Survival on the Streets

One persistent problem with living in London is the untold amounts of charity workers prowling the streets, trying to get you to sign away your soul and donate your hard earned cash to their worthy cause. When you really don’t want to.

I realise that this may make me sound like a mean penny pincher but I assure you that this is not the case. I am just incredibly impressionable and can be persuaded to do anything with no effort whatsoever. This weakness has led me to develop a list of tactics to avoid this happening. It is a matter of survival.

1. Identify the predator’s major weakness – in this case it is bright clothing. This means, if you have your wits about you, you can spot them from a safe distance and formulate exactly the right method of counter attack.

2. Your phone is a weapon. As soon as you see them and before they see you, pull out the mobile. Don’t wait until you are alongside them otherwise they will identify the sham call and look at you with disdain. No one wants that.

3. Make sure that your phone is on silent or that you have your finger poised to answer if anyone should choose that inopportune moment to call for a chinwag.

4. Make the fake conversation as believable as possible. Depending on my mood, I sometimes argue with the ‘person’ on the other end and shout sternly, ‘Are you mad? Who the hell do you think you are!’ It works.

5. Sometimes I brazenly initiate eye contact and raise my eyebrows indicating that the conversation is an inconvenience. I like to throw in an apologetic shrug and carry on shouting down the phone as I walk off gesticulating wildly. This continued performance is necessary. I assure you that they will watch you until you are out of sight and use a special charity worker bird call learned at their charity worker training camps to warn their comrade down the street of your imminent arrival. I recommend keeping up the charade until you are well and truly out of the danger zone.

6. At some stage you will be approached out of nowhere and will have no time to get your phone out. In this case, looking at the sky is good. It not only makes you appear dreamy and thoughtful, but there is also lots of cool stuff up there. I do warn you though – it can result in injuries and angering of fellow pedestrians.

7. If caught short, another approach is to pretend that you are interested in that approaching bus or pedestrian. Sometimes I even wave to an imaginary companion.

N.B. I would like to highlight that at no stage did I claim that these tactics make you look cool. This particular course of action can result in awkward exchanges with people who think you are waving at them. It’s a price I’m willing to pay.

8. Another tried and tested method is losing that tiny thing that you urgently need to locate at precisely the moment that the waterproof coat-wearing worker lunges at you holding a handful of brochures. I like to get my head as far inside the bag as possible for effect.

9. Cross the road. Only problem with this is that there are usually rival charity workers working the other side of the street. It can get pretty dangerous.

10) You could of course just politely decline…but where’s the fun in that!

I guarantee you they all work like a charm. Learn them! Like I said, it is a matter of survival.

Image by Ed Yourdon courtesy of Flickr