Homelessness In Portsmouth

TUESDAY 12^TH JUNE. Tonight we see JIM, IAN, SEAN, TINNY, CHRIS and met a new homeless woman called Frankie.

Tonight I had a good friend called Jim come out with me, we met at the end of the Eastern road where he left his car and jumped in with me.

Jim has not done this sort of thing and really enjoyed the evening, he said it was an eye opener and didn’t know what to expect.

We headed straight to the hostel where we delivered the rest of the bread and rolls that I had left over from the bakers. A local bakery give me bread whenever I go out and they have started giving me savouries such as quiche, sausage rolls and pies etc.. At the end of the bakeries working day they throw away the stuff that is left over so I take it off their hands and put it to good use. There is nothing wrong with the food but the bakery by law cannot sell it the next day. Still this is still very generous of them so if you are reading this thank you so very much from me and the homeless guys, we really appreciate it.

When we delivered the bread to the hostel we went to Portsmouth harbour where we see Tinny, Jim and Chris. We gave them soup, bread and butter, cake, pie and coffee etc and I introduced them to my friend Jim. They all were very polite and chatty. The homeless guy Jim was trying his hardest to understand our conversation but did have slight difficulty as he is from Hungary and doesn’t know much of the English language. We managed to find out where he and his friend Kevin were sleeping, (Tesco’s car park). They have both managed to get some bedding so they never required anything I brought out for them. They were both down the job centre and library every day trying to find work but no success at all.

When we finished with these lads we moved onto the hot walls, along the sea front and around a few other roads but found no one about unfortunately, we even went down Palmeston road and Osborne road to find no one about.

We went to Elm Grove and found a lady called Frankie, she is a self-harmer, she had cuts all up her arms bless her and she told us that she has been homeless for 5 years. We asked her if she had seen Ian or any of the others but she said no. She was a bit wary of us at first as she has had a lot of people verbally and physically abusing her when she is sitting around on the streets. She told us that she had somewhere to heat food if she needed to so we gave her a few bits to eat now and for later.

We went down Albert road and see Ian and Sean, we gave them a few bits and had a nice chat.

Sean tells me that he has found somewhere for his caravan to go if he can get it down here from up North, problem is Sean can’t drive bless him.

We headed back to Jims car then went home. Jim apologised for being a bit quiet, he said it affected him more than he expected.