Homelessness Project: Crisis Case Study

Jeff, The Clockwork Guardsman

Interview conducted August 2002, Long Lane.
Jeff is happy for his first name to be used and has approved the following case study.

"I'm 55 now and all I want is six years of happiness and enjoying work after all the bad luck I've had to put up with."

When Jeff first became homeless he began sleeping in his van. He lived like this for about a year, working on market stalls to try to make ends meet. When his van was broken into, he couldn't afford to get the windows fixed he had to turn to a hostel for help.

Eight years earlier he was running his own £200,000 a year business, which he'd built up from scratch after being discharged from the Army.

Jeff left the Army in 1974 after seven and a half years as a paratrooper. He started his own business producing gifts for military events and soon branched out into corporate gifts.

"I met a lady, we moved in together and ended up getting married. In 1986 we had a boy together. The business was going smashing and we were happy." Unfortunately, in 1991 the marriage was beginning to show signs of stress and Jeff decided to separate from his wife, though they still remained friends. However he soon had more problems to deal with.

"It just seemed like you're trying to get ahead and get on with your life and something would just get in the bloody way, something would just come and whack you right between the eyes."

Jeff lost two good friends within one week and his father was taken into hospital. After overcoming these problems his mother was diagnosed with cancer and died later that year.

"All in all I lost seven people that year. I was shell-shocked but I thought 'pick yourself up, get on with it'. I decided to get myself fit again and so I got back on the road; running, cycling, swimming, in the gym - all the good stuff."

Jeff managed to keep his business going and in 1992 his life seemed to take a turn for the better.

"I met an absolutely gorgeous lady called Jane. Without being corny, basically, we fell in love. It wasn't a mad thing, it wasn't rushing into anything at all. She'd been married before and had two children. We didn't involve the kids until we were sure how we felt about each other. She was a gorgeous girl, a lovely girl, an absolute soul mate."

Jane lived in Glasgow and Jeff would go and visit regularly. They went away for the weekend with the children. Jeff drove them back to Scotland and was supposed to visit the following weekend to help work on a flat that Jane was moving into.

"The police came and knocked on my door and told me she was dead. She'd committed suicide. She'd been at her friends and all she'd talked about was what a smashing weekend she'd had. She showed them the photographs and drove away. The car was found at 6am the next day."

"My brain just scrambled. From running a business doing nearly £200,000 a year it got to the point that two months later I tried to follow her. I went up a mountain with a litre bottle of whisky, drank the lot and took off all my thermal clothing. I knew full well that hypothermia doesn't take long to kill you. For some daft reason it didn't work. I woke up at four am in the morning very, very pissed and very, very cold. I got off the mountain and ended up in hospital."

Luckily Jeff got help and support from his ex-wife who was still a close friend and was living in the old family home with his sons. Jeff started to drink heavily and despite counselling found it incredibly difficult to deal with all that had happened. Amazingly, he kept the business going for five more years, steadily declining, before he was declared bankrupt.

"I went from driving a Mercedes to sleeping in an old van. I was able to keep clean using the changing rooms at the swimming pool and I was trying to find work on the markets. When my van was broken into I turned to an ex-serviceman's hostel that a friend had told me about."

Despite the problems still hounding him Jeff managed, with support, to move through the hostel system into shared accommodation where he still lives. He'd tried various different jobs and had seen some of the 'human statues' in Leicester Square. He wanted to be able to support himself again but wanted to do something that he enjoyed. He thought that working as a street entertainer could be a solution but had to think of an original act.

"I really fancied entertaining and I went through the different things that people come to London to see. Then, when I went past Buckingham Palace I had a little grin to myself at the guards because in the services we used to call them tick-tocks. So that's where the Clockwork Guardsman comes from. I talked to one of the support workers at a day centre I was going to and they said 'Brilliant Jeff, go for it.'"

Jeff now works in Covent Garden in a full mock Guardsman's tunic with a key turning in his back, a rifle, flag and bearskin hat - just like a palace guardsman. He puts on marching displays with children from the audience, gets people out for mock drill inspection and poses for tourists' photography. He initially managed to get together an old tunic and produced the other props he needed himself. He made his debut in Covent Garden in November '99.

"It was just me, on my own two feet, with my gun and the platform. I soon got to the point where the tunic was almost falling apart. I needed some money to set up the act properly and that's where Changing Lives came in. Now with the money that's been provided the act's going to grow into much more. I want to start doing functions and working at children's parties."

Changing Lives is a programme providing financial awards for ex rough sleepers. Awards can be used for training, to help people back into employment, or for materials to help set up a business.

Jeff has used his grant to get a complete new tunic made, pay for advertisements in the Yellow Pages, take out tap and mime lessons and get some photography done to produce a set of postcards for tourists.

"I've put together a full business plan, including costs and I keep a business record of all my expenses. I couldn't believe it when I got the letter. At first I misread it and put the decimal point in the wrong place. I thought I'd got a tenth of what I actually got. So when I looked again I was ecstatic."

"I've just missed out on the chance to do some corporate work in Japan, but other opportunities will come. It's hard work and you get hassle from idiots coming out of the pub but 99.9 per cent of the time it's fun. The money's not brilliant but the best thing is when you see the kids walking away with a big grin on their faces."

Jeff recently did some corporate entertainment work for Rolls Royce and who immediately invited him back to do another event. He still has problems to overcome but is looking forward to the future.

"There's depression there, which is difficult and that's one of the problems I'm having to deal with at the moment. It makes it hard to keep my head straight and keep the business end of things in line. But I'm hoping to audition soon to get onto the piazza at Covent Garden. That's where the major 40 minute shows take place and it's very respected. By then I should have music to march to, certificates for all the kids who take part in the show and my own guardsman's hut."

"I look back at what's happened, what I've achieved and where I've come from, from the point of nearly being dead. I feel very fortunate."

Steve

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