Ken spent many difficult years sleeping rough. He shares his experience of life on the streets, and what it’s like having found safety and a home for life in a St Mungo’s registered care home.
I grew up in a nice, happy family and my Dad taught me some great values. Sadly, he became very unwell – he had tuberculosis, and in those days, it was a struggle to work out how to treat it.
Eventually, I went to live with my grandparents, who played a big part in my upbringing.
Then in my younger years, I had wandering feet to see the world. A book can teach you about the world, but it can’t show you it! I’d travel around for miles and miles, then worked on a holiday camp which was a real experience and I got to meet people from all over the world.
Things went wrong when I went through a divorce, and I started drinking a lot. A combination which led me to sleeping on the streets, starting from the 1970’s, on and off. But here’s the thing, when you start sleeping rough, you drink even more.
Being in that situation is certainly an experience. You meet a lot of people along the way – the good, the bad and the ugly.
It’s not an adventure, more of a penance, where you do things you would never usually do just to survive. Like begging and stealing, all whilst trying to keep up appearances.
I had a good life before and my mind would go back to that, which was difficult.
When you’re on the streets, you’ve got to have a survivor’s mind.
Like in the heat, it was tough. Especially for me, as I’m not a lover of hot weather anyway and it was the worst time. That instinct would kick in, and I’d think ‘I’m not in control of this, but I need to go and find somewhere it’s cooler’ and that’s when the travelling would begin.
I feel lucky to have largely kept my health. If you’re on the streets and your health’s starting to deteriorate, you’re in bother and need to get expert advice from doctors.
I’d keep myself as healthy as I could by trying to eat foods that were good for me, like fruit and vegetables. The things you didn’t want to eat when you were little! It was all part of that mindset of trying to survive.
Back in 2022, someone came up to me on the streets and said, ‘this isn’t the life you want’ and they introduced me to St Mungo’s.
I’ve been with St Mungo’s since and am happy here. I have my own room and can still be independent, too.
It’s clean and modern, which becomes a reflection of you living somewhere like this, because you take care of yourself as well.
We get a lot of care here and you can see a nurse if you need to. It’s nice knowing I can stay for as long as I want – it gives me stability and I have access to the right advice for all types of things which I believe everyone should be entitled to.
Things are different for me now. It’s taken time to get here, but I now have a nice, peaceful, warm homely feeling.
