I was born in Luton and lived there up until 12 years of age, then I moved to Rochdale with my mum. I moved back down to Luton at 15 to live with my dad. Since then I've been moving up and down the country. I've got a brother and a sister, I'm the oldest, my sister's 21, my brother is 14, they still live with my mum. I came back from Luton last September for a funeral and my mum talked me into staying and then kicked me out on Boxing Day. Since then I've stayed with friends and came to the North about six weeks ago to a shelter who put me up for a week and then I went to a house which I shared with other people.

Things started to go wrong just after Christmas this year when my mum threw me out, which meant I had to give up my job because I was living too far away from it and it hadn't started going right really until I've moved to Blackburn - things seem to be improving. My mum threw me out because I left when I was 15, I came up for my grandfather's funeral last September and I think it was mainly her new husband who didn't like me, I think he was the pressure behind her throwing me out. I am 23 now, when I came up for the funeral my mum talked me into giving up my house and job where I was living down south to move back in with her. So I thought "fair enough" but it didn't work out and she asked me to leave at Christmas. I was working as a dry-cleaner down south and I thought I'd find another job along the same lines up here, which so far I haven't, so I'm going back to college to do some A-levels.

It has been a bit of a slog. I have met more people in the six weeks I've been in Blackburn than in all of the seven months I was in Bacup where my mum lives, and they seem to be a lot more genuine round here. In Bacup there's a very big drug problem with Heroin, which I don't associate myself with, so a lot of the people were never going to be friends in Bacup.

I was brought up as a Catholic, but I think over the last four or five years I have become a bit cynical over religion through seeing all the bad things that happen about the world and people close to me etc. I think there is something there, we're not just here and that's it, I can't explain the way I believe or what I believe in. I think when I was at school I was quite a devout catholic because I was serving on the altar every day and going to church on a Sunday etc. but I haven't done that since I was about 16. The only time I ever go to church now is Christmas Eve, weddings and funerals for some reason. I was going to a Catholic school and they arranged the altar boys for the services in the church across the road everyday, so I just ended up doing that for about seven years, sometimes I'd be at church about twelve times in a week with the altar services but that really stopped when I moved from Luton to Lancashire, because that's when I stopped going to church, I think.

At the moment I've got a girlfriend who, since I've moved to Blackburn, I can't see as much of as I'd like. She lives in Waterfoot, which if I go over there of an evening, I can't get back to Blackburn so I end up having to book into a hotel or whatever - that's the only bad point really about being in Blackburn. When I was living in Bacup I used to meet her every Thursday evening and I'd just walk home. Since I'm in Blackburn I have to go to a bed and breakfast which will cost between œ10 and œ12 any time that I want to see her, which is very inconvenient. I have kept my situation from my girlfriend, because when I met her we were working together and she was asked to leave the company. I carried on working and when I did lose my job, I just didn't tell her. I've managed to keep it that way. She doesn't ask questions. The job I left was a temporary job through the summer because it was a wedding hire place which obviously, different times of the year was busier than others. Since then, I haven't been able to find any work. With being in a hostel at the moment, it would be impossible for me to look for work because the rent would be œ120 or more per week, whereas being on Social Security that's paid for by Housing Benefit.