homelessness

Who interrupts someone in the toilet?

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Up at 5 and at work by 6am.  Still dark.  Buses replacing trains on one of our lines.

People are complaining about the lack of toilets and, yes, one has been engaged for over ½ an hour.  Two of us bang on the door and get no response except the smell of cigarette smoke.  Given the danger of overdoses in station toilets, we take the plunge, warn the person we’re coming in and open the heavy toilet door.  Someone is sprawled across the floor face down.  Skinny bare ankles and feet.

“Oh God!” says my co-worker. “We’d better call the ambulance.”  While she’s doing that, I push open the door again to check if there’s anything I can do.  The body has rolled over into a fetal position, a single dark eye open, peering brightly out from under a coat.

“Can we help you? Do you need help?”  We call.  “Are you ok?”

There’s a cushion under the guy’s head.  He mumbles, seems to be conscious.  The situation has changed. We call off the Ambulance.  We obviously have a rough sleeper.

The station Master arrives,

“Do you need help?  You can’t sleep here.  You have to get up.”

“Go away!”

“If you don’t get out, we’ll have to call the police.”

The door slams and we stand in the corridor talking about calling the police.  A minute later the door is flung open again and the three of us, all women are confronted by this huge angry man who screams at us…

“How dare you interrupt someone in the toilet! What sort of people are you to interrupt someone in the toilet? Don’t you know any better?”  He’s huge and he’s yelling. At me, maybe because I’m the tallest of we three smallish women. “Stop smiling.  How dare you interrupt someone in the toilet.  What kind of people do that?”  I feel a spark of terror because he’s really angry and big and it’s a small space. I call on my wireless for the ticket inspectors who are all men to come and give us back up.

The man slams the door again.

“We’re calling the cops,” says the Station Master as we retreat.  But we don’t need to. A few minutes later, the man appears cushion under his arm and stalks off towards the trains.

“What sort of people interrupt a man in the toilet?” he mutters loudly enough to be heard all the way.   Such wounded dignity.

It’s not yet dawn.  The beginning of a 9 hour shift.

Creekman mark 2

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Creekman has been replaced by a tall cheerful Maori New Zealander in his early thirties who always wears dark glasses.  He says he’s met Creekman and gained permission to use his camping site down by the creek.  (I have a feeling there is a protocol among the rough sleepers over campsites) He’s hoping to get a place when he makes enough money from casual construction but till then he says likes camping out in the fresh air and near the sound of water. He bustles about with great verve.  He comes for a regular wash up in my toilets but he’s very neat and organized about it. When his welfare payments come in he celebrates by having a BBQ..  We had a discussion about Bonds underpants yesterday.  Apparently they chafe.  Sort yourself out Bonds.

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Creek Man

I first met Creek Man about 3 years ago.  He was the cheery guy with the balding, slightly out-of-control hair and a sly smile who was building a shack.  He’d go to the Bunnings up the line and bring small piles of building materials back down on the train.  Being a nice orderly mainstream person I assumed he was building a shack on his own land.

Why build otherwise?

It only slowly dawned on me that he was actually a rough sleeper, squatting down there behind one of the hospitals, apparently with a nudge and wink from security?!! He always spent the winter on a farm in the country and lived in a tent down at the creek in the summer. He’d been there for 14 years.  Hence, I guess, the urge to build four walls and a floor.  But he kept faith with the idea of a tent by only roofing his shack with a tarpaulin. 

To be honest I was not a big fan of Creek man, mostly because he was so boring.  He’d repeat himself, telling me about how he’d once be a carpenter and how he was making the walls out of one kind of board and the floor out of another, about how he had a little camp stove to cook with and how he had a family of ringtail possums living in the trees above his shack who were company for him.  The camp by the creek sounded wonderfully idyllic but not again and again.  And sometimes he’d stay to chat for a WHOLE hour, missing several trains, telling me the same things again and again. 

“He’s just a lonely old guy,” said one of my regulars who got collared by him once.  Easy for her to say.  She could leave.

Compassion set in at last, especially after last year when he started to look so ill, hobbling along at a snail’s pace on painful knees, all his industry gone.  His topics had switched to what the doctors had said and which knee was more swollen.  (And they were swollen, he showed the whole waiting room one day.) I became more patient at listening.  You had to admire the way he still kept pushing on; still with smiling his sly smile, keeping himself and his clothes clean, hobbling onto the train to go down to the supermarket to have a sit in the warm and buy something for tea. 

It took me about two months to realize he was missing.  Around Christmas one of the hospital people told me his shack had burned down and his gas bottles had exploded.  Apparently he wasn’t there when it happened but it was tenth hand information so I couldn’t be certain of that.  No one knew where he was. 

I was forced to file Creek Man away among the many, many station stories that finish with a sad, I-don’t-know-how-it-ended-I-hope-they’re-all-right. 

Good News! Yesterday he popped up at the station, looking fresh and new, moving as he did of old, with that sly smile just that bit broader.  He’d been in hospital having his knees done when his shack had burned down.  He was sad about it but Human Services had him in a motel with the promise of an apartment somewhere down the line.  (During Covid Human Services seem to have suddenly got a whole lot better at housing people.)

Of course he went on in lots of detail about his other aching joints, but I was just glad to see him safe and well.

“I should be good for another 66 years now,” he said chirpily as he waved good-bye.    

On Delicate Matters of Etiquette

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Finest Jamestown Butt Bucket

Outside the station door I have an ice cream container full of sand for people to put cigarette butts in. It cuts down on the mess smokers make. Lately the butts have been disappearing and I’ve naively been assuming the cleaner is emptying them out. So I am terribly embarrassed to walk out of the station and discover a neatly dressed woman my age, crouched over the butt bucket collecting the butts. I cry “opps” as if I’ve interrupted someone doing something shameful, which to my mind I have. But of course that makes it worse because now she knows I’ve noticed. I feel I have created a difficult social situation.
But the lady isn’t ashamed. She’s about my age and looks like a librarian. Glasses and middle class teeth. Assertively she asks me whose bucket it is and if I could put more sand in so that the cigarettes don’t burn down so much. She even asks me if I will collect them in a little bag for her. This latter is bridge too far ever for a chronic people-pleaser like me. I say no I wouldn’t be comfortable with that. Then we have a little chat about holidays, because she is apparently saving for one. Hence the need to save on smoking.
I presume she will take the butts home and either smoke them or unwrap them and make roll ups out of the left over tobacco. Gah!
I’m startled that someone so middle class looking is collecting butts like this which makes me wonder about; (1) my own socio-economic pre-conceptions and (2) more interestingly what sort of life has brought this woman to doing something usually only the homeless do? Divorce, addiction, mental illness, plain bad luck? Homelessness? Its closer to us all than we think. Station life is full of interesting mysteries and wondering about them keeps me going during the quiet shifts.

The kindness of strangers

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Sign found in Coburg Station waiting room.

The middle aged man with the beard and the big coat clearly wanted to chat, but I was at the exciting part of my book and had been looking forward to using the train journey to read it. So I replied politely and then disengaged, firmly gluing my gaze to the page
Further down the line, the man got lucky. I was so enthralled with the conversation I stopped reading.
A young bloke with a skateboard got in and the man started a conversation about his neck chains which moved rapidly onto talking about homelessness.
“I lost my f… house, my daughter, my wife two months ago.”
“How are you finding it?”
“F… freezing last night. Terrible.”
“Yeah I know what it’s like. I was homeless for 12 months after my f… step dad kicked me out. Almost died of f… hypothermia a coupla times.”
“Yeah! F… hard to find somewhere dry.”
“Did you know where you can get a free feed every weekend?”
They slipped into talking of ways and means.
Then coming into the junction, the young bloke said,
“I found a place and I’ve been there almost a year. We got two spare couches in the living room. Here, why don’t you take my address and phone number, just come round tonight and we’ll put you up.”
The middle aged man was touched and I, eavesdropping, got a lovely warm feeling in my chest.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, yeah! Just show up tonight. I know what it’s like.
“That’s pretty f… great of you.”
My heart was lifted by this conversation yet at the same time I was fearful. What if someone was hurt? What if someone was assaulted or taken advantage of? I was brought up to distrust the kindness of strangers which is sad. But also wise.
But homelessness cuts down your choices

De-training

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Edward Burne-Jones 1898 The Sleep of King Arthur in Avalon

Recently I spent a Saturday shift de-training people (which is not nearly as exciting as defenestrating people or even as exciting as training people)
You walk down the train carriages making sure everyone is out before the train turns around and goes back to the city. It’s a simple job that mostly involves waking up people who are sleeping or engrossed in their ipods.
The only sleeper I had, a young man in black and a cloud of alcohol fumes, just wouldn’t wake up.
I shook him calling” Mate! Mate! Wake up!” (the magical railway incantation to awaken sleepers – I wonder if it works on Sleeping Beauty and the King under the Mountain- see above) The train driver also tried. No Joy!
We shrugged and gave up.
“I hope he’s still alive,” I said feeling guilty. He had felt warm enough.
“I once heard of a dead guy who travelled round on the London Underground for three days before anyone noticed him,” said the driver cheerfully.
This gruesome story pricked my conscience and after I’d finished checking the train I went back and tried again, this time shaking harder and yelling “Mate! Mate!” louder.
After a while the man stirred, lifted his head and regarded me with bleary eyes. I told him the train was going back to town. He put his head down and went back to sleep.
But at least I’d made sure he was alive! Job done.

In the cutting

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With permission from http://www.joshshalek.com/discarded-couches-of-portland/

Feeling rather small and ashamed today.  A member of the track cleaning crew dropped by and told me that while the trains were stopped for maintenance last night they’d taken the opportunity to clear up the couches in the cutting.  Ever since I saw those young men carrying couches up the cutting back in May I’ve been agitating to have them cleared away.  That’s because I was assuming this was a cubby house for young thugs or what we in the railways call a “shag garden”.  So I was horrified to discover that when the track crew went down there at 1.00 in the morning they found instead people sleeping in a homeless camp.  Now I hate myself for being just another authority figure persecuting the homeless who have enough problems as it is.

The Track Man told me that the homeless would probably come back.  It’s a really good place to camp if you want to be out of the wind and away from casual intruders.  I promised him I would never report those couches again at which he looked very relieved. They hate doing that kind of job and seem to have as much pity for the homeless as I do.  They’ve obviously seen way too much of it as has everyone in this time of rocketing rents.

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The girl without pants

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On a freezing day of sheeting rain, a dark-haired young woman without shoes gets off the 1.44 train. Not only are her feet bare, but so are her legs. I can’t tell if she’s wearing anything on her bottom half. The shirt and hoodies she’s wearing covers her down to the top of her thighs.
I greet her thinking she might be one of the clients of the youth mental health service nearby and in need of directions.
“I’m hungry,” is all she says.
Figuring she needs it more than me, I give her the chocolate bar I have squirreled away for my afternoon treat. I can think of a number of reasons why a young woman would be out in cold rain with no pants or shoes on and none of them are good. She eats it and proceeds to wander around outside the station. After a while she comes back with a cigarette butt she’s picked up outside and asks me for a light which I can’t give her. She tells me she is off to another youth health service in the city. I am much relieved. Hopefully she can get the care she clearly needs there.
If she gets there o.k.
The train is late and for a long time she stands on the edge of the platform staring grimly into the pit. She’s calm – not agitated. Stoned? In shock? The Boss is visiting and she starts to get worried. So do a number of the other people on the platform, many of whom have children in tow. Everyone is watching as the Boss approaches the girl, asks her to come away from the edge and is told, “Don’t treat me like a Fucking Child!”
At this the Boss goes inside and rings Control. The driver is told to come in slow and on the lookout.
As the train creeps in the young woman leaves the coping and walks away down the platform. I shadow her ready to pull her back if need be.
But the train stops without incident and she gets calmly into it. To go where? I wish I knew.
Later that day I ring the place she said she was going, but I only get answering machines. I hope she’s alright. I wish there was more I could have done.

A home for M and C

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happy-new-year1

I haven’t seen my homeless friends M and C for a while but, fingers crossed, this is a good thing. A couple of months ago they dropped by the station and told me that after five years on the housing list living in boarding houses and sleeping rough, they’d been placed in social housing. They both hope they’ll be able to get some of their children back. Terrific news! A happy ending at last!
M said – Now I’ll be able to make a cup of tea in my underpants and never have to beg again!
Then he gave me a cheeky grin and asked me for 20 dollars so that they could spend their last homeless night in a motel. I passed the money over feeling foolish but as the weeks roll by and I no longer see them begging at their old haunts, I feel more and more that it was money well spent. So relieved.
Merry Christmas everybody! And may all your homes be warm and cozy or cool and comfy depending on your hemisphere!

Clench!

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One of my regulars, a lady in her early 60’s, is always telling me about her exercise regime.  Apparently these exercises, relayed to her father by a Chinese doctor, have cured her of leukemia.  Her skin has the yellowish tone of someone who’s very ill.

Her exercise regime is to do two thousand arm swings every day.  They’re exactly like the hundred arms exercise in Pilates only standing up.  I don’t blame her for being obsessed, but sometimes when I see her outside the station swinging her arms, I suddenly think of something I have to do in the office. I‘ve known her to miss trains because she hasn’t reached two thousand yet.

Being so ill must be a lonely business.  So today I’m listening and so are a couple of social workers up from the hospital waiting to catch the train who want to hear all about this life saving exercise.

“Clench your bottom,” cries the lady. “And tuck in your belly.  Clench your bottom and swing your arms.”

Such is the authority in her voice that I see the social workers begin to swing their arms and, I suspect, clench their bottoms.  Oh no!  I’m doing it too.  As the train rolls in, there are the four of us swinging our arms in the autumn sun while the lady yells “clench your bottom.”

I see less of M and C now but this is a good thing. An NGO has found them a place to live.  http://www.hanover.org.au/

C is pregnant and I had terrible visions of them being homeless with a newborn. I suspect they did too – though they made tough noises about it. M is delighted with his new backpack and wears it everywhere.  A profound thank you to the people who offered them.