Tim's Sleep Out Blog

 Down but not out. Yesterday was the kind of day I dreaded on the 14 day sleep out. The rain was heavy and incessant. I ran the short distance from my front door to my car, and at work, I ran from the car to the front door. Some of the places I slept would have been ruled out by yesterday’s rain. The ground would have been soaked and I would have been stupid to sleep in places with puddled water.  There are days in the Archer Project when we just need to make sure people leave with dry clothes. Keeping dry is part of keeping warm. If I had been sleeping out last night instead of last week I’d have been huddled in a corner of a church porch, most likely sat up. And if I had got so wet during the day I would have spent parts of the night walking round to create body heat. People who rough sleep tell us about the cold and the wet. Very few words are needed. It’s usually written on their faces and in their body language. A simple, ‘Bloody freezing last nigh...

Day 15: Has it ended yet? I was awake at just before six this morning, lying in my sleeping bag, looking out at a clear sky from the doorway at St John's Church, Ranmoor in Sheffield. I tucked my shoulders into the bag because it was cold. Today I can go home but I instead of elation I feel drained and empty. I have no sense of achievement or satisfaction. I realised that if this was the last day of an adventure, walking the Pennine Way or something like that, I may be sad that was over but I’d be taking away a trophy of some kind, an objective completed and enjoyed. I haven’t enjoyed this fourteen days.  I’ve loved meeting wonderful people at the end of the day. And I’ve made some new friends. But homelessness got into my head and body and that’s a horrible experience. On Friday afternoon I had a low. It wasn’t a surprise. It happened most days but that day I texted my wife: “I just need to say this to someone, I don’t want you to come and get me, but I’ve had enough. ...

Day 14: The loo One of the most frequent questions I’ve been asked is, “What are you doing about the toilet?”  Remember, I am not homeless. I have had 14 churchyards to sleep in. Most have given me access to a toilet, though I have had some nights with no loo in sight. Toilets are a problem. Walking from the car park to our centre at Sheffield Cathedral one morning, Patrick was stood gloved up, bag in one hand, shovel in the other and a bucket of soapy water on the ground. “Just dealing with a pile.” “Oh, that’s unpleasant.” “I know, fancy needing to go and there being nowhere!” His sympathy was with the leaver of the deposit. Mine was with him.  I went into this fourteen days of homelessness knowing I have occasional problems with IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). There are moments when my body gives me little warning of the need to go. Sometimes it’s an immediate demand. At others I can manage about fifteen or so minutes of concentrated effort to get me to a loo. I...

Day 13: First survive, then thrive.. I’m sat on The Moor, one of the main shopping streets in Sheffield. It’s 8.30am. Shops are getting ready to open and a few familiar faces have walked past me. Two are men who are part of the street homeless population. One has accommodation. He walked past with a can of alcohol in his hand, open. It would be easy for me to judge him, after all he could be at home instead of here and he's drinking early in the morning. I feel conflicted because I know there's a reason he turned to drink. I also know he won't be easy to deal with later in the day if he drinks too much. I have a day of nothingness ahead. It is beyond boredom. It is surviving, with no other purpose than to get through the day. There are moments of relief, and for some that comes in the form of alcohol or drugs. Yesterday, for me, it was Carla. She spotted me and waved. I came alive. A smiling face I knew walking towards me!! Carla has never been homeless, but her...

Day 12: It’s everywhere I’m in Eyam, famous as the Plague Village. I’m not here because it is overrun with homelessness. Though rural homelessness is real and the locals can tell you about supporting people who have made the countryside their none-home.  Quite simply, Eyam Parish Church is where the idea of a fourteen day sleep out began. My day here has felt like a ‘break’ from being homeless and I feel a bit guilty for not being more hardcore. Afterall, I’m supposed to be homeless.  On my way here I had a conversation with someone who had slept rough for two weeks. It wasn’t in a rural village, but it was in her local community. She didn’t run away to the city. And it was ‘hardcore’ homelessness. But most of her homelessness wasn’t sleeping rough. She survived by using friends’ homes when life went wrong. For her it was always domestic violence. Interestingly, she distinguished between times when there was no physical violence, it was just that home had become da...

Day 11: Lest we forget.. It’s 5.52am and I’ve had a fairly good sleep. Lying here in the beautiful doorway of St Mary's - Ecclesfield , a cloudy moon is alone in the sky. When I went to sleep the sky was full of stars. I don’t know their names.   If Gav was here he might tell me something about constellations. He died in 2020 after years of alcohol abuse. When I first knew him, sometimes passed out on the Cathedral grass, I couldn’t have guessed at the intelligence that filled his head. I wouldn’t have guessed the horrors either. The violent death he witnessed, the rejection by his stepdad, the journey into the care system which didn’t work for him, the loss of a daughter and so the story goes on. This doorway is poignant too. The last time I was here was for the funeral of K. Twenty years of military service, three stripes on his arm and enough trauma to sink a battleship. He used the Archer Project for just a few months. In that time we saw the two sides, a joy a...

Day 10: I want to be where you are 5.30pm It’s cold. I imagine the cars on the road are warm inside. I’m thinking about it because I’m sat shivering. I’ve found a bit of shelter, an L-shaped wall, which stops the wind. Shortly, I’ll get up and walk about because my bum is cold, the paving slab beneath me is drawing out warmth. But I’ve been walking for a while and I need to sit for a bit. Maybe I should get my sleeping bag and mattress out but it feels too early. I can smell Chinese food. The smell is tempting but I can’t afford it. The church I’m at will feed me, that reminds me I’m not really homeless.  5.45pm. My bum and the slab feel the same temperature. Maybe I should stay. But what will I do? I wonder where the cars are heading? I’m jealous of them. I imagine warm rooms, kettles boiling, the TV on, paused for a conversation about the day. But it’s all somewhere else and I’m here. If I do get up and move from here, where do I go? What do I do? A couple of lads are...

Day 9: What if?.. Today’s blog was going to be about Richard. This journey was supposed to be his. He thought of it and wanted to do it. I’m doing it as a replacement, I didn’t start 2022 with any idea that I would spend 14 nights with no home. But first I need to tell you about my body. For the last few days it has objected loudly. No, it has shouted at me; ‘this is no way to treat me!!’ When I get up I’ve got a picture in my mind of my dad in his seventies, slowly stretching when he stood up, as if he was putting some of his bones back in place, a place they were tired of being. That’s me this morning. I wake two or three times in the middle of every night to reposition in the least uncomfortable shape. Usually, I move from sleeping on one side to the other, and then to sleeping on my back. I don’t think I ever sleep on my back at home.  I am tired. And I have to get up and leave. Years of listening to people tells me that the time I need to leave depends on where I’v...

Day 8: And still it goes on….. What a beautiful day! The sun shone and I walked. For quite a while there was nothing about the day that had anything to do with homelessness. I was just a walker in the countryside. No one would guess otherwise. And all would have been well apart from the fact that I’m trying to stick to some guidelines learned from real rough sleepers. The lovely country pub was off limits. I was once in Sheffield City Centre with a lad who was one or two steps away from street homelessness. We were next to Café Rouge and I asked him if he wanted a coffee. “In there? No way.” He looked at me as if I was joking with him. To me it was a coffee shop. To him, it was another world, a place he was excluded from. A self-exclusion. He looked around as we went in as if he expected some bouncer to step in front of him. Within ten minutes the myth had been busted. It was just another place to get a coffee. The country pub was in my self-exclusion zone. So what? Well, m...

Day 7: Rain, rain, go away.. I was sat in the Winter Gardens purely and simply because it was dry. I needed to be on my way but the weather was awful and as I watched a couple dressed for coming into town for the evening, no coat, just shirt sleeves, I felt the first pangs of jealousy because they didn’t need to worry about getting wet. I don’t know what real rough sleepers do, but upper most in my mind was keeping dry. It would be cold later and this rain would soak me to the skin. ‘Stay dry, stay dry’, was the message coming from a deep instinct. ‘You can’t afford to get ill. Should I spend money and get the bus? I didn’t know. Maybe I’d have to.’ Decisions, decisions. ‘I don’t have much money. I’d rather a drink.’  Suddenly I felt totally dispirited as if the tedium and pointlessness of being me in that minute and all the hours ahead had been captured into one moment of feeling. I was empty. I didn’t know why I was doing this. All around me pe...

Day 6: It really is beyond belief . I was tired last night, I had an almost idyllic spot, safe, unseen and clean St Mark's church, Grenoside, Sheffield. But I didn’t sleep. I dozed and kept dozing but that was it and in the end I just counted down the time until there was no point staying there. I even felt a bit sorry for myself because, to be frank, I wanted to be at home where I could stay in bed with the curtains closed and the door shut. But the truth is that this homelessness of mine is easy compared to the experiences of others and, thankfully, it will remain that way. Just another nine nights for me. But imagine if when I’ve finished I find that my home, the one I left, is no longer mine. Some people are on the street not because they haven’t got a home but because they can’t use the one they have. Chris was one of those. He was cuckooed. Having been on the street, he took pity on someone who said they needed his help and he let them stay. But it was a con for a...

Day5b: “Tim, you look like s##t” (How J, another former rough sleeper, greeted me yesterday) I realised yesterday that I need to change my plans. One of the things I’d wondered about for many years is how difficult it is to function properly if you are sleeping rough, especially if drugs and alcohol are part of the coping strategy. So far, I’ve tried to keep up my work during the day. Yesterday at 11am I realised all I was good for was reacting. I could answer emails and phonecalls and stuff like that but that list of work I want to do and may need to do, that is partly in my head, had gone. I couldn’t think what to do next without real effort. We want people who are rough sleeping to be organised enough to take reasonable decisions that will help them in the long run. It means remembering appointments and where those appointments are meant to be. It involves keeping your composure when systems fail or people don’t understand what you’re really asking for or try...

“Tim, you look like s##t” (How J, another former rough sleeper, greeted me yesterday) I realised yesterday that I need to change my plans. One of the things I’d wondered about for many years is how difficult it is to function properly if you are sleeping rough, especially if drugs and alcohol are part of the coping strategy. So far, I’ve tried to keep up my work during the day. Yesterday at 11am I realised all I was good for was reacting. I could answer emails and phonecalls and stuff like that but that list of work I want to do and may need to do, that is partly in my head, had gone. I couldn’t think what to do next without real effort. We want people who are rough sleeping to be organised enough to take reasonable decisions that will help them in the long run. It means remembering appointments and where those appointments are meant to be. It involves keeping your composure when systems fail or people don’t understand what you’re really asking for or trying to say. It invo...

Day 4: So, today is the story of the ‘haves and the have nots’, or ‘me and him’. It rained yesterday and through the night. Not heavy rain, and not all the time but I have a tent and the rough sleeper, who had heard about what I was doing and who found me, didn’t.  It was about half past nine when I pitched the tent because the people at Heeley Parish Church had fed both of us and kept us entertained as we talked about homelessness. The ground was wet and I told my companion that we could share the tent. Did I want to share the tent? No, if I’m honest. He told me he hadn’t showered for about a week, so he hadn’t changed for that long either, and, he said, the amount of alcohol he drinks has terrible effects on his bowels. Not very attractive!! But was I prepared to share. Absolutely! But he said ‘No.’ I tried to persuade him and in the end he said if it really rained hard he’d use it as shelter. That was that. In the night I heard him snoring and groaning. I heard the r...

Day 3: Can I trust you? What are you up to? I spent the first part of last night scanning the people passing by me. People take a short cut through St Aidan C Of E Church churchyard and walked right next to me, tucked up in the doorway. It’s the closest I want to be to being afraid.  A man walked past and noticed me. Immediately, he looked straight ahead, avoiding any eye contact. What was I? Something to be afraid of? Something unwanted? I didn’t know but I instantly felt wary of him. Another did the same. The first man returned, eyes fixed away from me. A man and a woman walked by, the woman turned, looked surprised to see me and then smiled and said ‘Hello.’ What a smile, such a small but valuable thing. I’d started to feel vulnerable and question whether I was safe. In just half an hour I’d realised I needed to stay alert. I wasn’t going to take my shoes off in case I need to get up quickly. I was going to drape my sleeping bag over me and not get in it because I mi...

If only I could carry a mattress! And a pillow, that would be nice. It was my first of 14 nights sleeping rough. I was out at Mosborough, welcomed by St Mark’s Church but by 5pm I was by myself. I sat on a concrete slab and wondered what I was supposed to now. By 6pm, I’d laid my sleeping bag out and rearranged it 3 or 4 times. At 7.30pm I woke up. I’d dozed off, good, that was a relief. I could forget about being alone and potentially vulnerable enough to sleep. The noises around me had changed and it was darker. The road was quieter and sudden noises of people talking grabbed my attention, so I kept sitting up to see if anyone was in the church yard. It can’t have bothered me much because at 9pm a sudden “Hi, are you okay?” woke me with a start. Fortunately, it was a familiar face.  B is a loner, he is a rough sleeper but, by and large, he tries to avoid others, especially at night. He sat down with his bottle of cider. He’d travelled from the city centre, ‘jumping’ t...

I’ve said goodbye to home for the next 14 days. My bed, the kettle, TV, radio, microwave, fridge and even my car have been left behind. Oh, I forgot the shower and toilet. I have got my toothbrush! This morning people at Sheffield Cathedral wished me well, prayed over me, told me to stay safe and to be careful. I have no intention of not being careful and I know this sleepout is to genuine rough sleeping what glamping is to trekking in the Himalayas. There is a world of difference.  I have chosen to sleepout and prepared for it. I walked away from home already equipped with a sleeping bag and tent. Having both is not unknown for rough-sleepers, but having them on your first night of sleeping rough is. By rights, I should have to do at least one night with nothing, unable to sleep and, at this time of year, probably walking around to stay warm when it comes to the really cold part of the night at about 3am.  There are so many differences between my sleepout and genu...