Around 2017 my mental health was not in a good place. I had recently been diagnosed with autism and was living in isolation at my parents’ house in a village near Oban. I had few friends, no job, and was struggling in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time. In a strange sequence of events involving a psychiatric appointment and a last minute decision to run, I found myself homeless in Oban, sleeping in a ruined building on the hill above the town.
With few options and no fixed address I made a decision that in hindsight was either brave or foolish or both — I got on a Megabus to London with almost no money and no plan. This is what happened next.

And so I set off by bus to Glasgow and then to London by the famous Megabus. You could get to London back then for a tenner on an overnight trip. I had already been on this bus journey a few times in the past. As you might have guessed there was an assortment of different people from the budget conscious backpackers to Middle Eastern refugees to tall and large Eastern Europeans. I had been on this trip in the past when there were crying babies keeping me awake all the way. The bus stopped at places like Preston, Birmingham and Bristol on the way to London Victoria bus station.

Eventually I arrived. My memory of this initial time in London is of getting a Burger King in London Victoria train station with the last bit of my money and then walking around the vicinity miserably wondering what on earth I was going to do. The people around me running or walking purposefully for trains and buses were oblivious to my predicament. I felt desperation and desolation. I walked around the vicinity of London Victoria along the bustling chain shops, surrounded by tourists, professionals and busy residents of London. I eventually came to a plaza. I had taken a step into the unknown and arrived at St Vincents plaza! At this point it was getting dark and people were now heading home or back to their hotels. My emotions overwhelmed me and I sat down by the door of St Vincent’s church and started to cry. Now weirdly at this time there was a young man with a shaved head who approached me. He had a North English accent. I told him I had no money, no food and no accommodation. The young man told me he’d been kicked out of his girlfriend’s (his missus’s) and was homeless too but told me I could get some food (for free) at a nearby place called the Passage. With regards to accommodation I could also get a sleeping bag (donated to me) and sleep in a doorway somewhere. This might seem like obvious advice for anybody who grew up in the city but I was from Oban. I’d rarely seen a homeless person in my hometown growing up. I didn’t know how to survive without money in a big scary city like London. This basic advice felt like an act of God to me. At my very moment of total weakness a kind extending hand was put my way. 

And so the next day I had an appointment with a staff member at the Passage and I was introduced to the homeless drop in centre. The staff member was an overweight black lady who seemed down to earth and kind to my predicament. I’m not sure what I told her but she was happy to register me as one of their service users without too many questions. There was a two door security system for entry. Inside there was a heated hallway. And then a medium sized canteen. Service users received tokens from staff for the basic laundrette (run by a kindly Filipino lady) at the end of the hallway. In the dining hall there were tables with moveable chairs. There was a table against the wall where there were perhaps a hundred mobile phones in charge. There was basic wifi. At meal times I saw the other service users, the canteen was packed. There were lots of grumpy old English beggars, there were African refugees, there were Irish young men, there was an assortment of foreigners and people down on their luck. In terms of gender there were more men than women. There were all different ages but thankfully no children that I saw.  There always seemed to be an excess of tasty food (I even took a few sandwiches in my backpack for later when I was out and about) which was nice because when you reside on the street you often burn more calories due to a) the cold and b) all the walking you do. Thankfully the weather at the time was not bad, although it was often chilly in the mornings, the sun often came out and everyone (homeless and homed alike) were more cheerful, pleasant and talkative. It must have been Spring/Summer.

I returned to St Vincent’s plaza where the kindly Northerner had directed me and talked to the other homeless and continued my writings to Tan Guan. One Nigerian guy I met, who must of worked during the daytime, showed me a spot where I could stash my sleeping bag so I didn’t have to carry it around everywhere. The place was a sort of disused property with a small garden with a wild hedge where the packed sleeping bag could be placed out of view. The other homeless also showed me that I should take cardboard and lay it flat as a sort of basic sleeping mat.

And so began a strange period of my life where I slept by the doors of St Vincents Plaza and then was awoken by the St Vincent’s security guards at about 6am every morning. Myself and others would then often go to Pret A Mangier where it was warm, there was wifi and mobile phone chargers and the staff were sympathetic to our situation.

I’d go to The Passage to get hot meals, and socialise a little. There was also a McDonald’s where one could buy cheap food and sit with wifi and write at the tables.

Periodically I would go to other parts of London like Cambden. I knew Cambden a bit from when I had explored there as a tourist with my cousin and brother a few years before. Another trick the homeless people taught me was you could jump on the back of the double decker buses (there was both a front door and a back door) and you’d get a free ride! I did this so many times I can’t count. The other thing about London is you can generally ask anyone for directions and they’ll generally try to help you by telling you which bus number to take and which stop to get off at(as opposed to Oban where they don’t want to be spoken to!).

Around St Vincents there was a variety of different characters. Some I liked more than others. Weirdly some of the most kind were those who were most different to me. There was a Mexican lady who went around in a full burqa who had converted to Islam. She was a bit older than me by a few years but she was oddly warm to me. I remember questioning her about why she changed her religion and why she didn’t follow the same faith as other Mexicans. She said the Koran made her feel deeply happy, within her heart, when she read it. She told me a few strange details about herself, for example she believed she had some sort of terminal illness (I couldn’t discern if she did, she certainly seemed healthy and normal to me). She was also intent on having a baby (soonish)!

There was a short black lady who went around with a bible shouting at passersby. She seemed to think she was deterring demons! She too was oddly fond of me and she’d buy me food with her benefits and we’d often sit together in between her street outbursts. 

There were however some violent and dangerous characters. I spent a bit of time with 2 Irish young men from the Passage who seemed to be both drug addicts and on the run from the law in Ireland for some sort of credit card theft. However my relationship soured with them when I thought they had searched my bag and things went from bad to worse when I tried to call the police on them in a panic. They physically assaulted me a few times the next day at St Vincent’s. I remember the reaction of the other homeless was not what I expected. They seemed to think it shameful that I hadn’t fought back. I remember one security guard demanding I wiped my blood off the pavement. In that moment I felt embarrassment. People would think me a walkover!

The London bystanders as always walked by engrossed in their own worlds. Rather helpfully at this point Tan Guan messaged me to say they sounded like trouble and I should do my best to avoid them. It might sound weird to the reader but grounded advice like this from someone on my side helped me survive.

There was also a new drug on the scene: Spice. It was synthetic cannabis. I however was cautious and I declined it when people offered it to me, worrying about the impact of a new drug like that.

I remember getting into an old squabble with an old English beggar, a black older lady came over and asked me where I was born: “London.” “Which part?” “Hounslow.” Then she explained that the old man considered me to be begging in his spot and that was why he was annoyed. It was a weird moment when I felt part of something. Somebody considered me to be one of their own.

I have so many experiences like this around the time that I can’t put them all into words.

There were rare moments of calmth amongst the chaos, euphoric feelings even sometimes that one was reluctant to enjoy because of the endless uncertainty and potential danger. The sunny and warm weather always seemed to cheer everyone up, and helped people to get along together.

Another time there was like a school group of European kids (you could tell from their darker skin and their different dress sense) who organized hula hoop games in the plaza. They stood in a few lines and tried to roll the hoop so it went through all of their legs. All us homeless people just stared and watched, not interfering. I felt a sense of togetherness, different people from across the world coming together for a simple game, in that Plaza.

Another time there was some sort of event in the plaza and there was a huge queue going into the St Vincent’s church of elderly people. There was a sense of tolerance of everyone there that day (and the weather was good too). Live and let live!

All in all I think I stayed 2 or 3 weeks sleeping rough in front of St Vincents and using the Passage hanging around with all manner of unemployed, addicts, people down on their luck, opportunists and mentally unwell. It was an eye opening time of my life, but also a weirdly happy one (though a happy time mixed with danger). I had read many books of life in London, now I was experiencing it for myself. I felt like I was growing by coming into contact with all these different people and cultures.

Looking back, my weeks sleeping rough in London were among the strangest of my life. I arrived at Victoria station with almost nothing and no idea how to survive. Within days I had a routine, a community of sorts, and even moments of something approaching happiness.
The people I met around St Vincent’s Plaza — the Northerner who stopped to help a crying stranger, the Mexican lady in the burqa, the bible woman who bought me food — were not the people I had grown up around in Oban. They were outcasts, wanderers, people the city had chewed up. And yet many of them were kind in ways that comfortable people rarely are.
I was mentally unwell at the time, though I didn’t fully know it. But London, strangely, was good for me. It forced me out of isolation and into the world. It showed me that strangers can be generous, that humility is learned in difficult places, and that life at its most chaotic can still contain moments of real warmth.
Eventually I left London and headed back north. But that is a story for another time.