Today being the last reasonably nice day for a while apparently, I decided to take one of my favourite walks along the river Lee from Canning Town to the Olympic park. As I’ve said before, it’s a lovely trundle along a well maintained path. I wasn’t going very fast and took several detours to explore various places, so it took a couple of hours for me to get up there. My plan was to then take the tube back from Stratford. However, crossing the bridge to get to the station, I passed the man I wrote about a few days ago in this entry. At first I thought I would ignore him and press on, but as luck would have it, a couple of policemen were walking past at the same time.

On the spur of the moment I decided to stop them. I explained that I didn’t have a problem, but rather would be grateful if they could ask the man nearby if he knew about the support he was probably entitled to. The cops seemed to think it was a good idea, and obliged.

The conversation they had with the man didn’t get very far: he didn’t seem very communicative. Five minutes later I was on my way again. Yet I’m glad I tried; I’m glad I took the opportunity to resolve something which had been bugging me. Who knows whether what I did earlier is going to make a difference to the man, or even if he had any interest in being helped to begin with. I suppose the best case scenario is that those policemen will now put him into contact with social services, who could find him a home etc. Perhaps I should have said nothing, kept to myself and carried on my way, but I needed to make sure that the man knew he is entitled to the help I am. I will probably  never know whether I made any difference at all, but at least I tried.