More memories of London - by popular request

The Londoners want to hear more London memories, so I will confess more in a minute.

But I thought I would share my cough and chest infection with you first as it has been going a few days without being blogged, haha. The cough is the worst, coughing at night can give away hiding places, though my new place is out of earshot, I think.

And I thought I would share something else with you because no-one knows this. My favourite song is a song called 'Another Town Another Train' by Abba, a song about a brokenhearted traveller or possibly suicide on the railway line, I was brought up with this song and my sister used to play it all the time when she was a teenager and I was 8 or 9, she was suicidal and used to spend all her time on the stations, she knew all the station staff and guards, and she used to consider or even attempt suicide on the railway and tell me about it, I have always loved the railways and still do, it is the one thing that the church have not tarnished, and when I die then I hope to die near my railway line and sanctuary's shore.
Even if the church and my family blacken my name in death and ignore my last wishes, I hope that my family  will grant my request to play this song at my funeral if I have one or in my memory.

Anyway, back to London:

Whenever I went to the Strand for food and sat in the dirt with the others, waiting, I couldn't help singing or whistling 'The Mountains of Mourne', you can Youtube this to find out why if you don't know. But having known and loved the song forever, it was so funny to be on the strand and in London and looking for food while the rest of London frantically digs for gold.

The strand is harsh, the immigrants will push and hit and swear and be rude to anyone, especially the females, in order to get what they want. I stand up to them but on some days I am too tired and my legs wont hold me up, fights break out sometimes.
One day a lady comes along to the strand and asks if anyone wants a hot meal, I am worried in case she is from a cult, but she and her male colleague are volunteers at a church that has just been refurbished and are doing hot meals twice a week, she leads a willing little band of us to the church 10 minutes away, and there we are treated to a sumptuous feast, curry and rice and delicious dessert, lots of bread and butter, lots of squash and tea, excellent, and they make a point of talking to each person and checking everyone's welfare, they introduce me to a spaniel who is 'part of the team' and they make a fuss of me and they keep asking if me and my new friend 'D.' are a couple, no we aren't, we only met that evening because he defended me from a rogue on the strand who was hitting and shoving me.
By the end of this first meal the church had decided that the two meals in the week would be divided, the first for immigrants, the second for everyone else, yay.

D. is a nice chap, he doesn't make any advances, there is another chap called 'R.' who I also get on well with, so despite the roughness of the strand, there are these good guys who stand by me and help me out. As well as my friend 'M.' who I will tell you about in a minute.

One night I am not very  strong and struggling to get my meal and not too hungry anyway so I walked away from the 'Rugby scrum', someone came after me and handed me handful of sanwiches and food and said 'don't go hungry', I grinned because it was hard to tell him from an immigrant and I had assumed he was one until he did this, I said 'I thought you were an immigrant', he grinned and said 'well yes and no', he was a Portugese Canadian and he he told me that politeness and helpfulness to ladies was part of his culture and that in Canada the bus driver would drive a lady to her door rather than let her walk home in the dark.

I don't think I have told you about 'M.' yet, early on in London I went to 'Street Cafe' the story behind that is interesting enough, I was starving, literally, my blood sugar levels were dropping rapidly, to the point I could hardly stand, and the hopeline lady was trying to find somewhere I could get food as some of the usual sources of food were closed that Saturday, she couldn't find anything at all, and I was at a point where I couldn't go on walking much further, then i realised and remembered I was near a place where an outreach called street cafe was happening, I staggered into street cafe but they had been busy and told me that everything had gone, I nearly collapsed completely, but someone was pouring water out of an urn, 'is that hot water?' I shrieked, 'Don't pour it away!' they stopped and poured me cups of hot water and I produced crumpled packets of sugar and coffee and cup soup from my bag, so I had soup and coffee and they managed to find fruit squash and some crumpled sandwiches that they had forgotten, and so I was fed, and another homeless person begged a packet of cup soup of me and was happy with that too.

As I left soup kitchen two young men were looking at me, I ignore looks in case they are the wrong looks, but they weren't, these two young men hesitantly asked if I was ok and asked if I wanted to come and sit in the little park and finish my tea with them and then head for the handout at Temple, I considered and then agreed, I soon realised I had met two very unique people, they certainly hadn't approached me for any untoward reasons, they both had mental health problems and they both cared about other vulnerable people.

We sat in the park, we enjoyed the company of the birds and the fishes, and one referred to his stay in a psychiatric hospital and the other rambled off into an unintelligable story that we tried to decipher, while his friend said to me 'just nod along and smile', he explained that this was 'M.'s mental health problem, wildly delusional unintelligable stories, while he, 'P.' was a paranoid schitzophrenic, in return I told them that I was autistic, and they were delighted with this, 'P.' has a compulsion to pick up litter as he walks, which slowed our journey to Temple a bit, he also believes that people are following him and leaving shoes for him to find, and strangely enough, whenever I was with him he did find old shoes, and sometimes socks, it made him curse every time, anyway, I slowed us up by needing the loo, finding a free loo in London is hellish impossible, but I quietly slid into a pub toilet and then we arrived at Temple, we weren't late, the soup run was, and I was happy to know that this soup run was there, a fight broke out while we were there, but we got good food and lots of tea, and then P. asked if I wanted to sleep at his flat, he is not homeless, M. is, but P. spends his time on the streets anyway.
P. says he doesn't want my money or my body, and because I have seen how he looks after M. who is the less able of the two, I believe him, I ask how far it is to his home, he tells me it is a fair hop on the tube, I say I have no money, he says he will get me there somehow, he seems confident.
he does indeed get me there, he persuades the tube staff to let me go for free, I never knew that this was possible, and at his house, he makes me a meal and insists on me having his duvet to sleep on the sofa, he has a very basic flat and life and is used to being alone, he tells me he has FHM magazine because he is a heterosexual male, but he makes no advances and I sleep on his sofa while he blunders about the flat and talks to himself.
He is a deeply deeply intelligent and insightful man, but he repeats himself and talks aggressively sometimes, I have a few nights on his sofa while I am in London, but one night he is too aggressive and wont let me sleep, he has stoppedtaking his medication and is drinking and smoking cannabis instead, he has always admitted to occasionally drinking or using cannabis, but he is pretty scary like this so I decide to leave, and he comes after me angry, so our friendship ends, but I remain friends with M. M. Brightens up the miserable waits on the Strand for food with his stories and his generosity in sharing his food and his umbrella in bad weather.

I hope that is enough London to keep the readers who were thirsty for London blog amused.
I am off to find some lunch in a minute.