Heaven's Promise Read Online Free

hollowed out and his hair has turned white. You can see he is still relatively young but streetlife survival has aged him twenty years at least. Shabby clothes cover his skinny body and he slurs his words into an indecipherable accent, a linguistic style which proved totally troublesome to moi on my very first encounter with him when he blasted, ‘SLIVEUS SLOME MONEY,’ directly into my face one rainy morning.
    It took me 60 seconds in the pouring rain to translate his demand as, ‘give us some money,’ a fair enough request given the burden he has to bear, and I handed him some coinage over, as I have been doing ever since I took up residence in this part of the world.
    Since we are on this tip, I must explain that several acquaintances of mine often reprimand me for such actions, telling me, ‘that kind will only drink it,’ as if someone like Digger can beg up enough cashola which will one day enable him to walk into an estate agent’s, spread it all out on a table and grab a nice little semi out in the suburbs with the rest of the mortgage brigade.
    Extreme I know but such attitudes often make me wonder about my fellow countryfolk for when it comes to feeding people who live thousands of miles away in a Godforsaken desert, living a life that you and I can’t even begin to imagine, the British prove themselves each and every time.
    No doubt about it, as soon as the call comes through and the TV screen is full of starving children and desperate mothers, they’re up and away, raiding their hard earnt bank balances to give over to people they probably didn’t even know existed the day before. You have to tip your hat to them because that kind of spirit speaks volumes and should always be celebrated.
    Yet ask them to do the same for someone living on the street but 200 yards away from their doorstep and you suddenly start walking into remarks like, ‘well, it’s their own fault,’ as if the folk in question had chosen that life as a kind of perverse career move and had now triumphantly achieved their ambitions in life.
    When the stench of another’s nightmare gets too close, we smell ourselves and run away in horror, but that is no solution and so before Digger had to ask, I reached into my pocket and handed over the loose change. Thank God, I thought for the perverse warm weather for it might just make today a little easier for Digger and his compadres and, passing that thought, I soon found myself at the tube station.
    Walking down the long snaking tunnel to the grey dirty platforms, I passed numerous people out and about on their business and somehow the scene livelied me up somewhat, especially as the busker on the morning shift was a young, dude coming on strong with a nice selection of Bob Marley tunes. I went to give him a coin as I do anyone who is not playing the obvious songs for my rule on buskers is a fair one. Nothing at all against The Beatles or Bob Dylan or Simon and Garfunkel, because they’ve all done their bit, but if I hear one more crooner singing ‘Yesterday’ or ‘Knocking On Heaven’s Door’ then I will have no option but to immediately report them to the nearest authorities for gross public misconduct, and that especially applies to ‘Theme From The Deer Hunter.’
    This morning’s musical selection featured Marley’s ‘One Love/ People Get Ready,’ and was sung with such conviction that you couldn’t help but be moved by both singer and song.
    Yet despite my good mood I soon found it to be temporary. Boarding the train to take me Westward Ho, the Sandra business reared up in my HQ and immediately took me right down. What hi t me first, as I struggled to make sense of this morning’s unexpected and unbelievable events, was that, without a doubt, all future missions, such as a stay in New York to crib off those DJ masters, were going to have to be put on ice until this crisis was sorted, one way