Lies.

Daniella sells the Big Issue outside the Co-op in the area I live.  She's Algerian Muslim I think. She wears a headscarf, she has several gold teeth and chronic Arthritis.  Sometimes when we used to do the market she would borrow painkillers from my husband and they would discuss the horrors of Arthritic pain in the cold.   I like her a lot, despite the fact that she's very religious (I don't tend to generally get on with religious people, I usually want to hit them for being stupid, in my tolerant Atheist way) and she has many children, one of them the same age as Solly.

Solly adores her.  When he sees her he shrieks, "DANIELLLLLLA!" and runs towards her and hugs her, burying his head in her folds of skirts.  She also adores him and we talk a lot about how quickly all of our children grow.

I can't afford to buy the Big Issue every week.  I can afford to buy it some weeks but if I did that then she would think I was going to buy it every week and then if I couldn't afford it I would feel bad and she would think I had let her down. I don't want her to rely on me, for me to become one of her regulars because what if I don't have the money sometimes?

Instead what I do is, I give her money in a Christmas card each year, because at Christmas I usually do have money, owing to basically being a Christmas elf and making all the things for people to give each other.  So I give her 20 or 30 quid and anyway, I also give to several charities directly once a month and when I see people on the streets I try to give them what I have in my pocket so not buying the Big Issue off Daniella isn't that mean a thing to do.

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Actually, this is all a lie.  I could afford to buy the Big Issue each week.  It's £3 out of my budget which isn't that much in the greatest scheme of things.  I could afford to buy it and don't, telling myself that I give elsewhere already and I don't want her to rely on me and all of the things I've just said.

But actually it probably wouldn't make that much difference to me, whereas it would to her.

I suppose that just proves I am basically shit.