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 OUR MAGAZINE IN THE CENTRE OF LONDON |
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| I CONTINUE TO SEARCH FOR A JOB | ||||
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 My name is
Damien,I'm 26 years old and I'm originally from Liverpool. I ha ve been living
in Scotland,up in Edinburgh for the past year . I came down to London three
weeks ago to try and find work. At the moment I ha ve not been able to find an
y accommodation,so I ha ve been sleeping down the subway for the past three
weeks. I was down in London two years ago and I found a job through the job centre for a kitchen porter up in a hotel in Edinburgh. It was live-in accommodation, so I went up to Scotland but it only was a six month contract and they didn't renew it. I have been trying for the last three months to find a job up in Edinburgh but I had no luck. I came down to London and the last time I was here I stayed in a back packers hostel. The guy who runs it usually lets me stay and pay at the end of the month,but when I got there it was closed for renovations. That's why I ended up on the streets. Three years ago I had a drug habit and I ended up in prison. While I was in prison my girlfriend had a baby and when I came out the relationship with my girlfriend broke up. I have been staying with my mum,and because I was on the drugs at the time things went sour between me and my mum. I decided to get away and start a new life. I managed to get off the drugs and I have been off them now for two years. I was on Heroin and I just went Cold Turkey. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. It felt like really bad flu,I didn't have any energy to move, I had a runny nose for like two weeks. While you are on the Heroin you don't look after yourself. I hadn't brushed my teeth for a month, I only washed my clothes once a month,I'd go to bed in my clothes and get up and go straight out to try and find money. It just got that way where I realised that I just can't carry on anymore, I had to do something about it. The last straw was when I was in prison. I got remanded and a week later my girlfriend had the baby. My mum phoned the prison to tell them that my girlfriend had had the baby and the prison service didn't tell me. I received a letter about four or five days later and that was the first I knew. It also said that two of my friends had died in a car crash. I just went to pieces with being in prison at the time. Luckily, I was in court a week later and with the circumstances that had happened to me they released me. I got out and spent two weeks with my girlfriend but we realised that things had gone too far by then and we split up. I went back to my mum's but things just carried on the same. I carried on with the drugs and my mum had the police round at the house all the time to arrest me. I went to the doctor but he just put me on Prozac and that made me worse . It was then I decided that I couldn't carry on and that I had to sort this myself. I phoned a friend up in South Wales and my friend told me to come down. When I went down there he just locked me in the house , took all my clothes of me so that I couldn't leave, he even nailed all the windows down. I stayed in there for two weeks until I felt better. About a month later I went back to Liverpool to collect all my stuff and then came to London.I have now realised that if you do have drugs you only have to have it the once more and your back to square one, so it's not worth doing it.I have not really been drinking,I have had a couple of cans.I have friends round here who are drinking and they're on the streets and it just makes them even worse. They get depressed because they realise that they are on the streets and they drink even more. So, I'll have the odd can of a night time but I don't go out and get drunk.I'd rather just sit there and realise what I am doing. Being on the street at the moment is not too bad because we have got the soup vans coming round. So I've got something to eat and I've got a sleeping bag. I'm O.K.,I don't really mind. I also sell the Big Issue to try and make some money. There are other people out on the streets begging and they are getting arrested for it. I have been selling it for about a week and I keep putting a bit of money away to buy a ticket back to Edinburgh if things don't work out here. After buying the magazines I make about £15-£20 a day. I'll start about ten O'clock, work through till about one and then I will have an hour to sit down for some lunch. Then I will stand there till about half seven.Then I will go and meet up with the lads,have a McDonald's and a drink. After that I get my sleeping bag and my clothes,and head off to behind the Adelphi Hotel. The soup vans start coming around about ten O'clock. They provide us with sandwiches and cups of tea and more blankets if we need them. Then I'll maybe go to sleep about twelve O'clock. We get woken up at about seven thirty and I go over to London Connections to have a cup of tea. At half nine I go down to buy my Big Issues. I have just joined the job club to see if I can get a job, try and get into a Bed and Breakfast and hopefully things will work out. I have really got to get somewhere to live before I try and find a job. |
