I met Chris tonight.

He was shaking like a leaf so I bought him a coke; he’s staying tonight in the same hostel as me but tomorrow is uncertain as he does not have a penny to his name. This was a man genuinely wracked with anguish the like of which I have seldom seen, he has had a business for ten years and has just done a months’ work worth twenty-eight thousand pounds only to find the bigger business he was working for has gone into voluntary liquidation leaving him, a man of thirty something from Ed Balls constituency, with literally nothing.

This is what homeless people are made of, this happens.

It is a human tragedy and yet on so small a scale that almost no-one will ever know about it, let alone care, yet to Chris the scale is monumental.

He was shaking because he had just had an epileptic fit and his recent diet of noodles and stress no doubt exacerbated the situation. All I could do was buy him a coke to provide him with some sugar to hopefully help in the short term, no help tomorrow when he has nowhere to sleep however.

I feel guilty for being a bit down this week through pressures of my own, they are nothing like this. The owner of the liquidated company screwed him over because he could, they had spoken today, and the owner took his call from Marbella.
I really hope and pray that Chris has a support net to catch him, I really hope he does not end up on the street, I wish I could have helped more. Life is many things from tragic to wonderful but it is seldom fair.


L