Edges Magazine Issue 21: I Slept Out To Make Money For You

EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 21

April 2000

I SLEPT OUT TO RAISE MONEY FOR YOU

We thank Marie for her sleep out. She raised money for our work.

I had seen the advert in the paper and jumped at the chance. Arriving at the meeting point outside Mark's and Spencers' in Blackburn I was shown a huge pile of cardboard boxes,told to claim a spot and make my bed. It had rained a lot in the days before and the air was damp – making a spider-proof house with yards of parcel tape, I expected to be cosy until 6 O'clock,but it collapsed! I decided to leave it flat for a while and go and rattle a tin at the few passers-by who are out late . Nearing McDonalds I was antagonized by tasty whiffs wafting tantalisingly me. In teams of two we wandered the streets and into friendly pubs rattling our tins. I was surprised by the attitude of people from whom I would have expected better. Contributions from young people made me feel warm inside. I can't say it was a pleasure doing street and pub collections as they were alien surroundings to me. Also, people felt cornered and nobody wants to look like a skinflint in public, especially at Christmas!

In the early hours,I was joined by three noisy youngsters who were laughing,joking and smoking.To the untrained eye, they could give an image of being far from being in dire straits.

The most memorable thing that happened that evening was when a young man approached the 'Cardboard City' area in the early hours,shouting and hurling abuse. He was slightly drunk but looked clean and respectable. With great gesticulating he urged us to "Get up off your backside...work for a living".He thought that we were lazy and his condemnations of us were verbally venomous.He then produced a wad of money saying he had worked for this. Fearing a mugging might be awaiting him around the corner, we persuaded him to hide it away. We seemed to be getting him very agitated. Then we realised that he was looking in the mirror when he was looking at us. He had been homeless himself and was finding it hard to reconcile his past and his present times. He had managed to do what he was telling us we should do, to get ourselves out of our mess.The little help that he received was probably not comparable to what we are blessed with:understanding parents;friends – that sleep-out night was a shared experience. We don't have any answers but stepping into someone else's shoes for one night made us realise that we have no right to judge because we don't know. Giving money isn't the only answer. Homelessness is a hard concept to grasp but we must not give up trying to understand it better.