Purchasing 'The Big Issue'

After being unsuccessful in the Abingdon precinct and avoiding one seller of The Big Issue in Oxford, another more welcoming man on Magdalen Street, outside Sainsbury’s offered me the magazine. I brought a copy off him and he was extremely thankful and ‘hoped I received a blessing.’ I talked to him and asked him a few questions about his day (by now I had realised quite a few people were looking at me), I asked him about how many he had sold that day, but he had only just started. As I left he wished me ‘a good day and good luck,’ and as I looked around at the people around me; I was trying to work out what they were thinking of me: hard to tell if they were either mystified to why I had donated my money to a homeless man or rather almost envious of me – who cared enough to acknowledge him and help him out. As I walked away I felt proud of what I had done and I passed the man I avoided shortly after who was engaged in quite an in depth conversation with another woman: which made my experience seem more normal, as before I felt like the minority.