Day Two


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’ the tram, to keep me company and for the next 3 hours we talked. He started by asking why I wasn’t going the whole hog and drinking 8 pints of special brew, because using something to forget is part of the deal. I told him what he already knew, I wasn’t the real deal. As if to make me more aware of that, he got up and went to blag a smoke and came back delighted with 3 good tab ends and a single cigarette.

I’m not sure how long it will take before I am desperate for alcohol or something else to numb the experience of having no place to call my home. I hope it is more than 14 days. I don’t smoke but if I did the desperation would make me blag them very soon, maybe collecting tab ends would follow. I know that after wondering what to do and how to pass the time, I really enjoyed his company.

Then, when the clock had struck midnight, just 1 litre of cider gone, he lay down and was asleep in minutes. Hardened to life without a mattress, he was snoring every time I woke to change positions and pull my makeshift pillow back into a pile. He was still asleep when I got up at 6.30am to leave.

I heard him say goodbye and wish me well, he may never know how much he made the start of it more palatable


- Tim Renshaw, Archer Project CEO



If you want to know more about changing the lives of people who are homeless visit www.archerproject.org.uk






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 11

Image
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 and ze
Read more

Afterthoughts 3

Image
14 nights but I still don’t know what homelessness is like for women During my fortnight on the streets, several women said to me that if they were to sleep rough there would be, as one woman put it, “an extra layer of vulnerability”. I realised I hadn’t ever considered the risk of a sexual attack. I’ve known men who have been sexually abused whilst rough sleeping, but they seem isolated incidents. I never considered it could happen to me. Women seemed to consider it automatically.  I am uncomfortable writing this blog. A 57-year-old man sharing insights into being female and homeless? The reality is that I’m admitting my ignorance. After 17 years I thought I knew the issues of female homelessness. I probably do but I now realise how little I understand them. I remember an incident of a woman who was nineteen. She came to the project seeking help. Her boyfriend had been arrested. She was alone and said, in the space of an afternoon, three men had offered to ‘protect’ her. S
Read more

Day Three

Image
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 might
Read more