Down And Out In Europe

BAITEL-RIBEIRO/GAMMA

EXPOSED: Around 10% of Europe's homeless are rough sleepers

Big Sid tells lies. During the course of a single three-hour conversation on a London street corner, he relates his life story four times, each version more fantastical than the last. In one, he swims to the middle of the Thames in midwinter to rescue a drowning dog. In another, he vanquishes a phalanx of machete-wielding skinheads with his bare hands. Sid is a black man who says his parents came to Britain from the Caribbean, but the specific biographical details he serves up vary so dramatically he might easily be talking about three or four completely different people; the narrative...

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