Alongside this Alexander looks backwards over Stuart's adult life and childhood to try and discover what went wrong with his life.
The development of Alexander's friendship, and frequent utter frustration, with Stuart forms the foreground of the book. Alexander is working for a homeless charity and when the directors of the charity are convicted and imprisoned for allowing drugs to be supplied on the charity's premises, both men are key members of the action group that is trying to get the conviction overturned. From these inauspicious beginnings, when Stuart announced 'As soon as I get the opportunity I'm going to top meself', Alexander and Stuart develop a somewhat unlikely friendship. The chaotic ('Kai-yo-ic'), as Stuart calls them, are beyond repair.'Alexander Masters first discovers Stuart begging in a doorway around the corner from Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge. Right at the bottom of this abnormal heap are the people such as Stuart, the 'chaotic' homeless. Ex-convicts and ex-army - take away the format of their lives and all they can do is crumple downwards. The youngsters who have fallen out with their parents, or have come out of care and don't know what to do next or even make their own breakfast, they're a third homeless category. Perhaps they are dyslexic, autistic, shy to the point of inanity, never went to school. Their daughter has been killed in a car crash or both.Then there are the ones who suffer from chronic poverty brought on by illiteracy or social ineptness or what are politely called 'learning disabilities'. As Alexander Masters says at the beginning of this book, there are many different types of homeless people:' There are those who where doing all right beforehand, but have suffered a temporary setback because their wife has run off with another man (or surprisingly often, another woman).
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