Paul Atherton - SimpleTV: The Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain's Social Evils - Could change everything for me... but probably won't!

I've never been this nervous... possibly the minutes before my first professional theatre performance a few years ago, acting in Human Mating dance, came close, or maybe my driving test in Cardiff in 1986 where my nerves couldn't be placated with alcohol.... but they only come close to the tension waiting for the Long List announcement of the Orwell Prize on Twitter in 15 minutes.

As ever, something massive always happens on a day I'm waiting for life changing news.

A person was mauled at London Zoo when the press were carrying a big news story about my newly launched Lingerie delivery company A Touch of Silk when I was twenty one in 1990 & my story got pushed from page 2 to 13.

When I won the case to be finally legally recognised as my son's father, my barrister was surprised I wasn't overjoyed, but I had an overwhelming sense of unease and rushed to phone my mother... she didnt answer... the answerphone didn't pick up... rationality usurped intuition and I put it down, unreasonably to a catalogue of coincidences.

I left the court uncomfortably, met friends in the pub to celebrate, then I get a call from the hospital... Mum had, had the stroke that would end her independent life for good.

As it is too today, stomach churning, breathless, eager to rush to the toilet repeatedly, constantly checking the clock... waiting for the tweet that could my impending eviction back to the streets, national news breaks on my twitter stream

The Queen's husband, Prince Phillip, had died.

You couldn't make it up.

Today of all days. He's been seriously ill for weeks. He came out of hospital last week. He's had a great innings almost making it to a century, but he picked today to die.

Then unbelievably, the owner of the residence, totally unexpectedly, comes to tell me, that he's not be paid the rent for the past 6 months by Westminster Council.

I've been residing in his residence since being picked up from Heathrow Airport where I'd been sleeping for the past two years, as part of the cohorts who were housed under Boris Johnson's "Everyone In" in hotel rooms (mine is a hotel apartment) since April 3rd 2020 and explaining he's going to have to evict me.

All this, ironically, would normally make me feel like I had a good chance of making the cut for the Orwell Prize, but learning this news didn't change the sense of forboding I had, that I had sensed for the past 3 days, that the news was not going to be good.

Why the nerves, I can feel you thinking, what difference does it make if a homeless person is given an acccolade for his writing.

Well to begin with it acknowledges the fight. Unlike paid journalists, citizen journalists write purely for the intent of change. Unlike their staffed counterparts doing their job the personal journalist exposes themsleves fully and unashamedly to public gaze, to be scrutinised for their every decision by complete starngers and indeed, those who do, or think they do, know them well.

Everything you write is about your own experience, your own emotions, you at your most vulnerable. You don't have the buffer of speaking on someone else's behalf as many other writers do.

It also acknowledges the struggle, being homeless, means you're not touch typing on manicured keyboards and reading your efforts on perfectly lit screens. Instead you're using finger and thumb on a cracked screen of an out of date Samsung Galaxy A6 Tablet, with intermittent copy & paste capabilities, writing in a notes app, that has a maximum word count that comes with no warning.

No nice MS Word or Apple Ink. If you have Wifi you may get access to Google Docs but more often you'll be using the body of an email to compose your work and hoping editors and others will understand, the lack of word counts, garmmar and the errors caused by a cracked screen, which makes typing almost impossible.

But the biggest reason for the nerves is the accolade of a homeless man being in the running to winning a writing prize is newsworthy. It would be talked about in reverant terms and with it the power of the media to assist my plight.

Being in the limelight forces politicians to listen, local Authorities to act, lawyers to engage, social services to be put on notice, MPs to engage where they haven't, the DWP to be investigated.

So the award isn't an ego thing, it's a survival thing... with days bedridden this past week due to my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome trapping me inside unable to move or speak, I need something to give me hope to keep me going to help me win my Kafkaesque battles...

Just making the shortlist could have done that...

But while I've been writing this...it's been announced... my intuition as ever was on the money...

I wasn't selected.

-------------------------------------

The articles that were submitted for consideration

My article for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism entitled, I've Gone From Homeless at Heathrow to a Hotel, Where Next? 26th June 2020

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2020-06-26/opinion-paul-atherton-from-homeless-at-heathrow-to-a-hotel-and-back-out-again

The Letter from Lockdown I wrote & audio record for Tortoise Media, My World, Now Yours. 13th May 2020

https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2020/05/13/members-letters-from-lockdown-paul-atherton-audio/

https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2020/05/13/members-letters-from-lockdown-paul-atherton-transcript/

https://twitter.com/tortoise/status/1264541817141370880?s=20

A commission for Bristol University Press, Transforming Society, Blog; Homelessness & Covid19. The Reality Behind The Promise. 20th April 2020.

https://www.transformingsociety.co.uk/2020/04/20/homelessness-and-covid-19-the-reality-behind-the-promises/

And my 7 day Twitter take over of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism account, with two twitter stories, one in the morning, one in the evening, expressing my feelings and emotion as I counted down the last 7 days to my impending eviction at the end of Boris Johnson's "Everyone In" initiative on 3rd July 2020, which housed those experiencing homelessness in hotel rooms for the duration of lockdown (which was supected to be three months and was never reinstated).

#PaulsStory #OffTheStreets

Introduction - 10:07am - 26th June 2021
https://twitter.com/bureaulocal/status/1276441989534420993?s=19

Paul Atherton - SimpleTV

Friday, 9 April 2021

The Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain's Social Evils - Could change everything for me... but probably won't!

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