It's 9 a.m.
I am sitting in Caffe Nero in the arrivals lounge of Heathrow Airport Terminal 5, typing this blog on a beer encrusted keyboard having had just 3 hours of sleep.
This is now becoming common place and the continual circle of get beaten down, struggle back, be given hope and then crushed to nothing again, is coming to an end.
If we are to believe it, Einstien is alleged to have said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result".
Well that's been my life for the last ten years and maybe it's time to acknwoledge life has won.
This year was supposed to be the year, that I conquered, not that I started the cycle all over again.
Displaced had been an idea that I'd been trying to get off the ground in truth for seven years. It's inception was based on the fact that I've paid £20,000 to keep my possessions in storage for the last ten years and rather than thinking of that in terms of money, I saw it as a way of telling my story in perpetuity. They'd gone into storage for what I'd thought would be a maximum of three months, when I first became homeless. But as time went on, the DWP failures compounded, Local authorities lied and cheated, homeless charities failed, the police confiscated my car etc. it became apparent it would go on forever.
The initial idea was that I would donate the possessions to a Museum, this didn't work out as planned as the Geffrey Museum were too full to take anymore, the V&A liked the evolution of my jeans from Levi's to Edwin to Brioni, but it never got off the ground and so many institutions liked the idea, were either too slow in making decisons or simply had no more space to take anything but my reaching out did finally lead to my video diary being taken into the Museum of London's permanent collection.
But the discovery of the Museum of Failure through Social Media, prompted that idea to morph into a London Citywide Street art installation. MoF never came to London as envisaged but then like a miracle Museum of Homelessness came across my bow.
And as of last year the project actually came into sight and seemed to becoming together at a rate of knots.
I discover that the founder of the MoH Jess Tuttle and I had lived in the same homeless community which her mother ran, when I was 17 she was 6, one of the participants on the course had assisted in trying help save the Kensington Odeon when we tried to break-in, a friend's boyfriend, introduced me to Museum Exhibition consultant Bob Deakin, who became the lynchpin for the event. I'd met sponsorship consultant Tom Meggle at a French Institute screening, Sam Bompass had put me in touch with his Lighting Designer, Helen Marriage had introduced me to her Production Manager, Access Storage's PR team were keen to assist with promotion.
As you know, I suffer with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Laughingly the medical advice is always to avoid stress. Try avoiding stress, when you don't get paid the money you're entitled too from the state, because of some civil servants whim, even when the courts are on your side every single time, even in the highest in the land (see prevoius blog)
So now I have decaying teeth, because my borther who has been my dentist for thirty years has retired and I can't afford the treatment (especially because until my circumstances change, there seems little point, becasue I can't look after them properly in my current situation).
My doctors at Riverside Medical Centre all left, first the brillaint and kind Dr. Murray Ellender, who was the most supportive and understanding of Doctors I've ever had, ended up running the entire group of practices and doing some amazing work for patients at a management level especially in respect to technology. Then Dr. Dyer-Smith who remained my doctor for 5 years and again who eventually fell foul of the draw of a management position was replaced with
I started this blog by saying I was typing on a beer encrusted keyboard. Why? Well this is the continual problem. You are homeless, so you don't get much sleep, therefore you're tired, therefore you lose concentration and make mistakes. In this instance it involved me moving a pint and not placing it properly splashing beer all over my keyboard.
Previously it had been lost devices, broken power cables, dropped tablets in St. Katharine's Docks. Now it's even the simple ability to write.
You see surviving daily in this state would be a masive impact on my health if I was heathy, but trying to do it when I'm suffering with ME/CFS is nigh on impossible, throw in the fact that I'm then trying to achieve a massive citywide art project then, would seem insane.
But it wasn't, it just required a little help. and as I said for a week or two it all seemed to be coming into place, but then just as quickly it vanished.
Growing up I wa taught by my parents that people help those who help themselves. That's no longer true. The DWP have used my accomplishmnets as a stick to prevent me from getting benefits, people only offer to help, if they see a way of making money for themselves and the fun of doing something just for the sake of doing somethnig just simply doesn't exsit in public consciousness anymore.
The most crushing of all these has been the Museum of Homelessness. Their catalyst programme had been a wondrful experience and the bonds that I made there empowering, but rather than being the assisting platform I had hoped, it turned into the same bureaucratic nightmare of all these institutions.
The things that they were supposed to bring to the table like contacts and a mentor, just didn't materialise. I secured my own Mentor in the amazing Helen Marriage (and her efficiency just further highlighted how easy this whole thing could have been if everyone took her approach, email's answered within 24 hours with a resolution, always looking for ways to say yes, never no and always there for me).
So with this gone, I've really given up on life. Everytime I think of ending my life, I think of my son Charles, but even here I feel like a complete failure. Like your average 19 year old, he doesn't stay in touch. I wonder what impact my departure would have on him. I often wonder what my homeless situaiton has on him. Since he was 9 years old I haven't had a house.
Thankfully, friends, hotel owners and other location site owners have all facilitated in me housing him on visits to London and giving him the most amazing times when he came to visit me in London but things are now on their last ebb.
I've been typing this for the past two hours.... fatigue is creeping in,,,, brain fog has probably mean I've missed things as I can now no longer look back on this to check.... Suicide beckons once again.
I'm aamzed I've not had a stroke or a heart attack, my diet is abysmal £3 meal deals do not constitue a balanced food source, exercise is non-existant, I'm sedantry for 14 - 18 hours at a time, with the excpetion of two to three visits to the toilet I can sometimes, endure an entire day without moving from a single position. DVT something my biolgical mother suffered with must be just waiting to kick down the door. Alcohol consumptoin has gone back to Whisky for breakfast.
Do I continue to fight and thus kick-start the whole cycle all over again and as Einstein stated demonstrate my insanity because I expect a different outcome (a stark contrast to the Try, Try and Try again mantra, because everything I do is with a different appraoch) or do I quit, end my life, just simply by letting go of the fight and giving up....
I'm leaving Heathrow to go and do something cultural and free... It's the reason I fight to stay in London, endure impossible odds and want to enshrine myself in it's history... London has always been kind to me, sadly the people who now inhabit are not... and maybe it is indeed to take my final bow... time will tell.
I am sitting in Caffe Nero in the arrivals lounge of Heathrow Airport Terminal 5, typing this blog on a beer encrusted keyboard having had just 3 hours of sleep.
This is now becoming common place and the continual circle of get beaten down, struggle back, be given hope and then crushed to nothing again, is coming to an end.
If we are to believe it, Einstien is alleged to have said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result".
Well that's been my life for the last ten years and maybe it's time to acknwoledge life has won.
This year was supposed to be the year, that I conquered, not that I started the cycle all over again.
Displaced had been an idea that I'd been trying to get off the ground in truth for seven years. It's inception was based on the fact that I've paid £20,000 to keep my possessions in storage for the last ten years and rather than thinking of that in terms of money, I saw it as a way of telling my story in perpetuity. They'd gone into storage for what I'd thought would be a maximum of three months, when I first became homeless. But as time went on, the DWP failures compounded, Local authorities lied and cheated, homeless charities failed, the police confiscated my car etc. it became apparent it would go on forever.
The initial idea was that I would donate the possessions to a Museum, this didn't work out as planned as the Geffrey Museum were too full to take anymore, the V&A liked the evolution of my jeans from Levi's to Edwin to Brioni, but it never got off the ground and so many institutions liked the idea, were either too slow in making decisons or simply had no more space to take anything but my reaching out did finally lead to my video diary being taken into the Museum of London's permanent collection.
But the discovery of the Museum of Failure through Social Media, prompted that idea to morph into a London Citywide Street art installation. MoF never came to London as envisaged but then like a miracle Museum of Homelessness came across my bow.
And as of last year the project actually came into sight and seemed to becoming together at a rate of knots.
I discover that the founder of the MoH Jess Tuttle and I had lived in the same homeless community which her mother ran, when I was 17 she was 6, one of the participants on the course had assisted in trying help save the Kensington Odeon when we tried to break-in, a friend's boyfriend, introduced me to Museum Exhibition consultant Bob Deakin, who became the lynchpin for the event. I'd met sponsorship consultant Tom Meggle at a French Institute screening, Sam Bompass had put me in touch with his Lighting Designer, Helen Marriage had introduced me to her Production Manager, Access Storage's PR team were keen to assist with promotion.
As you know, I suffer with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Laughingly the medical advice is always to avoid stress. Try avoiding stress, when you don't get paid the money you're entitled too from the state, because of some civil servants whim, even when the courts are on your side every single time, even in the highest in the land (see prevoius blog)
So now I have decaying teeth, because my borther who has been my dentist for thirty years has retired and I can't afford the treatment (especially because until my circumstances change, there seems little point, becasue I can't look after them properly in my current situation).
My doctors at Riverside Medical Centre all left, first the brillaint and kind Dr. Murray Ellender, who was the most supportive and understanding of Doctors I've ever had, ended up running the entire group of practices and doing some amazing work for patients at a management level especially in respect to technology. Then Dr. Dyer-Smith who remained my doctor for 5 years and again who eventually fell foul of the draw of a management position was replaced with
I started this blog by saying I was typing on a beer encrusted keyboard. Why? Well this is the continual problem. You are homeless, so you don't get much sleep, therefore you're tired, therefore you lose concentration and make mistakes. In this instance it involved me moving a pint and not placing it properly splashing beer all over my keyboard.
Previously it had been lost devices, broken power cables, dropped tablets in St. Katharine's Docks. Now it's even the simple ability to write.
You see surviving daily in this state would be a masive impact on my health if I was heathy, but trying to do it when I'm suffering with ME/CFS is nigh on impossible, throw in the fact that I'm then trying to achieve a massive citywide art project then, would seem insane.
But it wasn't, it just required a little help. and as I said for a week or two it all seemed to be coming into place, but then just as quickly it vanished.
Growing up I wa taught by my parents that people help those who help themselves. That's no longer true. The DWP have used my accomplishmnets as a stick to prevent me from getting benefits, people only offer to help, if they see a way of making money for themselves and the fun of doing something just for the sake of doing somethnig just simply doesn't exsit in public consciousness anymore.
The most crushing of all these has been the Museum of Homelessness. Their catalyst programme had been a wondrful experience and the bonds that I made there empowering, but rather than being the assisting platform I had hoped, it turned into the same bureaucratic nightmare of all these institutions.
The things that they were supposed to bring to the table like contacts and a mentor, just didn't materialise. I secured my own Mentor in the amazing Helen Marriage (and her efficiency just further highlighted how easy this whole thing could have been if everyone took her approach, email's answered within 24 hours with a resolution, always looking for ways to say yes, never no and always there for me).
So with this gone, I've really given up on life. Everytime I think of ending my life, I think of my son Charles, but even here I feel like a complete failure. Like your average 19 year old, he doesn't stay in touch. I wonder what impact my departure would have on him. I often wonder what my homeless situaiton has on him. Since he was 9 years old I haven't had a house.
Thankfully, friends, hotel owners and other location site owners have all facilitated in me housing him on visits to London and giving him the most amazing times when he came to visit me in London but things are now on their last ebb.
I've been typing this for the past two hours.... fatigue is creeping in,,,, brain fog has probably mean I've missed things as I can now no longer look back on this to check.... Suicide beckons once again.
I'm aamzed I've not had a stroke or a heart attack, my diet is abysmal £3 meal deals do not constitue a balanced food source, exercise is non-existant, I'm sedantry for 14 - 18 hours at a time, with the excpetion of two to three visits to the toilet I can sometimes, endure an entire day without moving from a single position. DVT something my biolgical mother suffered with must be just waiting to kick down the door. Alcohol consumptoin has gone back to Whisky for breakfast.
Do I continue to fight and thus kick-start the whole cycle all over again and as Einstein stated demonstrate my insanity because I expect a different outcome (a stark contrast to the Try, Try and Try again mantra, because everything I do is with a different appraoch) or do I quit, end my life, just simply by letting go of the fight and giving up....
I'm leaving Heathrow to go and do something cultural and free... It's the reason I fight to stay in London, endure impossible odds and want to enshrine myself in it's history... London has always been kind to me, sadly the people who now inhabit are not... and maybe it is indeed to take my final bow... time will tell.
