12 Nov 2024
The Big St Albans Sleep Out took place at Oaklands College last Friday. One family have made the event an annual tradition to remember how homeless charity Emmaus helped a friend. Dad, Damian GaskIn, tells their story.
The first time we slept rough for the St Albans Sleep Out, my sons and I had sleeping bags, yoga mats and their school’s toy donkey that the boys had to take on an adventure for the weekend.
While my children slept soundly throughout the entire night, ‘Donkey’ joined me in listening to every 15 minute toll of the bells and all the drunk revellers stumbling through the Cathedral grounds in the dead of night trying to find their way home.
We probably had more equipment than most people who sleep rough. However, there is a fine line between experiencing the unhealthy reality of sleeping on the streets and putting yourself at risk of child neglect.
That was 2013 and now we approach our 11th St Albans Sleep Out. I can’t say I am looking forward to it, because it is a dreadful experience and yes, that is the point.
Personally, I do not sleep. I am cold, uncomfortable, and aware of how vulnerable we are as a family to the elements (imagine your vulnerability if you do not have the security guards of Oaklands College patrolling your sleeping area). I feel my chest tightening, I take several puffs on my ventolin and I pray for 6am to come and the chance to go home and, well, sleep.
The reason we do this goes back to my first Christmas without my children in 2008. I was recently separated and not looking foward to the festive season.
Friends invited me to spend time with them but I did not want to have someone else’s Christmas. I either wanted to be with my children or to do something completely different. And so I volunteered to work at LifeShare in Manchester. This charity gave meals, clothes, medical and other assistance to the homeless. The organiser said that volunteers had shifts from 7am to 1pm and 1pm to 8pm over five days and asked me what shifts I would like to do.
“All of them,” I said. And that’s what I did. And it was the best Christmas I had and have ever experienced.
It was there that I met Terry, a guest of LifeShare. Like many of the guests Terry had been made homeless after difficult personal circumstances and now slept rough on the streets of Manchester.
At night, if he was in the right place at the right time, he might find a shelter – on camp beds in a draughty, noisy hall with many other homeless men and women. Only three months before he had been working as a chef in Stockport and living at home with his wife.
When his marriage fell apart the stress meant that he soon lost his job in the restaurant.
Terry and I had a few things in common. Recent marriage breakdowns, financial difficulties and a life turned on its head.
We both had had to face our worst fears. The reality was that there was not much separating us.
Two years later I was now living in St Albans. Terry called me to say he was sleeping rough at Marble Arch. It was the winter of 2010 and bitterly cold. I met him for coffee and a sandwich.
The nightly chill on his kidneys was clearly making him very unwell.
After our turkey and cranberry wrap it was an awkward goodbye. The reality was that I was free to head back to St Albans, my home, bed, central heating and a fridge full of more Christmas treats. He was heading back to an ice block of a paving slab, if his space had not already been pinched. I could not ask him to stay with me as this would not have been acceptable given my sons were still young and lived with me on alternate weeks.
I prayed for a solution.
At home I called Emmaus St Albans. They told me that there was no chance of a space for Terry, they were full.
“Full? Really? Totally full?” I asked.
“Well, we have one room but we are saving that room for someone who can run our kitchen.”
The next day Terry, a chef by trade and training, left the cold, concrete pavements of Marble Arch and became the chef at Emmaus, moving into a warm room, with a fresh start and a reason to get up in the morning. Emmaus was a place for his body and mind to heal.
If you can support our fundraising for Emmaus in this our 11th year of the Sleep Out in an effort to end homelessness for good, we thank you very much indeed. Donate here: http://bit.ly/SleepOut11
