Stone Pillow.

Last night Lit'lun and I joined hundreds of people in sleeping rough for Stone Pillow at a cathedral in the south of England. We had to sleep in a box!
On arrival we signed in and were both given a wristband. My daughter had her sponsorship form but I was just doing it as she is under the age of sixteen and therefore needed an adult to stay with her!
It was six pm and I had intended to drop her off go to fat club then return, but once you had arrived you had to make your shelter...... out of cardboard boxes, I duly got stuck in and before I knew it the time had flown by and Fat club would have been over, I was annoyed as I wanted to get weighed in, its good to see the weight coming off.
Anyhow, by ten pm I was freezing my wotsits off as was Lit'lun, Beth had got me something to eat as I hadn't had very much with all the running around I had been doing during the day, and there was a BBQ on site, all night there was a room in which you could make hot drinks, but once I had made the shelter and got into my sleeping bag there was not much chance of wanting to come out again! We chatted to some of the other people around us, but by eleven thirty the security patrols had turned the main lights surrounding the Cathedral off, in the hopes that everyone would sleep.
My feet froze, I couldn't seem to get them to warm up, and as I was only sleeping for a few minutes at a time I was very aware of them.
The most amazing thing about the sleep out was the diverse range of ages, there were children maybe younger than 5 years old, up to elderly people, one of whom told us he was 75!! It was extremely cold, little comfort to be had from a sleeping bag and some cardboard boxes, even if you had a ground mat!
One of the few joys was to go to the loo!!! Oh yes, the water for washing your hands was ohhh sooo hot as was the hand drier..... quite long conversations were had in the loos just to maximise the warm time!
In the morning we had a hot drink packed up our sleeping bags and dragged the flattened cardboard boxes to an area in front of the Cathedral where the local council would be collecting it to recycle.
Lit'lun and I spent 11 and a half hours sleeping rough, homeless!, and it was 11 and a half hours too long! It did make us think, we managed that night knowing we could go home get a shower get warm and that would be it, if we were truly homeless we would still be cold and hungry with the same to follow day in day out!
Stone Pillow.