I found this on a wall in an alley near Chiswick high road:

It was bizarre but someone either was bored waiting for someone, or thought that the leaf was pretty. I like to think it was the latter.

Then walked round the corner and saw this:

I think street drinking is fucking sad. This young guy had his arse out and his tracksuit trousers were soaked. These guys are often hanging out on the corner pissing their precious time away. By the way, what was his friend thinking/saying/doing while his mate was clearly having a minor bodily collapse next to him?

In Britain, we love to mine the rich seam of humour of alcohol-associated humiliation. And my first thought was how the scene reminded me of 8-Ace from Viz, the perennial figure of drinking-excess fun. But I was struck by what a terribly sad sight it was, seeing someone degraded so low. That guy was once a baby in his mothers arms, now he is slumped bare-arsed on the cold pavement doused in his own waste.

I cannot help being reminded of when I was in Mauritius, where there is a notorious drinking problem amongst the locals. One day we drove through a suburb of Grand Baie. We saw a guy pissed off his nut slouched against a wall in the full burning sunlight (it was regularly around 40 degrees C). He probably died of sunstroke.

It is so easy not to care about street-drinkers, because they do it to themselves and when they are abusive and covered in vomit- well they are hardly Andrex puppies, are they? Hmmm. I still feel uneasy about taking that view though…