shock!

I went to the takeway last night but all the food had gone. I walked up to the Samaritans but I was too nervous to go in and talk to them, this happens occasionally.

I went to McD's as I had a full sticker card, and had a cuppa, then I started going round looking in the bins for more stickers for tomorrows cuppa, resigned to the fact that I would have to go to soup kitchen at 10pm for my supper.

The homeless people start gathering from 8pm onwards even though soup kitchen isn't till 10pm. This is the way in most towns. I don't go to gather with them, but as I walk up from my bins which are near McD's, the soup kitchen and the protesters camp, I see some homeless people running around and running away towards the market, I stop and wonder what it happening, last night one man was chasing another and calling him a grass and threatening to stab him, so I wonder if it is anything to do with that.

Anyway, I walk up past the big church and away, as I walk I am accosted by a furious aggresive protester, he tells me to stop, I tell him to go away and that I have asked the protesters to leave me alone, he grabs hold of my arm and tells me he is arresting me, I tell him to go away and I wrench free, he continues to accost me and he says I have commited an assault and that he is taking me to the police, he says I have thrown eggs at the camp, he picks up the phone and calls the police, I walk up to the police station which is just accross the road, the station is closed so I use the emergency phone at the door and tell them that I have been accosted and grabbed and accused of throwing eggs, they say that they will send someone out.

A female community officer appears along with the protester who grabbed me, she gets him to go away a bit and asks me what is going on, I tell her that I have been grabbed and accused of throwing eggs and that I don't have and can't afford eggs, I explain to her that the closest that I got to the camp was walking along the top of the square looking for stickers for my cup of tea.

She says that apparently there are five witnesses to me thowing eggs, she asks if I found any eggs in the bins as I looked for stickers, I tell her no, she asks if I saw any broken eggs at the camp, I tell her that I didn't get close enough to the camp to see anything.
 I tell her that there cannot be five witnesses as I haven't thrown eggs, I ask her if there is CCTV on the site, she says yes but that it is roaming CCTV and may not have picked anything up, I say that if there are eggshells then there will be DNA and that can be checked with mine. Police keep coming and going, and I tell one of them to ask the Big issue seller if he saw me as I walked round past the camp. He was sitting on the steps. They say they will.

In the end as the police speak to the protesters, it turns out that there are no 'five witnesses', no one saw me, they just decided that because I was in the area then I was responsible for some eggs being thrown, I gather that some eggs were thrown. The police then asked if I wanted to make a formal complaint against the protester who had grabbed me.
In the end it was settled that the police would simply talk to the protester and it would be left at that. The protesters are getting on my nerves, they told the police that I liked that girl from their camp who was causing me so much stress, I said I didn't and that I had written to her and the protesters and asked to be left alone, the police confirmed that and I told them that I had told the protesters recently that I would go to the police about them if they didn't leave me alone - thus the reason they decided to blame me for the eggs appearing in their camp? The protesters said I was the only person around when the eggs were thrown, which is entirely untrue, a big group of homeless people were behind their camp and that area is a busy throughfare at all times.
I never have raw eggs, which I presume is what was thrown, I didn't even have enough money for food for myself, let alone wasting eggs.

Anyway, in the end the police appeared to believe me and said there was no complaint against me, but I ended up in shock with an asthma attack anyway.

It was difficult to settle to sleep after this incident, I was terrfied and shocked by it. But the police ensured I could go to soup kitchen  in peace, and hopefully that will continue. When the police thought I had been throwing eggs, they wanted to restict me from that area even though I rely on McD's and soup kitchen, but at the end of the conversation they told me that the protesters don't own that land anyway, and if the protesters come after me then I should ignore them.

When i finally settled to sleep I slept soundly and comfortably with the rain hardly getting through my hedge, I woke in the morning to find that a slug had been merrily decorating my backpack.

I went to look for a final sticker and found one, stickers are more plentiful at this time of year. I sat in McD's and tried to eat what I had saved from soup kitchen with my cup of tea, the cake tasted mouldy, the tuna sandwiches were ok. Then I went for my wash.

I went to the council to see about talking to them about the protesters, the lady on the desk said that the man I needed to see wasn't in yet. 'Go and get yourself a cup of tea and come back later' she said, handing me a £5.

Well that would be a big cup of tea.

I found out in the morning paper that the trains to London were badly disrupted and hardly running yesterday. Good thing I didn't try to get to London to see my brother. It would have been stressful and upsetting with crowded, slow and non-running trains.