Hi Bloggypeeps,

Yesterday I stayed in the library all evening apart from when I had a brisk walk around and a look for a hot drink, just by coincidence someone had bought a coffee with sugar for Cheerful and he didn't want it so he gave it to me. So I had a coffee.
The bins are not producing anything.

After the library I went to wait for soup kitchen, one of the guys had raided the bakery bins and there was  bread and cakes and sandwiches all over the place, I ate a sausage roll and an iced bun.
This bin raiding guy only turns up occasionally with the bags full of food, and he always tells us the same story, how the police once threatened to do him for theft by finding and he said if they did he would go to the local press and the headlines would be how the police victimised a homeless man for feeding his fellow homeless.

soup kitchen turns up, this is not my favourite team of volunteers, I once bawled them out for repeatedly asking where I slept while the other homeless people were listening, it is not helpful in any way for them to do that, and they were also putting me under inordiante pressure to be housed, until one night I said 'enough is enough'. Soup kitchen is for feeding homeless people, not adding to their stress.

Anyway, tonight this lot make no attempt to get involved with me, phew, but when they are giving out blankets I simply don't dare to go over until it is too late. I do need a blanket really, in fact in the dead of winter I will need several to build a blanket pile.

I don't go forward for food as the sausage roll and donut were enough for me and soup kitchen is very crowded, but as I wait for tea, a new guy asks me what I am waiting for and I tell him I am waiting for my cup of tea, he shouts out 'tea for the lady please!'. And tea appears, funnily enough earlier one of the guys had been shouting out 'rough sleepers first!', so there are a few new guys who are 'good un's' with a sense of fairness.

The guy who shouted for tea for me introduces himself and then makes it his mission to ensure I have loads of food and tea, he is smiling and sober and I am glad to see that he is one of three or so new guys who are nice and reasonable, this is good because things have gone to pot here, M. is no longer coherent and my pal with the dog has moved on again, life is hard with no clean and sober pals, and now I have new clean and sober pals.
Tessa comes and asks what I am worrying about, and I tell her that tomorrow is a hospital appointment so I get lots of sympathy and everyone is glad it is not them going to hospital.

After soup kitchen I wander down to put my thermals on, there is a notice on the toilets that says that they now close at 9pm, so I was right, some trouble has meant that they are no longer 24 hour toilets.
I go in the disabled toilet and quickly change, when I come out the friendly security guard is standing there, 'I'm glad you've got a key' he says and goes on to describe the trouble they have been having that has meant that the toilets have to close.
apparently a certain one of my fellow homeless has been naked in the toilets and flooding them out and making a mess, yes I tell him I know who that is, a certain man with psychosis and OCD, who has been banned from other places for similar disasters.
The security guard asks where I have been and how I have been, I tell him I've been ok and been wandering about, he says again he is glad I have a toilet key and he knows I will never make a mess.
I say goodnight and wander off to look for cardboard.

I find some slabs of cardboard and decide that they will do, I prefer smaller cardboard boxes that I can fold them up inconspicuous so no one sees me and thinks 'rough sleeper'. I usually remain nice and inconspicuous, but this evening I think it is cold enough for slabs of cardboard.

Interestingly enough someone notices me this evening, a young man is showing too much interest in me as i walk towards my porchway, so I stop, cross the road, go round a corner and wait, he was heading the opposite way, but surely enough he comes round the corner and jumps when he sees me, I ask him why he suddenly changed direction, and he splutters and starts saying that I looked lost and he was worried, I tell him that I definitely wasn't lost, and he says that he thought I was homeless and he wanted to get me some food.
This is wierd, he is stuttering his excuses and I tell him that the town has a soup kitchen and no homeless person is hungry tonight, he continues to make noises about thinking I was lost, I say goodnight to him.
He may have been genuine but there was something that worried me about his behaviour and excuses for following me, it didn't sound genuine. The outreach here are meant to leave me alone so he shouldn't have been one of them in disguise, anyway I dont want a man following me at night for any reason.
I wait a long time, and I keep checking, but he doesn't follow me further.

I climb up to the porchway. The way is barricaded, that doesn't mean anyone is objecting to me, it means something is happening tomorrow, and it makes me safer because no one else and no cars will come up, I skip the barrier and go to bed down.

I bed down and sleep through the night, sometimes lightly, I wake once for a toilet break, and I wake two minutes before my alarm goes off in the cold dark early morning, the cloudy sky of last night has cleared and the stars are shining.
I get up, stash the cardboard and carry all my belongings, I walk down to the cash point and get some money, isn't it a pain that I have my money today and I can't even go and get a nice cuppa or a decent breakfast because I am not allowed to eat or drink except water.

then I head for the train station, my progress is a bit slow and I get there just before the train leaves, which is a pain as I need time to buy my ticket and the next train is in an hour.
The first train at 5.50am was the one I wanted as it would be the quietest and I would miss rush hour. But never mind, I settle in the waiting room under a nice wall heater and get on with writing the book with the remainder of the battery on the laptop.

Time flies and soon it is time to board the train, it is 6.50am, I expect the train to be crowded but this isn't really a commuter route. So the train is quiet enough, I put my luggage in the rack and use the last of the battery to get halfway down page 100 of the book! Then I look out at the cold beautiful dawn and fall asleep, no one disturbs me and I sleep in between stations all the way there, which is good because I dislike this journey normally.

We arrive at 8.25, I walk over the bridge and down to a bus, which to my surprise is also uncrowded and I get a seat near the luggage rack with my bags.

8.45, I arrive at the daycentre, I cannot remember if it opens at 9.00 or 9.30, there is a man sitting on the ground, for a minute I think it is my friend 'Tag', but this guy is older and more defeated and broken, Tag is full of fire and life, I ask him what time the daycentre opens and he says 9.30, so I sit down and read my book, a few more people turn up but I don't recognize them.

Eventually the receptionist turns up, she is happy and she undoes a pack of chocolate bars and starts throwing them to us, unfortunately for me not only can I not eat the chocolate and I am hungry now, but she throws mine short so I have to scramble off the ground to get it! Rats!

And then we are let in, she begins to write me a meal ticket and I folornly tell her that I cannot eat. She fishes my letters out of the box and my hospital forms are among them, I fill the forms in ready to take them and ask if I can have a shower, I go and have a luxurious soapy shower, my foot is no better.

Then as I go to get my bags, the staff are sorting through the harvest stuff and ask if I want some tins, I tell them I can't carry any more, and they give me a box of chocolate instead, now this is getting silly, chocolate everywhere, my fellow homeless enjoying a cooked breakfast and me miserably hungry, at least I am allowed water so I got myself some flavoured water as I waited for the train, haha.

I am cutting it fine with the unreliable bus service but the hospital is a short bus ride away and I get the bus in time and arrive at the clinic bang on time.
I am sent straight through and a nurse who I have not seen before sees me.

She takes all the information down and is horrified that I am homeless.
she says I am nice and asks how come I am not married yet, (in her culture marriage is inevitable and they always ask people 'are you married?') I am amused and tell her I have yet to find an honest single man as they are few and far between.
She laughs.
she checks my blood pressure and this is the first good thing of the day, my blood pressure is unstable and very variable indeed but today it is miraculously normal despite my tension, and my pulse/heartbeat are ok too. Last time they were worried about releasing me because of my blood pressure, and I have it monitered now.

She takes me through and the lovely nurse who I saw last time says hello and comments that I am still carrying my world on my back.

I wait and she keeps forgetting that I do not have tubes through my nose, so she keeps talking about spraying my nose, hehe, thankfully I am avoiding that ordeal this time, my nasal passages are simply too small.
There is a wait because another patient is taking longer to recover.
 The wait is bad because I know what an ordeal this is and I am not looking forward to it.

I go in and meet the nice doctor, a different one from last time, and he asks a few questions, then he tells me that the spray will taste like rotten bananas and he sprays my throat a few times, I get scared and choke because the spray works immediately and I can't feel my throat and the spray is dripping but I can't swallow.

I lie down on the trolley and they put a mouthiece in and insert the tubes, I cannot have general anasthetic because I am homeless and have no one to look after me, so this process is not nice.

The tubes make me gag and retch and try to be sick, they are horribly unbearably uncomfortable and the whole process hurts and feels unnatural, it is the same as last time, except this time I don't start coughing up blood.
Thankfully it is all over quickly and it is good news. My insides are looking a lot better. I am advised to keep taking the strong dose of medicine for now in case the healing undoes itself, and I will be on the meds indefinitely, but thankfully I don't have to schedule another appointment here at the moment. Yay.

They put me in recovery and bring me a large strong cupof tea and some biscuits, so I feel very hapy.
They check my pulse and blood pressure and both are still ok despite the ordeal.
I drink my tea and eat my biscuits and am given the medical form and released. The lovely nurses wish me well and the one who did the paperwork grabs my rosary and says 'you're a Catholic! So am I!' she is funny because her way of doing things is the way they do it in her country so she is very personal, but thats ok.

I wander over the road to the shopping centre, it is handy that here is a shopping centre and Post Office and I need to shop for clothes and possibly boots.
I look in the sport shop as they sometimes have some good cheap walking boots, but today they have nothing suitable, I go to Sainsburys and get some jeans, and I get socks and knickers, I desparately need the socks and there are bumper packs on special offer.

My insides wake up and start complaining loudly about having tubes poked into them and suddenly I feel very tired, carrying all my things and my shopping, it is normal to be tired and in pain after that operation, but when you are homeless and a long way from anywhere to rest it is not so good.

I go to the chip shop because I must eat, and I sit and eat a chip butty by the bus stop.
I remember my friends as I sit here, I am so close to them and so far away, friends who are no longer in my life but the memories are here.

Tell me how to fill the space you left behind
and how to laugh instead of cry
and how to say goodbye

The food makes me feel a bit better and I am still proudly wearing two hospital tags, I always keep those as souveniers for as long as possible.

I get the bus and make my way to the station via my favourite old tea kiosk, I have a 20 minute wait on the platform and again manage to get my bags on the luggage rack and a seat on my own by the luggage rack and I once again sleep through the journey, though I end up a bit stiff and with pins and needles.

Of the train I walk the short distance down to the Old Chap's place and hope that my space is available, it is and I stagger in, expecting to fall asleep, but here I am still awake, I have had lots of tea and watched a bit of television and found out that my new jeans fit and are nice and soft but a little bit long.

It is nice to rest in a peaceful place when you are tired and recovering.