The brief encounter with the young man at a South London bus stop had bugged me for close to two weeks. His request for money to buy some food from the eatery across the road had met with misfortunes of circumstance and timing; as well as with one of my habits.

I had no cash on me and, with my love affair with punctuality was telling me I couldn’t miss the approaching bus, getting to a hole in the wall some sixty metres away to extract some cash was not an option. After telling him I couldn’t help him, the look on his face helped guilt jump on the bus with me.

Now, let’s fast forward to last night and a moment of weakness that led me into a chicken and chips joint a couple of hundred metres from that bus stop. As I stepped out with a greasy package, I suddenly had that face in front of me.

The same request – money for something to eat – followed and circumstance again threatened to work against him as I had just used most of my cash on the package in my hand. However, this time, I had time on my side and asked him what he wanted to eat.

“Barbeque ribs… chicken wings… some chips” he mumbled.

I asked him to come into the shop with me to place an order so I could pay for it. He immediately switched fire from wanting food to needing accommodation for the night; and, for that, he needed £16.

“But you said you were hungry!” I retorted.

“I’ll rather pay for somewhere to sleep”, he insisted.

I told him I didn’t have enough cash on me to pay for his hotel room but I had a card that could get him food. He mentioned the £16 again.

As he wasn’t offering a credit card reading machine to take the £16 for the accommodation, I gave him the lone £1 coin I had on me and walked away not knowing whether he really wanted the money for food or accommodation… or for something else.