Samaritans, 46 Marshall St, Soho, London W1F 9BF & Lincoln’s Inn Fields

Two Samaritan volunteers: One can’t understand when they are not wanted and the other is something of a fishwife.

The Samaritans send volunteers out on the streets who, I suspect, are supposed to be of assistance if someone is feeling especially low or contemplating self-harm. These volunteers sometimes turn up in the area of food hand-outs and such like.

I’ve come across some of these volunteers, and I’d describe four of them whom I’ve encountered as being particularly unqualified for being in the profession of lifting people’s spirits.

The first was an Irish female who approached me out of the blue one evening. She was a vile, uppity, vulgar and an obviously ill-reared little brat. Quite clearly, she thought that the Samaritan’s badge which she was wearing gave her the right to patronise and be sarcastic to me. And just as clearly, I told the ignorant little scumbag to f-off.

I then approached a male volunteer about the conduct of this brat but was met with a flood of arrogance and aggressive dismissal.

Then a while ago I met this fellow (pictured right). He’s Irish. He showed up one evening and began to instruct people as to what they could talk about. I’m serious, he ordered me and some people I was speaking with to change the theme of our conversation. Obviously he didn’t like what we were saying.

He wasn’t polite about it, he told us to quit what we were speaking about from about 5 metres away with a headmasterly loudness and attitude. Like above female, he seemed to have the impression that representing the Samaritans gave him authority over others.

I emailed the Samaritans about his conduct. And thought at least that that would be the last time he stuck his nose into a conversation others and I was having.

But he did decide to have another go at cowering me. After a few months he again approached me with an arrogant smirk on his gob. He had a crony with him and began to speak patronisingly to me. I immediately and loudly told him I didn’t want anything to do with him. He then got a little annoyed at this – probably upset at not being kowtowed to in the presence of his crony – and aggressively asked me to repeat what I’d said. He definitely heard my second reply.

As if this wasn't bad enough, he again approached and spoke to me two weeks later. It’s as if it’s a challenge to him to get the better of me through a mixture of patronism and annoyance because I had previously made a complaint about him.

Getting alarmed about his provocation and his inability to understand I wanted nothing to do with him, I approached another Samaritan volunteer (pictured right) who was in the area.

I intended to request her to relay a message to her colleague, for her to let him know I wanted him to stay away from me and to refrain from speaking to me.

Immediately upon realising what I wanted, she lost her veneer of decency. And turned into an arrogant and sarcastic fishwife – she also seemed to me to have mild mental health issues that are somewhere on the spectrum of those with special needs.

She met my request with sarcasm and a blatantly sneering ridicule. She’s red-headed. I suspect she was annoyed because she viewed me as showing disrespect to, what is very probably, her fellow countryman mentioned above.

I also suspect she was annoyed because she’d met someone whom she couldn’t talk down to and patronise – as far as I have experienced, "they" like to meet “vulnerable” people who’ll accept without question their efforts at double-speak, sarcasm and sly abuse.