He has sung on the same corner since 2015. On Thursday the pavement filled up.
A man who has sung on the same Carlton pavement for ten years thought a police welfare check meant he had to stop; his neighbours answered by singing with him, and in Texas a district named a school after the custodian who cleaned its halls for 39 years.
For ten years, Miles Green has sung on the same stretch of pavement outside a convenience store in Carlton, Nottinghamshire. 1
He is 28 and has Down's syndrome. He works at the One Stop on Gedling Road, and he sings on the corner outside it, and passing drivers sound their horns in encouragement. 1
On Thursday, dozens of people gathered on that pavement and sang with him. 1
The song was Elton John's "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me". 1
They came because of what had happened on Wednesday.
The welfare check
Miles told the BBC he was on the corner, singing as usual, when police arrived and asked him for his name and address. 1
"Obviously, I was upset," he said. 1
Nottinghamshire Police said a member of the public had called with concerns for the welfare of a man in Gedling Road.
Officers "attended and carried out checks to ensure he was safe and well, with no issues identified", a spokesperson said. 1
A welfare check is a routine response to a call like that.
What the police statement cannot describe is what a check feels like from the other end of it.
Miles went into work and told his manager he was finished. "He said 'I'm not going to be able to sing anymore'," Deborah Bradley said. 1
"I said, 'we're not going to dim your light Miles', and we haven't, we've made it shine even brighter." 1
"Everybody knows him"
Word had gone round by Thursday morning. People who know his name turned up and sang along while he worked through one of his favourites. 1
"I can't believe it. I am a bit emotional obviously," Miles said. "I just love [singing] and I want it to keep going." 1
His mother, Shirley Green, said he had been singing on that corner since 2015, and that it was often hard to get him to come home. 1
"Everywhere we go, someone will say 'oh look it's Miles off the corner'," she said. "Everybody knows him." 1
Bradley said older customers ask after him when he is on holiday. "He's just a general all-rounder for the community, he keeps everyone jolly," she said. "It's just his spirit." 1
Miles also has something most adults with a learning disability in England do not: a paid job.
Mencap, citing Department of Health and Social Care figures, puts paid work among adults with a learning disability who are known to their local authority at 6%. 2
The job is the smaller half of it. The corner is the part nobody could have arranged.
Thirty-nine years
In Aubrey, Texas, a school district arrived at the same point more slowly.
Marilyn Hampton cleaned its buildings for 39 years. She was one of eight siblings and the only one to finish high school, and for years she held that against herself. 34
"I just thought, 'You know, Marilyn? God put you where you are supposed to be,'" she told WFAA. "And I'm very happy with the way things turned out." 4
The district's superintendent, Shannon Saylor, said Hampton did more than empty the bins and mop the halls. She bought and delivered school supplies, and she helped students study for tests. 4
"She is truly Aubrey ISD," Saylor said. 4
The carpet
Aubrey is building its fifth elementary school. Until this month the building was known only as Elementary School Number Five. 4
Hampton was invited to the board meeting on 21 October and asked to talk about problems with the school's opening. Then she was asked to roll out a red carpet, which is close to the work she had been doing for four decades. 35
It took her a few seconds to work out what was stitched along it: Marilyn Hampton Elementary School. 4
"Oh, my goodness," she said. "Oh God, y'all are the best." 4
"I still can't believe it. I haven't stopped crying," she told WFAA. 4
She is 76. She spends part of her week in a rocking chair at the district's Early Bird Learning Center, feeding a baby girl called Claire. 4
What the two of them got
A carpet in Texas and a crowd in Carlton did not fix anything. The school is still a building site. The corner is still a corner.
What both places did was say out loud something they had been quietly relying on: the woman who kept the buildings going, and the man who keeps the pavement going.
Miles, who thought he would have to stop, has said he will keep singing.
References
- 1
- 2Employment - research and statistics
mencap.org.uk
- 3New Texas School Is Named For Longtime Janitor 'Miss Marilyn'
goodnewsnetwork.org
- 4
- 5
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