182./ Two of everything plus blankets

There was a couple of guys begging outside Aldi, and trying to hustle a few pound coins from the trolly returns. I asked them what they wanted, ‘Anything… a strawberry milkshake..’

Got them a bag of two of everything, milkshake as requested, also chocolate bars, biscuits, and some noodle snacks for when they got back to where ever they are staying. Came out of the shop and they’d gone, so I put the bag in the car and thought to deliver it to some other street people, there’s no shortage of them, and this Sunday there seems to be a lot.

Drove past the Spar on Ecclesall road, there was a guy in a sleeping bag, so got out and gave him the bag, and chatted, he was using, but only about £10 a day, he said, everyone on the streets is on something, usually heroin, it’s what took them there, for the most part. I asked if he had a place to sleep, he’d been offered a pace in a hotel, but the people we all users and he would rather sleep rough. We chatted more. He was hoping for some sheltered accommodation or some such solution.

What to do about the drug problem? Perhaps a zero tolerance to street begging, coupled with sufficient residential places for detox, coupled with a recovery and re integration programme…? I don’t know, I don’t have the answers, it’s Sunday, the churches are empty, the streets are dotted with the broken and needy, Jesus can take addictions from people, change them, dramatically and almost instantly, there’s thousands of people who can testify to that, but it’s still a rarity, like a medicine that’s hard to find, or hard to process, or something. Jackie Pullinger MBE can tell you more about that than I can.

But we feed people food, and love, and oh yes, I’d picked up some nice clean blankets from a lady at Dore earlier in the day, and they were in the boot of my car. So I gave him those as well. Thank you lady from Dore.

There’s so many problems in the World, always has been, and when you individualise them, there’s more problems than people! True! So when we try to find the answers, we get overwhelmed, and don’t know what to do.

I think he knew this. So he said “Love One Another’ and that is all that we can do, and in any and every situation, if that is what we do, as best as we can, then we’re doing what we can, and if Love One Another were the motto of our land and people and Nation we would and it would heal us all, sooner or later, and even if not healing, comforting, blanketing.

Thank you ‘U’ for the GoFundMe donation, and ‘A’ for the blankets 🙂