Innholdsfortegnelse for 5/1/2023 i The Big Issue

Little did I know that a few weeks after the coronation, following eviction, our slum life would end and we would have baths, beds with sheets and blankets, three meals a day – and shoes that were not holed. Pullovers and other niceties that other classes took for granted became ours. These were all administered by tough-handed nuns who mainly came from the west coast of Ireland and who had devoted their lives to Jesus and the wellbeing of the downtrodden. You could get a bus from our part-condemned slum flat to Buckingham Palace and Westminster on the day in 1953 they coronated Queen Elizabeth. Although we did not have a street party, we ‘raided’ others held nearby. I was seven and we were the street urchins loved by filmmakers…

REVIEWS Who to believe in this rich tapestry of eccentrics? Tom Rachman’s The Imposters begins during lockdown, in the north-west London home of Dora Frenhofer, a spectacularly unsuccessful Dutch novelist, and her husband Barry, an equally unsuccessful “couples therapist”. The marriage is a late one and neither entirely happy or normal – Dora, 73 (Barry is nine years younger), is exhausted and disillusioned, and admits she sought a partner mainly to help her “pull the plug” when she has finally had enough of this world. It is soon apparent that this odd situation is even odder than it first appears as Dora, as well as being a writer of fiction, is an unreliable narrator of her own existence. So the scene is set for an intelligent, tricksy novel that engages…

Well, I finally got Covid, three years after it was trendy. This reminds me of when I bought a Nutri Bullet in 2017 and all the millennials I was working with at the time teased me for being late to the party. I couldn’t stop going on about juicing but nobody wanted to listen because, as a conversation topic, it felt old, stale and tedious. People just don’t take The ’Vid seriously any more. There are vaccines now and there is know-how too. The sense of panic the word Covid once generated is just a distant memory for most people. I’ve had three jabs so I figured I was either never going to get it or, even if I did, the symptoms would be imperceptible. But I was wrong. On…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Open for business Even with construction work going on, for Simon it’s “Business as Usual!” And we have the sign to prove it. Best vendor ever! From me and Simon in Norwich, Mary Dead letters Two letters in issue 1559 suggest contacting your MP. I used to do that, it got me nowhere. I soon got the flavour of my current MP, Philip Davies and he is absolutely not someone I want to waste any time on. All MPs do is forward letters to and from the relevant minister, they ignore the content. I offered to buy a Big Issue subscription for my previous MP (also Tory) on the grounds that…

ANDRÉ ROSTANT Soho, London What will you be doing on the day of the coronation? For the spectacle of it, I may go have a look-see at the procession, though I am not a fan of monarchy. The system enshrines – crystallises – the poisonous idea that some people are innately better than others. What ‘big issues’ should Charles address as king? The monarch is supposed to be above, or outside of, politics. Charles should not opine on, nor address, any political matters. Nobody elected the King – we have government, local and national, to deal with ‘issues’. What does the royal family mean to you? Rather than upset readers too much, I’ll settle for saying the royals aren’t my cup of tea. BRAD COUNSELL Clifton Village, Bristol What will…

I spent most of my 16th year being a punk and trying to survive my exams. I was a punk from when I was 14, when I saw The Clash in 1977. I loved going to gigs – we lived in the Cotswolds so I usually went to Bristol for gigs. By the time I was 16 punk was coming to its close so I was moving more towards The Specials, The Beat, 2 Tone music. I love classical music, so I was really into that as well. I was the average tortured, depressed teenager. Everyone I thought was interesting was a bit like that – New York Dolls, the Ramones, Nico, The Velvet Underground, John Cooper Clarke. They were sort of upbeat in their own depressed way. And I…

CORONATION The king of rock’n’roll On June 2, 1953, the day of Elizabeth II’s coronation as queen of the United Kingdom, buttoned-up Italian-American singer Frankie Laine was number one in the singles chart with polite, easy-listening ballad I Believe, and pre-Beatles Britain was still a long way from starting swinging. Fast forward 70 years, and Charles succeeds his mum on the throne at the same time as songs including Calvin Harris feat. Ellie Goulding’s donking trance rave anthem Miracle and giant Y-fronts-bedecked Scots soul-boy and social media oversharer Lewis Capaldi’s Forget You, and Miley Cyrus’s Flowers – an allegorical ode to, nudge-wink, “self-love” – all compete to be crowned top of the pops. The country, its mores and its music have changed massively in the last seven decades, more than…

RICHARD HIND, 43 I choose to live outside. I was born on a farm in Cumbria, so I’ve always been an outdoor person. I just enjoy it. Years ago, when I was a lot more nimble on my legs I used to do potholing, caving, rock climbing, downhill biking, all sorts of stuff. I live down by the Double Locks in Exeter now. I’ve lived in quite a few places in my time: in Scotland, Wales, Blackpool. There must be something about Exeter because I’ve come back here twice. I think it’s the countryside and the simplicity of it. I’ve spent a long time building myself a camp here, about four years. I’ve just taken my time working on it, coming back and forward. I’ve got a homemade shanty kitchen…

I was talking to Toastie. This is not uncommon, of course. We were back up the hill behind the library. He had been recovering from an operation on his right hind leg. It was an operation to repair something that went wrong following an earlier operation. He’s been through the mill, has our Toastie. He remains ever-positive. Though, like all dogs, he’s been a little sad following the funeral of that great canine champion Paul O’Grady. During the recovery period Toastie had been doing a lot of lead walks, and was now building strength back up and starting to rev again the way springers do. On this early evening, he was trotting beside me. This is uncommon, so I sensed he wanted a chat. I asked him what were we,…

Millions of Brits will head to street parties to mark King Charles’s coronation – but what better place to do it than on the streets he has moulded with his own hands? Poundbury is King Charles’s pet project. Located on Duchy of Cornwall land just west of Dorchester in Dorset, the monarch has spent more than three decades carving out his vision of what Britain should look like across its 400 acres. A model village designed to show how building development can enhance the English countryside, to “break the mould of conventional housing development”, as the King put it, he has been overseeing Poundbury’s development since 1993. Originally laid out by architect Léon Krier, the project is due to be completed in 2027, with 2,700 homes built, meaning one for…

December 1997 Future King Charles visited our offices in London and bumped into an unlikely acquaintance. Clive Harold had been a classmate of Charles at Hill House School. He later became a journalist and author before falling on hard times and selling The Big Issue. Harold joked with the Prince that he remembered him from their school days over 40 years ago because they both had big ears. March 2001 The Queen made sure to pick up a copy of The Big Issue in Brighton. She was presented with it by Ivan Vetson, who the previous night had slept in “a shed made out of bins”. June 2016 Camilla chatted to George Whyte, a Big Issue vendor in Edinburgh, over a cuppa at Social Bite, a social enterprise cafe in…

CULTURE KING CHARLES CORONATION By John Sheehy John Sheehy is a well-respected outsider artist who has exhibited throughout Europe. A long-time regular Street Art contributor, he first discovered his natural ability and enjoyment of painting in 1999, aged 50, as encouraged by The Big Issue. He has gone on to be exhibited at prestigious galleries in the UK and abroad, including Somerset House, The British Museum and The Royal Academy. “I wanted to capture this historic event in paint,” he says of his latest artwork. “A coronation has not been seen by many living people and it deserves to be recorded and celebrated. I wanted my painting to be part of that process. The occasion sparked a desire to create a picture for the coronation of Charles III.”…

It’s a strange thing to look back on all the places you’ve called home. Sit down with a pen and paper and make a list. Before speaking to author Kieran Yates about her new book: All the Houses I’ve Ever Lived In, I made mine. I counted 18 homes by the age of 29. Is that normal? Maybe, maybe not. But Yates has me well beaten. By the age of 25, she’d lived in 20 different houses across the country. There’s the childhood flat in a car showroom that had floor-to-ceiling windows. Then there are housemate auditions in her 20s that enable tenants to discriminate on the basis of race, class, sexuality – reproducing some of the systemic disparities of our society. And then there are the floors she has…