I left Shrewsbury and I went to the National Express Bus Station there. I said, “Where’s your next bus going?” and I got a very strange look. It was going to Manchester.
So I said, “Hmm, yeah, why not” and the ticket cost me 20 pounds and 20 pence and I ended up having to borrow 20 pence off somebody because I had no change.
I didn’t know Manchester, never been there. All I knew about Manchester was the I.R.A. bombing in the 80s. That’s all I knew about it, and obviously the football. So we’re coming in and as we sort of hit the city, I was watching the trail of the Big Issue sellers.
So then we got off at the coach station and I went back to the nearest one and asked the guy where I should go. He says, “Well, round that corner there, there’s a day centre, go in there and I’ll meet you in there when it’s about to shut and I’ll take you to the YMCA hostel.” That doesn’t exist anymore.
So then this guy met me and he took me around to the YMCA. Because it was men only, they wouldn’t let me sleep there, but they took me to a women’s hostel not far away. The next night, I went to this night shelter. It was a big sports hall with 30 beds. That’s all it was. There was no privacy, no separation between the men and the women, except for the fact that the women are all in one corner and the men are in the rest of it.
Then Barnabas got me into a hostel and, again, that doesn’t exist anymore. You know, all these places that people can go, they just don’t exist anymore. It’s not as if the amount of homeless people have halved or anything. If anything, it’s got worse.
I spent 18 hilariously wonderful months in that hostel so that I could get that local connection. The all-important local connection.
Then I got a flat from there in central Salford and, again, that flat doesn’t exist anymore. They found asbestos in the walls of the block. They’ve knocked them all down.
They are now rebuilding on that spot, but from what I’ve heard, they’re not going to be for the likes of me or my friends, we will not be able to afford them.
