An encounter on Waterloo bridge

An intruiging Monday. I was in London for the start of my Advanced Civil Litigation module. Spent much of lunchtime in Apostrophe with my tutor debating whether or not conditional fee agreements covered the work of law costs draftsmen (this is highly unlikely to interest any reader, but if it does, the answer is that such agreements do cover the work of law costs draftsmen, because their fees are categorised as profit costs)(I digress). In the afternoon I acted as the father of a severely disabled child who was contemplating litigation against a health authority.

The oddest part of the day came when, walking home accross Waterloo bridge, I was approached by a homeless man who was rather polite and apologetic and explained at great length how he had 10 children (or something) and had just come back from Japan. He asked me if I spoke Japanese, so I replied with a few rudimentary Japenese remarks which I have picked up (its amazing how these things come back to you). I didnt really work out why he was telling me about himself in such great detail. It turned out he was looking for money to get into a hostel. He said that it was very difficult to get accomodation if you were homeless and over 25. Anyway, the poor chap really shouldnt have spent so long explaining himself to me because, as a matter of fact, I didnt have any cash on me (I rarely carry it in London). Still, I felt I managed to witness to him a bit, and did my best to encourage his efforts. You can never tell how genuine these people were, but if he was making it up then he had certainly put a lot of trouble into it (and learnt japanese!)