been aware it was my birthday, I’d have spent the day trying to beg, borrow or – most likely – steal the money I needed to treat myself to an extra wrap of heroin. I’d probably taken the same reckless gamble I’d taken a hundred times before and risked overdosing by taking an ‘extra hit’. I could easily have ended up like that guy I’d seen on the landing of my flats.

Ten years further down the road, my life had finally taken a positive turn. That period now seemed like another life and another world. When I looked back I found it hard to believe that I’d lived through that period. But, for good or bad, it would always be a part of me. It was certainly a part of the book. I’d decided not to sugar-coat my story. It was virtually all there, warts and all, which was another one of the reasons I felt so racked with nerves.

In the hours before the signing, I was due to be filmed by a photographer and cameraman from the Reuters international news agency. He wanted to take a series of photos of Bob and I going about our normal, day-to-day life, travelling around on the tube then busking on Neal Street. I was quite glad of the distraction. By the time I’d finished with the photographer, it was early evening.

A damp chill was beginning to descend when we got back to Islington and made the familiar walk from Angel tube station. There was no sign of the guy who had ‘acquired’ my pitch outside the tube station. A flower seller told me that the guy and his dog had been causing all sorts of trouble and had already been stripped of the pitch by the co-ordinators. There was now no one from
The Big Issue
selling magazines outside Angel.

‘What a waste,’ I said. ‘I’d built that pitch up into a nice earner for someone.’ But that wasn’t my concern any more. I had other things to worry about.

Bob and I walked through Islington Memorial Park towards Waterstones. We were early so I let Bob do his business and sat on the bench to enjoy a quiet cigarette. Part of me felt like a condemned man, enjoying a final, fleeting moment of pleasure before going to face the firing squad. But another part of me felt a sense of anticipation. I felt like I was on the verge of a fresh start in my life; that, for want of a better phrase, a new chapter in my life was beginning.

I felt queasier than ever. I had so many conflicting thoughts fighting for space in my head. What if no one turned up? What if loads of people turned up and thought the book was rubbish? How would Bob react if there was a crowd? How would people react to me? I wasn’t a typical author. I wasn’t a polished public personality. I was a guy who was still operating on the fringes of society. Or at least, that’s how it felt. I knew people would love Bob, but I was terrified that they’d hate me.

I drew on the last remnant of my cigarette, making it last for as long as possible. The nerves had solidified inside me to such an extent that I felt like someone had punched me really hard in the stomach.

Luckily Bob was being extra cool for both of us. He spent a couple of minutes rooting around in a favourite little spot then sauntered back to me. He just gave me a look as if to say: ‘it’s all right, mate, it’s all good.’

It was uncanny how he was able to calm me.

Arriving at the bookshop about half an hour before the signing was due to start, there were four or five people standing in line outside.
Ah well, someone has turned up at least
, I said to myself, relieved. They all smiled at us and I gave them a sheepish wave. I couldn’t quite get my head round the idea that people were giving up an hour of their evening to come and meet us. There were a few more people inside the store as well. They were all stood in a queue to pay and were all holding copies of the book.

Alan, the manager, invited me upstairs to the staff room where I could wait for the signing to start.

‘You can have a glass of wine and Bob can have a saucer of milk. You can take it easy for a minute before things get under way,’ he said, sensing my nervousness.

I wasn’t sure whether to keep a clear head or to have a drink for Dutch courage. I decided on the former. I’d have a glass of wine afterwards.

Belle, Mary, Garry and a bunch of people from the publishers were there to wish me luck. There was also a stack of books for me to sign for general sale in the store. Someone had come up with the rather bright idea of having a paw-shaped stamp so that Bob could also ‘sign’ each book. I got to work scrawling on the first copies. Belle added the final flourishing touch with the paw stamps. There were at least two dozen books in the pile. Were they sure they’d even sell this many?

The staff from the store seemed positive. At one point one of them arrived beaming.

‘It’s stretching all the way around the block,’ she smiled.

‘What is?’ I said, stupidly.

‘The queue. It’s stretching all the way back around the corner. There’s probably a hundred people there with more joining all the time.’

I was speechless. I didn’t think it was possible to feel any more anxious, but somehow I did. There was an open window next to me. For a moment, I thought about climbing out of it, shinning my way down the drainpipes and making a hasty escape.

As the clock ticked down towards 6pm, Bob climbed up on my shoulder and we headed back down to the main store. On the landing at the bottom of the first flight of stairs, I knelt down and took a sneaky look down on to the shop floor. My heart jumped into my throat. It was heaving with people.

A table stacked with books had been laid out ready for me and Bob. The line of people waiting to file past it was stretching along the bookshelves all the way to the entrance and out into the dark March evening. They were right. There must have been a hundred people and more in it. At the other side of the store, a separate queue of people were lined up, buying copies of the book. There was even a group of photographers and a television cameraman there.

It was surreal, an out-of-body experience. Until now we’d been hidden from view but as we started walking down the final flight of steps, the cameras began flashing and photographers began shouting.