Ben Casey

Ben Casey

Years ago I was in charge of a group of Brazilian students taking a summer English course in the City of Bath. To me, Bath is a dream city. There are plenty of things to see and enjoy there, such as a visit to the Roman Baths, a site of historical interest in the English city of Bath. The house is a well-preserved Roman site for public bathing; the Fashion Museum, which holds a world-class collection of contemporary and historic dress, housed in the magnificent Assembly Rooms; the Jane Austen Center, one of the best places to find out more about Jane Austen, Bath’s favourite author  the Pump Room Restaurant, one of the city's most elegant places to enjoy stylish, modern-British cuisine; the Sally Lunn’s tea house, one of the oldest houses in Bath. Its kitchen museum shows the actual kitchen used by the legendary young Huguenot baker Sally Lunn in Georgian Bath to create the first Bath bunn – an authentic regional speciality now known the world over;. the Bath Abbey, with its magnificent stained-glass windows, columns of honey-gold stone and some of the finest fan vaulting in the world;  Pultney Bridge, a rare surviving example of a bridge with shops built across its full span on both sides. It is the only one of its kind in Britain and one of only four found anywhere in the world. not to mantion the many picturesque pubs where you can relax and have a nice pint of .Guinness. You can choose between  the Boater, the Crystal, the Huntsman, etc. My favourite was the Crystal.

One afternoon, it must have been two or three p.m., I was sitting on a bench in a street in front of a cigar shop, when a tall blonde young guy sat by my side. He was a busker, that is, a street artist, who made a few quid by singing, playing the guitar or doing magic tricks. This young man did nothing of the sort. Ben was a chalk artist who had been creating chalk drawings on pavement surfaces since the mid-1990s.

“Can you speak English?” he asked.

At first I was not in the mood for small talk with a total stranger, and a wino, as well. Do you know what a wino is? Well, a wino is a person, especially a homeless person, who drinks too much wine or other alcoholic drink. He is usually dirty, smelly and always carries a dog with him. 

“Can you speak English?” he repeated.

“A little,” I answered grudgingly.

“Ah, a little is more than enough. Can you keep an eye on my stuff while I go to the loo?”

“Ok,” I said. His stuff consisted of his dog, a cane, a bundle of clothes and a set of brushes, crayons and chalk.

We started talking. He asked me lots of questions. Could hardly believe I was Brazilian, and told me everything about his life. He was a Cambridge dropout whose family could not afford to keep him in the university.

In the end I paid him a beer, gave hm some small change, and would have become good friends with him if I ever had met him again.