Day Twenty Six

Day 26 – A book that changed your opinion about something.

That would be 'Stuart : A Life Backwards' by Alexander Masters. I'm not the sort of person who will throw 'get a job' or 'you'll only spend it on drink/drugs' type comments at homeless people, I sometimes give money but it's random (you know, it depends on how I'm feeling and what change is left in my purse etc and, to my shame, it might depend on appearances .. I mean whether to me they really look homeless ) but I've never really thought about what might lead a person to be homeless or, once they are, how difficult it is to get themselves back into society (and how unappealing and hostile that society can be.) Reading this book opened my eyes to all sorts of issues that frankly made me uncomfortable.
We're all only four steps away at most, from becoming homeless, it could be caused by illness, divorce, debt, addiction, death of a loved one, violence in the home, nervous breakdown .. it's really easy to get there but hard as anything to get out again.

There's a piece in the book about a baker who, rather than let the homeless people eat them, would deliberately spoil his cakes, by spitting on them or whatever, before throwing them in the bin. Now I can understand that maybe he didn't like them hanging around his shop late at night but what sort of world do we live in when we would rather throw good food in a bin than give it to people who need it?. I've worked in coffee shops before and the amount of food waste was criminal, not only could it be used to feed the homeless but those on low incomes too.

I would find it difficult to sit and chat to someone I didn't know (and what's more hubby would kill me) but I am trying in small ways to do a little bit more .. like buying someone a hot drink or food etc and I do want to do more once I've figured out how I can help. There are a lot of homeless people here which shocked me when I moved in last year because the area is quite posh (perhaps that makes them even more visible) so I found the book pertinent and it answered a lot of my questions.