On a shopping trip to buy some new clothes, my naivety was smashed to pieces by an event that I just could not believe could ever happen in my home city.

At the tender age of 20, I was a wide eyed naive young man who genuinely believed in doing the right thing even if others did not.
I still believe this today, but at age twenty I innocently thought that most of the population believed this as well.

However, just like a child who discovers that Santa Claus is not real, I was about to wake up to the reality that we were heading for a selfish, self centered materialistic society were the only the elites matter and poor are expendable.

It was1984 and the Thatcher the Britain was just about to take off.

I had taken the bus into the city of Liverpool to meet up with my girlfriend and we intended to do some shopping and then eat at a cafe in Church Street.
The city of the Beatles was a cool and exciting place and my childhood was full of only fond memories from adventures every time I visited of the musical metropolis.
It is said that everyone on Liverpool as some connection to the fab four and my family was no different.
My uncle sat next to John Lennon at school and my father and mother both knew Paul McCartney and George Harrison back in the days of the Cavern, before they were famous.
And so I was somewhat proud of my family heritage and thus proud of the city I grew up in.
I was not a born scouser but my father was.
Note: A scouser is person who was either born in Liverpool or has lived in Liverpool most of their life.

Below is some footage of this era of the early 1980s
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I had been born in another country because my father emigrated to Africa in the 1950s. The family returned to the UK due to the diamonds war.
But from age ten I had lived and grew up in the soccer loving Beatle City.
I have never met any of the Beatles myself but my father often told me stories of time when he knew them and how he met my mother at one of their concerts. But thats another story.

However, what is relevant to the story is that my grandmother (my fathers mum) relished telling me the history of old Liverpool and how everyone helped each other, looked out for each other, when most families were "dirt poor".
And so you could say I had a rather positive view of the city that rested alongside the river Mersey.

So there I was walking though the town center streets with not a care in the world. Suddenly right in front of me I saw man flat out on the floor and it looked like he was dead.

I stood there stunned not quite believing my eyes. I looked around waiting for someone to come and help bit no one came. In fact, as I stood and watched, two people actually walked over the body as though it was a just a pile of clothes. I was dumbfounded at this and reacted by going over to the man on the floor myself.

I moved closer nervously. I mean I had not seen a dead man before and I was a little frightened I admit.
I kneeled down beside him and placed my hand on his side.
"Urrrg!" He was not dead. But then he must be ill?
"Fck off!" The man shouted, and then his arm came heading towards me but I dodged it.
I then saw there was an empty whiskey bottle beside him and began to put two and two together.

Another guy had now stopped and stood over me looking down on the situation. I looked up at him and said:
"I think he is drunk"
"No shit Sherlock." Answered the guy. I assumed he was being sarcastic referring to the fictional character of Sherlock Holmes and I was somewhat stating the obvious.
"What shall we do?" I asked
"We! Nothing to do with me pal. He is just a drunken bum, a tramp, a no body.
Just leave him and go about your own business." Said the man standing over me. He took one last drag on his cigarette, threw it in the bin right next to us, and hen walked off.

But I could not "Just leave him".

I have never been a religious person but my favorite story in the Bible has always been the Good Samaritan.
I liked that story because it defines the best of what it is to be human.
In some way it defies evolution. In a world of survival of the fittest there is no reason to help another unless there is something in it for us. Such is the business world, and such is the world of the psychopath.

When a person helps another knowing they will probably never get anything back in return, it is usually an act of pure empathy and as such raises us up from the mere primal instincts of survival.
Some believe in karma and so perhaps might help others in the hope that good will one day come back to them, and perhaps there is something to that. But how about just helping others just because we are one big human family.

Evolution may have made us, but that does not mean it has to define us.

And so I leaned over the drunken vagrant and asked if he was alright?
"What the fk do you care. I lost my job, I lost my house, and Ive got no family. If you want to be a do-gooder give me some money so I can get some more whiskey." He said slurring his words.

Now it so happens that a good friend of mine was a member of the Salvation Army and he sometimes helped out at a YMCA Hostel. I knew where it was in the city and I got the idea to take him there.

"Tell you what, I will take you a place I know where you can have a shower and good nights sleep.
If you come with me to there then I promise I will give you some money."
"You fcking liar," He said. And so I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out £50 pounds and showed him to prove I did have money.

Half an hour later we stumbled into the YMCA building and I asked for my friend by name. Unfortunately he was not there that day but they were very helpful anyway. They took us to small barren room that had a bed and not much else. They insisted he have a shower or he could not sleep there. The drunken vagrant, who was sobering up a little now, cursed the nice lady but in the end he went into the shower.
She told me that they charged £1.50 pence a night and if I was going to pay.
I gave the lady the £50 and told her that I had promised to give him this. She nodded and took the money from me:
We will try to get him to stay here and contact the social services to see what that can do, but in the end it is up to him if he wants to stay or not.
I left the building and never saw that poor man again.

I ran back all the way back to the city center to meet with my girlfriend
and luckily she was still there.
"Where the hell have you been, Ive been waiting here over an hour you selfish twat". Actually I had forgotten how articulate she was.

I will not explain what a "twat" is but lets just say it is not a compliment. Anyways she dumped me that day so that was the karma I got, lol".

The event so moved me that I could not let it go. And so once again I put on my artist head and decided it would make a for a great subject for a painting.
A sort of modern day version of the Good Samaritan.

I decided that a big event deserved a big painting. And so I began to make plans and to prepare.
The first thing to do was to get some reference photographs and so the very next Saturday I once again got the bus into town but this time with my sister, who was a photographer.

And so there I was, dressed up as as a vagrant, a tramp, a drunken bum, a no one, at the exact place where the event happened. My sister took plenty of shots of me and considering we were right in the middle of a busy shopping area, no one blinked an eye.

I was working full time as a junior graphic designer at that time so I could only work on the painting on weekends. I had no studio at the time and so a friend of mine (the same guy who was in the salvation army) a let me use his garage as a temporary studio.
All in all it took about six months to paint and was the biggest painting I had ever done.

The problem was, now that I had finished it, I did not know what to do with it.
I wrote to the city newspaper "Liverpool Echo" and asked them of they knew of whom I could donate the painting too.
The next thing I knew they turned up at my apartment and wanted to do a story.
See below

In the end the newspaper itself bought the painting from me and it is now part of their private collection. Well I say they bought it but what happened was we did a deal that they make a donation to the YMCA

Below are some close ups of the painting of which I have not seen for 33 years.

The man is me posing as the vagrant and the boy is my younger brother representing me as a child offering money to help.

Close up of my face and hand.
Although hands are notoriously difficult to paint, I have always relished the challenge. And for a young painter who had just turned 20, I was particularly happy with the result of this one.

Thank you for taking the time to read and thank you for visiting my blog.

Welcome back another time @arthuradamson

The Day I became a Vagrant on the Streets of Eleanor Rigby