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






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