Phillip

Phillips laughs at me behind his face mask after I confess that I don’t know how to make the cup of coffee he asked for. I start to explain its because I rarely drink coffee, but he just waves his hand at me, laughing at me again. He’s pulling my leg. “It’s just one spoon of that stuff, with some hot water. Is it the butler that makes it at yours?”

Phillip and I had met about 30 seconds before, in the courtyard of the Ace of Clubs centre where the staff had just begun serving lunch. It’s been sunny every day pretty much since London went into lockdown, and there is a long queue outside the centre of people sitting down in the heat, separated by crates placed to enforce social distancing. The queue seems to be getting longer every day.

Cliff, one of the chief organisers of the centre, invites Phillip to jump the queue to come talk to me. There is always a strategy for what time you start queuing, with the vegetarians coming early in case their option runs out, to those who want seconds arriving later, not wanting to stand around for ages waiting for everyone else to finish. Phillip’s strategy, and his first question to me, ends up summarising the entire interview:

“How long do you think this will take, as I have a friend who arrives in a bit and I don’t want to keep him waiting!”

After my embarrassing attempt to fix up his coffee, we walk over to the far end of the empty canteen for the interview (all meals have been distributed as takeaways since lockdown). He’s wearing a furry trapper hat as if it’s snowing outside, and the face mask covers his entire face below his eyes - it covers his face so well actually, that when he removes it to take a sip of his coffee I’m taken back by the whiteness of his beard.

“I was born into foster care in 1959, making me 61 years old”, he says, glancing at me with his incredibly youthful-looking eyes. “My foster family, unfortunately, my parents - the only foster family that I was with - died by the time I was 21. Put that down! There you go. I had no next of kin since 1981.”

Phillip was born in Bristol, where he grew up with his foster family. He is insistent that I write down ‘foster’, and not ‘adoptive’ family.“There’s a big difference.” Fostering is usually seen as a temporary solution to housing a vulnerable child, whereas adoption is typically a long-term commitment. Despite the loving environment he grew up in, his family chose against changing the legal status. Cruelly, it still only became a temporary home, after his mother passed away when he was 16, forcing him to start working instead of attending college. He looked after his father until he too died, five years later.

After a few years working in factories and technology companies, Phillip moved to London and began working as a healthcare assistant at King’s College Hospital. He would stay there for 20 years, including 6 years at A&E.

“I enjoyed some of it, but it was hard. It was fucking hard. You get to see so much, but so much…jerk. stuff. People who show you so little respect. It's all very well, everyone clapping at 8 o’clock for the NHS, but It makes me bloody mad - because, they've been there for years! It's one of the hardest jobs that you do on every level, emotionally, mentally, physically, everything, everything. Everything you could imagine. Dead babies, live babies. Babies being born. Fractures. Brains. Everything I've seen, every single thing. And I got to such a state because I didn’t have family, I didn’t have a partner, and in this kind of work, it can destroy relationships. I would have to do twelve hours, fifteen hours a day. There wasn’t enough hours in the day for anything else. I'd walk out of the department. I'd put my sunglasses on. I couldn't speak to anyone. I didn’t want to speak to anyone. I don't want to look at anyone. I wanted to be left ALONE.”

He raises his voice at this last word, and drags it out slowly. There is a distinctive sense of pain as he stops, and he removes his mask again to have another sip of coffee. He has been speaking continuously since my opening question, and has recounted fifty years of his life in five minutes.

“They say, they say it's the nearest thing you get to be on the frontline in war. And I'd say…yes, absolutely, absolutely. I did six years there and then I had a nervous breakdown. They moved me then to a medical ward. And then I did another thirteen years on medical wards and then I had another nervous breakdown. And then they fired me. After twenty years, a week before Christmas.”

Cliff intervenes at this point, bringing Phillip his packed lunch for today, with extra supplies. Phillip thanks him, and stays silent for a moment as if he is deeply moved by the gesture. Later in the interview Phillip speaks with genuine adoration about the centre, about his respect for places like it. He continually refers to its convictions and its core values, of the selfishness of the staff to give to others: “this place is standing out like a beacon, this is the type of place I want to work for”.

Throughout the interview, Phillip continuously returns to the concept of putting others before yourself, and how that concept has defined his entire life. Every time it comes up he starts to talk faster, and his tone becomes frustrated.

“If you always continually, continually keep putting people, people, people, people, people before yourself, which is how we were brought up - we were brought up Christian, we were brought up Methodist. Yeah. Treat others how you wish to be treated, you know, and think of others before yourself. It's like if you asked any mother, you know, she will know. With the family there, her needs, and what she wants, gets put right at the back of the queue. It’s exactly the same with me. Exactly the same thing. Until I had a nervous breakdown.

And I had a kind of suicide attempt. Two. Yeah. two, two. Two suicide attempts. A cry for help. Well, thanks a lot. They don't fucking listen. I self referred myself, and I said to my mental health registrar - I am having the darkest thoughts. I want to kill myself. I can do it. They didn’t listen.

But you know, I said to a mate of mine recently who was thinking the same thing, I said, you know, with suicide, you've always got to think of those people, the people who would be left behind. How’s that going to affect them?”

He stops and looks down at my recorder and pauses. Across the room in the kitchen some of the staff are laughing together, and as the room is empty except for us, their laughter carries right across to where we’re sitting. It seems an inappropriate sound with what he’s just told me, and whether he is thinking the same isn’t clear, but he waits a few more seconds until the room is quiet again and says:

“Even when my two grandparents were alive after my parents died. You know, I wanted to be where my dad was. I wanted to be dead. Yeah. But I was too busy looking after other people. Your needs. Your needs.”

He breathes, and for the first time since we sat down he smiles and points towards the window. “Now, I’m just getting some light, getting some sun. But all this over 20 years I'm lucky to be here because you can lose it. You can lose yourself. Yeah. So since I've not been working, I've been helping out at Soup Kitchen. I've been here a few times. I had been volunteering. I'm always busy. I'm not lazy. I'm always busy. But I’m putting myself first. I’m even on PrEP now, it’s a trial prophylactic for gay men, a prevention for individuals that never became HIV positive. It can be very helpful and makes you feel safer when starting relationships. I have a very good landlord, who only increases the rent by £1 every year! I have assured tenancy because I’ve been there twenty years. I’m on benefits, but that pays my rent. I’m not left with much, as I’m on the very lowest amount despite all my hard work. That makes this sort of place necessary for me. God bless them.”

I ask him if I can take his photo for the profile, to which he agrees and completely removes his mask. He mentions that photography is a passion of his, as is opera and fine dining, the last to which he laughs at, winking at me as if to point out the irony of where we are sitting. After I take a few shots, he starts to search through the supplies Cliff brought him.

“You know,” he says while looking through the bag, “with a lot of stuff like this you feel like you're in the dark tunnel. A dark, dark tunnel. And now, now I quit. I wake up, happy to be alive. You know, I don't fear anything. Anything. Except big spiders.” He chuckles at this, telling me how he was terrified as a child by a scene in The Incredible Shrinking Man, where the shrunken protagonist was caught under a giant attacking spider.

“I have a friend who lives in New York, has two apartments, one in Harlem, successful guy. But he’s miserable, and he’s scared of death. I’m not. But I’m much happier now.”

“I'll take that thing out of Stephen Hawking’s book: ‘I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die’.”