This is a public service announcement.I was minding my own business, as is required on a Canary Wharf bench at lunchtime. Then I was approached, tentatively, by a man in a high viz jacket carrying a hard hat.
"Do you know how to get to..?" His voice was soft and his accent eastern European so I missed the last word. Costa Coffee? Kruger? No, after three attempts it was Ealing Broadway, which is somewhat beyond my personal map.
I suggested he would need the Tube. I pointed in a direction I fondly imagined to be west.
He had no money for a ticket, he said, increasingly angry. He had already walked from Beckton but, on the way, he had been mugged and lost his company's laptop, his money and passport.
Before I could state the obvious, he said: "I went to the police and they couldn't help me."
Seemed a little excessive to send such a man to Ealing in such a state. I apologised in that typically British way, as though I were responsible for the criminal acitivity in my country and the bureaucratic off-handedness that followed.
He was angry and upset and forlorn. I said that I reached the extent of my powers in this particular episode added, rather lamely: "Hope the rest of your day gets better."
I imagine getting gored by a dog, run over by a bulldozer and falling short of Ealing Broadway by a step would still constitute a better day.
I felt guilty, as is the norm. Should I have offered more assistance? Money for the Tube?
Instead, I did what Wharfers do, I shrunk back into myself and imagined my hunched being as an impenetrable island of steel.
He walked away, carrying with him my obligation to act.
I recounted this sorry incident back in the office. The reaction I did not expect, to the point where I assumed my colleagues were taking the mick.
"That happened to me," said one. "Ealing Broadway? High-viz jacket? Me too," said another. And these events had taken place weeks and months apart.
He never asked for money, but maybe hoped. Either way the scam is lucrative enough to be worth repeated attempts.
I feel less guilty about my country, less fearful of the Beckton region and more hardened against similar sob stories in future.
