Ali Lochhead

I'm cycling right across London to get to the homeless centre, as there's no public transport today. I'm feeling a bit apprehensive, it's an 8 miles hike and I'm not sure if I'm fit enough because I'm smoking again (even though I've stopped!) but I got really good advice from a co-volunteer yesterday, who suggested I make the ride part of my whole experience.

It's a wonderful sunny day and loads of people are out, tourists mostly and when I get lost they help me with directions! Everyone seems in a good mood, I feel alive and connected, to the people, the sun, the trees and I'm just enjoying being in London.

I get to the centre on time and the atmosphere is just as amazing as yesterday. It's fairly peaceful and I have a brilliant conversation with one of my co-volunteers, a young model who has had so much success this year, travelling to Japan and all around Europe. She's got a ticket to New York in a couple of weeks and this is her dream come true, so she's helping the homeless this Christmas to give something back. I think she's incredible. I think young people get too much bad press these days. I feel a little jealous of that flourishing of youth when everything is still possible and recall my own mad trips to New York when I was a late teen. But then I realise, nothing's changed! Life is still for living. All my dreams can still come true too! Many of them have come true already and I sense there's still more to come! In many ways I'm still living a crazy, fun adventure and I connect with her energy and reconnect with that part of myself. That's a real gift I've received. Just there.

I spend time with the vulnerable lady I met yesterday. She's really grateful to me for washing her clothes. I sense she feels a little more secure today, this is her third day off the streets. She asks me to join her for Christmas dinner and we sit and talk. And as we are eating I get what she has done for me. How much she has given me. I realise it can't have been easy for her to ask me to wash her few belongings and the other lady too. It can't be easy to put yourself in such a place of vulnerability before a stranger. There's no facade there whatsoever. There's no facade left to hide behind. And I understand by just being her and by being vulnerable before me she has taught me to be vulnerable before myself and to feel ok in my vulnerability. To be me, all of me, the bits I don't like, the bits I wish were different but none-the-less just to be. To accept myself in this moment for who I am, in my entirety. In whatever situation I may find myself in. This is such a blessing.

I have a hoot with another guest, who tells me stories about how she designed clothes for legends in the music world, in the sixties. She's a great spirit and so well read and interesting to be around. She wants to watch 'Absolutely Fabulous' on TV so we are sitting together laughing so much. What an inspirational lady. If you can laugh like that even when life has taken such an apparent downturn. That's another amazing teaching I receive, yet another gift. Some other guests gather round, I'm having such a laugh I don't realise my shift has finished! I look around and I don't recognise the other volunteers and I realise the night shift has arrived. It all works like clockwork. I feel sad to leave.

My team leaders are working hard to get everyone into accommodation by the end of the month. I hope they manage. I don't like to think of the ladies being back out on the streets again. But when we part we say, "hope not to see you next year" and we chuckle. And I know no matter what they will always be in my heart. I am profoundly grateful for their honesty, courage, inspiration and teachings, for all of gifts I have received. I'm already playing with my new presents, being more vulnerable, before myself and before others, more open, enjoying life and remembering it's all a big adventure.

Ali.

Crisis Homeless Charity