Early in the first lockdown of 2020, Emma Tarlo, then a professor of anthropology at Goldsmiths, is introduced by a friend to two men who lived in a wild corner of Regent’s Park. Nick, a white man of 64, and Pascal, a Parisian of Algerian Berber heritage, who have been companions on the streets for 16 years and shared their pastoral nook under the hornbeams for the past five, do not consider themselves homeless. “I’ve never identified with the term ‘homeless’,” Nick tells her, “except as a category that the police might put on you.” As others welcome the policy of providing accommodation to rough sleepers during the pandemic, he and Pascal quietly resist any efforts to move them on, remaining in the home they have made with the tacit agreement of a sympathetic park manager. As Tarlo’s working life loses all recognisable structure, her daily excursions to the park to take the men food begin to reconfigure not only her routine but her understanding of freedom, connection and privilege.
There is always a danger that this kind of narrative can take on a middle-class saviour cast, and Tarlo is keen to stress from the outset that the relationship she builds with the men and the ragtag entourage that gathers around them is wholly reciprocal; she offers hot food, while in return they offer companionship, wide-ranging conversation and an alternative perspective that begins to shape the author’s view of her own life. The book – written with the men’s blessing – works hard to maintain a balance between affording Nick and Pascal the dignity of their chosen way of life, and not romanticising its extreme hardship and dangers.
