Table of contents for 8/4/2025 in The Big Issue

Green fingers, clear mind I don’t think it’s pottering. Though, maybe it is. There is something unfocused, but not unpleasant, in pottering. It normally involves knocking about a garden or a shed, or a combination of both. And age. Pottering is associated with people a bit blown around and yellowed by time. So maybe it is pottering – somewhat. I find myself in the garden often now, sometimes not doing a whole lot of anything, just nudging along, tweaking a growth here, trimming back a plant there, checking if I’d left something in the shed (I hadn’t. It was in the drawer in the kitchen). We’re lucky to have a garden. For a few years it was either a work site or on hold until it became a work site.…

For Big Issue man Jason Sallis, the wait for an accessible home has gone on for so long that it has affected his health and left him feeling discriminated against. All he wants is a home to fit his needs. Amputee Sallis, who sells Big Issue at London’s Moorgate tube station, is wheelchair-bound and suffers from ischaemic heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Housing association Notting Hill Genesis (NHG) has been his landlord since 2014, and during that time he has pleaded with them to provide him with an accessible home. Sallis was housed in a second-floor flat until 2022 which left him “crawling up the stairs” when a lift broke. He was moved to a ground-floor property in 2022 but it’s not accessible for his wheelchair, limiting his mobility…

For about a decade I was convinced I was mortally ill. The identity of my illness changed several times, but the fear was always the same: in short, that I was dying; that I had some dreadful and no doubt painful disease that, for all my worrying, I had carelessly allowed to reach the point at which it had become incurable. Above all, I wanted a scan that would reveal what was the matter with me. But my doctors tended to take a different view – and the greater my fear at their inaction, the more I convinced them my symptoms were the result of anxiety. The history of hypochondria is probably as old as humanity itself, but – like so much else – the word itself emerged in Ancient…

On an extremely hot Tuesday evening in late July, I found myself part of a small gathering in a nicely air-conditioned pub beside the Thames. With me were my best mate, Ollie, a man I have known since I was four years old; a newer pal, Rory, who is roughly the same age (we’re all in our 50s); and my 13-year-old son, Lenny. It was a mixed bag: my two friends had never met before and the only thing they appeared to have in common was me. My son was probably fretful that he would have to endure one of those tedious evenings in the company of adults, nursing a Coke while listening to us talk about work. It was all impromptu and I didn’t think any of us would…

Get in touch The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissueuk @bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @thebigissue Thug off Over the past few weeks, I have watched my town be taken over by thuggery and violence, incited online by the far-right. These ‘protesters’ have made our high street a no-go area for locals over multiple nights, only to claim their intention is to “make Epping safe again”. I felt perfectly safe before – even walking home alone from the tube just two evenings before the first riot. It’s them who’ve made us feel unsafe. A woman has required protection from the police after missiles were thrown and individuals shouted verbal abuse at her. Two female police officers were sexually harassed while trying to do their job. Tell…

Cal Grevers was on a council waiting list for two years for an accessible home and saw no progress in that time – so he took matters into his own hands. The 32-year-old, based in Edinburgh, raised £54,000 through crowdfunding. This allowed him to secure a flat through shared ownership and adapt it to meet his needs as a wheelchair user. He had just moved in when he was on the cover of Big Issue in April 2023 (pictured above). He spoke about his fundraising efforts and the positive impact that independent living had had on his confidence. Three years on, Grevers says it has changed his life. “It does make a big difference to mental health to have that freedom,” he remarks. It has also changed his career path.…

“Blending natural, architectural and figurative elements I build bold landscapes in thick, bold oil pastel,” says Patrizia, who submits this artwork via the 240Project, a London arts and health activity centre for those affected by homelessness and exclusion. “Eyes are a recurring motif: peering out from buildings, rock formations, seas; to some people they seem sinister, but I think of them as being benevolent, peaceful. Creating these worlds, getting lost in them, levels my spirit.” 240project.org.uk The work on this page is created by people who are marginalised. Contact street.lights@bigissue.com to see your art here. To see more and buy prints: bigissueshop.com. At least half of the profit goes to the artist.…

IRVINE WELSH Tunespotting I recently finished reading Scottish author Irvine Welsh’s new novel Men in Love, a sequel to his 1993 debut Trainspotting – the all-time classic tale of youth, poverty, addiction, the working class and the search for transcendence in the mean streets of 1980s Edinburgh that inspired Danny Boyle’s era-defining 1996 film of the same name. Welsh’s latest among many assorted continuations of the adventures of Renton, Sick Boy, Spud, Begbie and other Leith lowlifes is arguably his best yet. It picks up where Trainspotting ended (one robbing the others in a drug deal then disappearing) and sends them careering off on assorted doomed quests. This time not for heroin, but love, in its many forms: romantic, seedy, squalid, experimental, manipulative, and ultimately tragic. I loved a lot…

JOE MCDOWELL, 63 I was born in Glasgow, but we moved to Leeds when I was little. I started selling the magazine when I was homeless in Leeds years ago, by the university. Then I used to work in Manchester, and now I have been in Prestwich for about 25 years. The staff and customers at M&S like me because I help to put away the shopping carts or help people take their shopping to their cars. I’ve seen managers come and go, and I always say to new managers, “If you need anything, just let me know.” I had a hard childhood. My dad was really nasty. He was violent. He told me to leave home when I was 15. I went to a special school and have no…

Eight years ago, measles had been eliminated in the UK. There had been no reported cases for three years. But last month a child died of the highly infectious disease and doctors have sounded the alarm about the rising number of cases. There were 362 measles cases reported in the UK in 2023. This surged to almost 3,000 cases in 2024. Measles is prevented through vaccination but spreads quickly among those who are not protected. Rates of childhood vaccinations have been declining for the last decade, and new figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF show that this trend has continued. One in 10 children missed out on the first dose of the measles vaccine last year, while 15% did not have full coverage. And it is not…

REVIEWS The language of love Kimberly Campanello’s work has always been uniquely difficult to define. Her most significant work, MOTHERBABYHOME, was a 796-page “poetry object” that took the form of a report on Ireland’s infamous Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, where up to 800 children had died between the 1920s and 1960s. There are only six copies of the original edition, each poem printed on vellum and stored in an oak box. Hence, the term “poetry object”. Her practice moves fluidly between poetry, visual art, durational performance and digital literature, defying any easy categorisation. Knowing this, it feels uniquely perverse that Campanello’s latest project, Use the Words You Have, comes to us in the form of a novel. Campanello brings many of her poetic sensibilities with her…

In studio two at Polmont Young Offenders Institution a young actor is licking his wounds in the corner. A moment earlier, he’d whipped his T-shirt off, enthusiastically preparing for his next scene, brazen and bare chested. Taps aff, as they say in these parts. The merest ripple of laughter registered in the prison’s drama studio and a hair-trigger clicked. The scene had been changed, he hadn’t got the memo and demanded to know what’s funny, what they’re laughing at. The actor stormed off into the wings, hurriedly pulling his T-shirt back on, the difference between his fellow performers laughing at him and laughing at the unintentionally comic impact of his false move momentarily lost to the flare of discomposure. These are callow boys, not yet men, who are living out…

EDINBURGH FRINGE Mister Motivated I have a memory of doing press-ups in July 2023. It was before I was due to go up to the Edinburgh Festival to perform every day for a month. While doing the press-ups I was listening to the song Not Giving In by Rudimental. It was loud and those three words were really getting to me. NOT GIVING IN. What was I not giving in to? Myself I guess. I was thinking about being on stage and trying my best. There’s two-thirds of me that wants to try and a third of me that doesn’t. Most of the time the motivated proportion of me dominates my existence but sometimes that other third is absolutely rabid. I fight against it. I had been going up to…