Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin / AP

This twenty year old man, Nicholas Simmons, from Greece, New York State, USA was found warming himself on a steam grate with three homeless men just a few blocks from the nation’s Capitol building, during freezing temperatures in Washington last Saturday. It’s a vivid image of just how terrible cold weather is for anyone unlucky enough to find themselves homeless at this time of year. Jacquelyn Martin’s beautiful photograph was published in USA Today and, fortunately for Nicholas and for his family, his parents saw his image in the paper and got in contact with the police who were able to reunite them with the young man who had gone missing on New Year’s Day.

Not so many homeless people were as lucky as Nicholas Simmons and I wonder what happened to the other two men huddled  there in the steam like melancholy figures on a memorial.

The image is all the more poignant when contrasted to these photographs of happy New Yorkers enjoying the snow on Broadway the same night.

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My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.