A few years ago I was made
homeless. I had been in a relationship for some six years and felt
everything was going well, and then it happened.
It started with polymyalgia
and cancer and then aneurysms on my aorta. But in truth it probably
all started several months earlier when my partner started to talk
almost incessantly about a new young man who had started to work at
the same place as her. One night I committed the unforgivable sin of
writing the 2am e mail telling her what I knew. The following day I
went off to do my volunteering stint at the local university and
about the middle of the afternoon a call to my mobile phone
interrupted me in a meeting. She told me it was over, my clothes
were in an empty house she owned just down the street from where we
lived and were all packed up ready for me to collect.
Bit of a shock to the system I
can tell you. Anyway, with a lot of help from a couple of friends I
was pointed in the direction of the local authority housing
department who had access to accommodation for people in my
situation. I went there and met a very sympathetic young man who
fixed me up with a room in a hostel for a few nights.
The hostel had been built as a Technical School by the local council
many years ago. A grey stone built edifice with large arch windows
and a grand solid wooden door. I often wondered how many young
people had been through those doors over the years. I was yet
another.
My room was pretty good.
Large enough to accommodate me, a single bed, a large double wardrobe
and a chest of drawers. It had along one wall a shelf at desk height
where I could write and make a cup of tea if I wished. It had a
large separate bathroom with a fabulous old cast iron claw foot bath
which I used to lounge in with a gin and tonic for company most
evenings whilst I stayed there.
Down two flights of stairs was
a kitchen and next to it a room which had all the hallmarks of it
having been a gymnasium when the building was first constructed.
Being in the town centre had it's real advantages. I could walk to
the bank, the post office, the central library to use their computers
and check my e mails and generally do any shopping I needed to do.
But it was a lonely place.
The other inhabitants of the
place were female, apart from one single man of late teenage years.
We all smiled and nodded at each other on the stairs on when entering
and leaving the building. There was almost always someone at the
door having a smoke. The place had a no smoking policy. Drinking and
smoking in the place was not allowed, so my gin and tonic had to be
carefully brought in and the empties equally secretly smuggled out.
The kitchen was massive with
cookers and sinks (all stainless steel) along two walls, with large
cupboards of the same heartless material underneath. In the centre
was a great big square table for eating at. It was quite strange to
cook a meal for myself in the kitchen, eat it at this large table
(big enough of at least ten) and then stand washing up my utensils
afterwards, all in total silence and alone. I spent a lot of my
spare time in the room practising my Saxophone, which amused the
residents quite a lot. Apart from that, it was a lonely time, all by
myself. Rattling around in this high ceilinged bright airy big room.
As good as it was, I didn't
stay there too long. I was six weeks away from starting radiology
treatment for cancer, and managed to find somewhere permanent to live
during that time. Better times were ahead, for many years to come.
I did not like living in that building, but will always remember it
with a degree of relief.
