Rewinding Life: A Life Lesson from a Cambridge Nomad

Stewart didn’t like my first draft.

Through the light-colored striped plastic bags from Tesco, I saw a large stack of manuscripts. That is all the result of two years of visiting and writing.

"What's wrong? Is something wrong?"

"It's so boring to read."

His hands are in each bulging pocket of his body I rummaged around, looking for cigarette papers, then sat in my armchair, stretched my neck, and looked carefully at the pile of brown branches and withered summer experiments on the balcony.

Stewart sat down with a hand between his thigh and the chair, a position he still maintains. The sky is getting dark outside the window, and the trees in the garden that were previously neglected are now growing vigorously, and their original young appearance is no longer in memory.

"I know you put a lot of thought into it, so I don't want to go too far." Stewart said.

To put it simply, the reason why Stewart did not like this manuscript was that the content was too boring and chatty.

He wanted me to write jokes, make up stories, and use humor. He doesn't like academic paper-style "quotes" and background research. "This won't work, Alexander, you have to rewrite it, and it must be better than this manuscript."

What he wants is a best-selling book, "like Tom Clancy's work That's the case."

"But in the novel, the protagonist may be someone who wants to assassinate the president with an anthrax bomb, and you are not such a person." I answered. And the line in my heart is: You are just a homeless vagrant, or a psychopathic poisonous insect.

Stewart spoke again, this time in a different way: "You should write something that others are willing to read."

There are several types of homeless people. There is a kind of homeless person who used to live a normal life, but because his wife ran away with another man (or with another woman, and there are surprisingly many cases), he became depressed for a while. Maybe their business failed, their daughter died in a car accident, or even both at the same time. For them, the biggest difficulty is losing self-confidence. If they can get expert help in the first few months of the situation, they can return to work within a year or two, or settle in one place for a long time.

Among all homeless people, men make up the majority, with a male to female ratio of nine to one. Women end up living on the streets only because they encounter problems such as sex, violence, or mental disorders. They are better able to face financial difficulties or betrayal. In other words, they are better able to adjust their mentality and lower their expectations, so they will not be too disappointed.

There are also people who have lived in poverty for a long time because they are illiterate, unable to integrate into society, or, to put it nicely, have so-called "learning disabilities." Maybe they were dyslexic, autistic, or incomprehensibly shy and so never went to school. They may simply be sick, or they may be deaf, blind, or mute. They moved from a warehouse in the garden to a bedroom-living room suite; from a refuge to a youth hostel, to a garage, to the living room floor of a friend's house and finally to a wheelie bin next to King's College. They cannot escape their existing situation.

The third type of homeless people are those young people who have fallen out with their parents, or those teenagers who are helpless, don’t know what to do next, and don’t even know how to make breakfast. If they do not find a job, a place to live or a girlfriend within six months to get their lives back on track, they are likely to become homeless on the streets.

People who have been in prison or in the military will become sluggish if they are removed from a regular life pattern. This is just the beginning.

Among this group of people living abnormal lives, Stewart belongs to the lowest level of "chaotic" vagrants. When it comes to chaos bums (Stewart pronounces the word "chaos" like he's chewing gum, elongating the syllables), professionals are at their wits' end. When Stewart was first discovered, he was like Caspar. Hauser, like a wild child, huddled on the lowest underground floor of a three-dimensional parking lot. The average homeless person didn't want to be associated with him, and everyone called Stewart "Don the Executioner" or "the crazy *** from the fourth floor underground."

Chaos homeless people usually have served time in prison, but they are not professional repeat offenders.

Stewart's verdict was twenty pages long, but he had only stolen once. Stewart's motive for committing the crime was to make a fortune, and in that ridiculous crime, he got a total of five hundred pounds (after deducting the cost). In other words, he got a hundred pounds a year in prison.

Chaotic homeless people don’t need much, but there are still a few things they need, such as heroin and alcohol. Some people ended up on the streets because of their habits, while others turned to drugs and drinking as hobbies after becoming homeless. Although chaotic homeless people are homeless, they are not necessarily penniless. During the three years that I knew Stewart, ***'s welfare benefits to him were almost higher than my income. As long as you are physically disabled, mentally retarded, or addicted to alcohol or drugs, you can receive up to 180 pounds per week from social welfare agencies when you are unemployed. In addition, they can apply for housing allowance to pay their rent.

The most common thing about Chaotic Nomads is that their lives are quite chaotic. There is no reasonable connection between the cause of the behavior and the consequences. They are unable to control it, and it is difficult for outsiders to understand. Their mental state often swings on the edge of excitement and collapse. This group of people worries the staff of social welfare agencies the most, because they are in the worst condition among the people living on the streets; if not the most hated, they are also the most pitiable lower-class group among the homeless.

Two years ago, Stewart's life was chaotic and chaotic. When the city police's foreign aid social worker discovered him, in addition to being addicted to alcohol, multiple drug addictions, and paranoia, he also had a dual personality like the protagonist in the book "Dr. Jekyll". Another of Stewart's hobbies was stabbing people with what he called "little silver bars."

His condition has not improved yet. But one thing that has changed significantly since then is that his drug addiction is not as severe as it was before. No one knows why. This change is unusual, even suspicious. The situation of the chaotic homeless is volatile and unpredictable, but Stewart's life looks completely new. He stopped contacting other homeless people, signed up for appointments at a housing counseling center, started taking methadone treatment to treat his heroin addiction, renegotiated court fines, started paying fines every other week, and even bought himself a bargain-priced computer. All this behavior is unreasonable. Stewart had many old friends who would rather die than take a bath or pay off their debts, and several actually died: of drug overdose, liver or kidney failure or both, and hypothermia. The life expectancy of homeless people is about forty-two years, and they are thirty-five times more likely to commit suicide than the general population. People who worked in bureaucracies such as police departments and social welfare agencies applauded Stewart's transformation from his medieval appearance to a respectable life. However, they secretly waited for Stuart to grab the meat hook next to him and start hacking and killing everywhere.

Not only that, Stewart actually had enough undamaged brain cells to describe what it was like to live as a homeless person. Not only that, but he can pinpoint the point of transition. When I was twelve years old, it was around four to five o'clock in the afternoon on a weekday in early summer. It was in this symbolic moment that (to paraphrase his mother) he went from being a "carefree little boy" and "the sweetest baby" of her two children to becoming the man who has spent the past twenty years. Like the troublesome character in "A Clockwork Orange". If his current life wasn't still quite chaotic, maybe he could make a fortune by explaining to many parents why their children turn into troubled teenagers who despise authority.

"Alexander, I don't like that word." Stewart said, interrupting my thoughts. Stewart picked up one of the pages from the pile of crumpled manuscripts that he had dumped on the floor. "Racing in a stolen car." That was back in his adolescence, when he would sneak out onto the street late at night and smash the windows of his Ford Cortina. I wrote this:

Strictly speaking, racing with a stolen car is not considered "theft" because the driver's intention is not to take the car as his own, he is just "taking the car without the owner's consent" Just borrowed from below" (OC). The acronym OC is what Stewart was charged with, and it stands for taking a vehicle as one's own without the owner's permission.

In the article "Teens who stole cars for joyrides", Jeff. Brig pointed out that in addition to stealing items from the car, car theft can be divided into five categories: 1. occupying without permission for profit; 2. occupying without permission for a long time; 3. just for racing. Occupying without permission; 4. Occupying without permission for other criminal purposes; 5. Occupying without permission for practical purposes. So far, Stewart has been charged with counts three, four, and five.

"Practical or something?" Stewart tried his best to read the words correctly. "'Used for practical purposes without permission.' To put it plainly, what does it mean?"

So I deleted this paragraph.

In order to explain the above paragraph, I have also attached a flow chart titled "A Brief Diagram of Dr. Kepak's Illegal Occupation Behavior." This picture was also rejected by Stewart. He said: "It looks like an assembled model of a toy airplane."

Stewart was very familiar with toy airplane models. He had used them before. Suck the adhesive inside the model set.

"Kerpert assumes that the fun of using other people's vehicles without permission will make children break the law. Then they will break the law because they want to make a profit, and finally it becomes Adults commit crimes." I saw a sentence I wrote: "This is the path of sinking, from innocence to crime."

Stewart was too lazy to comment on this sentence.

"There's another thing?" he said.

"What's the matter?" I sighed.

"Write it another way, write it like a murder mystery novel. What killed the boy like me in the past? You know what I mean? Write it backwards."

So, what readers see now is my second rewrite, trying to describe Stewart. Short's work. He's a thief, a hostage-taker, and a psychopathic, sociopath street storyteller. Stewart also served as my spy, observing for me how Britain's chaotic lower class lived a troubled life at the beginning of the twenty-first century. All in all, he is a very important person.

I wish I could have finished this book earlier. I wish I could have shown this work to Stewart before eleven-fifteen in the evening, before he had crossed the front of the train from London to King's Lynn.