Homelessness In Portsmouth

First stop this evening was on the seafront to see Phil and Mark. We filled a flask for them both at home full of tea, Phil gave me a flask on Tuesday to fill. We gave them socks and trousers and tee shirt, also rolls, crisps, cake, biscuits and soup. I must admit, they both looked pretty cosy in their new sleeping quarters. Phil was telling me that he was adopted by his mother’s sister when he was a little boy, his mother couldn’t cope .Phil hasn’t had a very good life, always felt unwanted. He also said that he is always telling people how helpful I am and how thankful he is for all that we do for him, this touched my heart as it was a lovely thing for him to say.

We moved onto the hard and found Tinny, we stopped and had a little chat with him, he is finding it difficult to find somewhere to sleep at the moment as the police keep moving him on, poor soul.         We carried onto Osborne road to see Paul, we gave him food and underwear then went onto Albert Road to find Sean and Geoff. We met Geoff on 13^th December, he was hanging around with Phil at the hard on that day, I remember so well as he didn’t look homeless as his hair was gelled back and he looked smart. Seeing him this evening, he was in a bad way, kept saying that he is killing himself with alcohol but can’t kick the habit as it is all he has. He was crying, was so heart breaking to see a man cry like that. We offered him comfort and food. He still had the big jacket on that I gave him back in December. If he wasn’t homeless back then, he is now. I tried all I could to calm him down and by the time we finished with him he had at least stopped crying.                                                      Sean seemed a bit low this evening, asked him what was wrong and he said he got into a bit of a scuffle this evening back at the hostel. Liam noticed he had a cut across his Knuckles and was bleeding, this was caused by the fight he just had. Liam went into the shop that Sean was sat outside of and bought some hand gel for Sean so his hand doesn’t get infected.

We had a text message from Jamie saying that he was staying with a friend tonight along with Chris, we met up with them both and gave them some food etc and had a lovely chat with them.                We drove around some more but found no one else so we made our way home.