File image of Philip, who has been long-term homeless, with his belongings and tent in tunnel beneath N2/M50. Photograph: Dan Dennison
A couple of weeks ago, I was walking into a supermarket in the centre of Dublin when a homeless man approached me to ask if I could help him out with some money for a hostel.
The encounter followed the more-or-less rigid format of such encounters, or non-encounters: the request apologetically advanced, the reply timorously made, a half-muttered and slightly shamed expression of regret: no cash, sorry, I’ll get you next time.
A person becomes numbed, by the sheer repetitive ubiquity of these exchanges, to how strange and sad it is to move about a city only half-conscious of the lost and suffering souls on every other corner, hunched in doorways and alleys against the cold, the rain, other miscellaneous misfortunes. All this is normal, part of the texture and flow of urban life.
As I walked through the doors of the supermarket, I realised my automatic response ha
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