Orwell's struggles revisited

I do not fancy the idea of having to sleep rough. Call me paranoid - perhaps I have watched too many B-movies - but fears of having my throat slit by a psychotic homelesshater makes me feel vulnerable.

But I am down to £3 and the street beckons unless I can find a free hostel or a job. The experiment, to retrace the journey that led to George Orwell's Down And Out In Paris And London, still has time to run.

When Orwell returned to London from France, he travelled third class aboard ship and booked into a cheap room on the Portobello Road. From here, he undertook three-day tramping excursions, sleeping in London's doss-houses of last resort and using his experiences as material for his book.

I return on the Eurostar - an unshaven, slightly smelly figure still wearing the same clothes after three days of slumming it.

I realise I must be starting to look homeless. When I ask a man propped up in his sleeping bag against the wall outside Waterloo where I might find a free bed for the night, he directs me without hesitating to St Martin-in-the-Fields - a charity near Charing Cross that Orwell happened to frequent as well. But sleeping bag man adds that I will have to wait for it to open in the afternoon.

I while away the small hours of the emerging day by gingerly reading a stamped-upon discarded newspaper - yesterday's Times - by lamplight.

By the time daybreak arrives, I am famished and eagerly anticipating my breakfast - a 69p hamburger at McDonald's. I savour every bite of the paper-thin patty.

With time to kill before the shelter opens, I decide to try for a job on Park Lane, with its plethora of grand hotels. At the Dorchester, a doorman in a top hat directs me around the back to the smelly service entrance, where a receptionist in a cubicle asks me my business.

"I am looking for a job as dishwasher," I say. After Paris, it's such a relief to be understood.

"Sir, we call it kitchen porter," he corrects me.

"Excellent. Yes kitchen porter. Can I start today?"

"Today?" He snorts with derision. "First fill out form. Then interview. Then (he sniffs the air disdainfully) we see."

As in Paris, I am gobsmacked by the formalities: four pages of paperwork is surely over the top for a prospective dishwasher! Orwell never had to contend with this, although he did face other challenges.

In his day, dishwashers were casual labourers who worked 14-hour days and were paid partially in alcohol - in Orwell's case, two litres of wine each. Now dishwashers are unionised and work regular eight-hour days, though for paltry pay (£600 a month appears to be the going rate).

The other hotels on Park Lane say they have "no vacancies" but there might be casual work going at the Savoy on the Strand, one tells me - something to do with a change of management.

The walk to the Savoy from Park Lane is at least a couple of miles, and I stop on the way at the inviting Green Park deckchairs to rest my weary feet. But no sooner have I set myself down than an attendant comes striding up to me, demanding £1. I protest, pointing out that I am down to my last £2 but he's having none of it, indicating the grass is free.

Approaching the front of the Savoy is a thrilling feeling. Aston Martins parked outside, beyond them the immaculate doormen and the gleaming black and white marble foyer. But I am unceremoniously directed down a dank alley towards the "staff entrance", where I step over a beggar lying comatose in his rags.

Inside, a security guard behind a glass panel exclaims: "Jobs? The situation in the hotel business is not too clever. No tourists. People too frightened to fly."

Nevertheless, he directs me towards the "job vacancies" board, which confirms that the hotel is urgently seeking "minibar attendants".

Feeling my luck about to shift, I try a different tack. I tell him I am desperate for work and deliver an offer they can hardly refuse: I am prepared to accept half-pay if I can start today. But the system will not be short-circuited. I leave with yet another sheaf of application forms.

By now it is 3pm and I join a line of homeless people jostling for position on the stairs and waiting for the St Martin's shelter to open at 4pm.

Most know each other. A woman with gray hairs sprouting out of her chin kisses a man, unperturbed by the cold sores encrusting his mouth.

Their ability to be affectionate among the pigeon muck and stench of urine seems extraordinary. Perhaps they don't notice it any more.

At 4pm sharp, the door opens, and a palpable buzz of excitement fizzles through the crowd. Only the first 40 are admitted. Thankfully, I make it at number 29.

Free tea and a three-course meal - comprising chicken paprika, potatoes and apple crumble, for which they charge just 85p - awaits us inside. A man from Coventry called Mike tells me, between mouthfuls, that he prefers to sleep rough (even though he only manages on average three nights of sleep a week) because he doesn't care for the 10pm curfew imposed by hostels. "A job is a bad idea," he chides me, when I describe my frustrating morning. "Better to collect benefits."

The irony strikes me that there are none so hedonistic as the homeless. They are free to pursue their most basic desires - eating, drinking, smoking, sleeping - with no societal constraints to conform to. Of course, theirs is also a life of tragically curtailed options.

Now comes the critical moment. I approach a care worker for the free lodging the centre offers, explaining that I have no money and am not keen to sleep rough. "No problem," he tells me. But I need to be referred, he adds, and for that I will need someone called a CAT (contact and assessment team) worker to confirm my status as a homeless person.

The fastest way, he continues, is to have them visit me in my sleeping bag on the street. He asks me which doorway or bench I intend to sleep in.

"My usual spot is third bench on the right of the Hungerford Bridge on the Embankment side of the river," I lie. "Can the CAT team come later this afternoon?"

"Oh goodness no," he says. My heart plummets. "Don't worry," he reassures me. "They will come within the next two weeks."

I find myself trudging aimlessly around the West End. Everyone seems to be heading somewhere - passing me by in a blur - whereas I seek a safe doorway or bench. Among the homeless, it is considered bad form to try and muscle in on somebody else's doorway. By 11pm, most spots on The Strand are full. The number of homeless people in central London seems to far exceed central Paris.

In Orwell's day it was the other way round. Orwell quotes the 1931 census, which counted 2,061 people as officially homeless in London, of which 78 slept on the streets.

Today, despite London's population having declined by a million, the number of homeless has soared 25-fold to 51,200, of which 200 sleep rough in Westminster alone. Orwell noted that "according to the law in London, you may sit down for the night but the police must move you on if they see you asleep".

Today, the law is such that the homeless may sleep wherever they choose, as long as they do not make a nuisance of themselves or beg.

After much prevarication, I opt for a bench on the Embankment with a spectacular view of the London Eye. I slip my bag under my head, curl up and try - despite my fear - to sleep. Every so often the bench gives a little shudder as a Tube passes deep below.

After a while, the Eye stops turning, the shudders cease, the passing pedestrians diminish. At one point I drop off but a sudden noise close by sends me bolt upright. Silly me. It is just a couple of half-drunk pedestrians kicking Coke cans.

It is 2.30am. "You have talked so often of going to the dogs - and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it," Orwell wrote.

Perhaps, but not for too long. I have spent two nights in London sleeping rough and, believe me, it wears thin. I fantasise about climbing into a steaming hot bath, settling down on my mattress under a crisp-clean duvet. Ah, even the very word "mattress" sounds so alluring.

Orwell did this in his twenties. I am 41. At my age a bench, even one with a view, is a hard place to lay your head.