Down & Out In Dublin
I love my bed. Every night, I fall into my cosy double bed, pull the duvet up over my nose, settle into my pillow and nod off knowing that when I wake up it will be so hard to leap out of my feathered nest and face a cruel world that expects me to earn a living.
I wonder how I’d feel if my bed were a doorway, my covering a cardboard box, and my pillow a roll of my few possessions. Would waking up in the clanking dawn be such a miserable experience were I not to have a job? Or would it be far harder to trudge the streets looking for handouts and somewhere to wash.
Some people actually think that this way of life constitutes a "lifestyle choice" but they are ostriches whose heads are buried in the comfort of their own preconceptions.
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell paints a vivid picture of the time this author spent among the destitute in those capital cities. Orwell describes the unrelenting squalor and hardship that was the daily lot of the forgotten people in the community; he documented a world where the homeless lived on scraps, and slept in bug-infested hostels and doss houses. It is a book that is as relevant now as it was when it was first written in 1933.
And still today our streets are home to those with a diagnosed mental health conditions, with physical handicaps, alcohol and drug dependencies, people who were born with foetal alcohol syndrome and are incapable of leading an ordinary life. Others who have endured abuse at a home they cannot return to, and those whose homes have been lost or taken from them.
Tonight, when I curl up with a good book, ready to nod off after two or three pages, I’ll probably have forgotten all about this blog. I will be tired, having worked quite hard, and feel I deserve this final comfort after a long day at the helm of my life. I’m not sure that the seven or eight people who will be shivering in doorways in my local town will give much thought to me either.
I wonder how I’d feel if my bed were a doorway, my covering a cardboard box, and my pillow a roll of my few possessions. Would waking up in the clanking dawn be such a miserable experience were I not to have a job? Or would it be far harder to trudge the streets looking for handouts and somewhere to wash.
Some people actually think that this way of life constitutes a "lifestyle choice" but they are ostriches whose heads are buried in the comfort of their own preconceptions.
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell paints a vivid picture of the time this author spent among the destitute in those capital cities. Orwell describes the unrelenting squalor and hardship that was the daily lot of the forgotten people in the community; he documented a world where the homeless lived on scraps, and slept in bug-infested hostels and doss houses. It is a book that is as relevant now as it was when it was first written in 1933. And still today our streets are home to those with a diagnosed mental health conditions, with physical handicaps, alcohol and drug dependencies, people who were born with foetal alcohol syndrome and are incapable of leading an ordinary life. Others who have endured abuse at a home they cannot return to, and those whose homes have been lost or taken from them.
Tonight, when I curl up with a good book, ready to nod off after two or three pages, I’ll probably have forgotten all about this blog. I will be tired, having worked quite hard, and feel I deserve this final comfort after a long day at the helm of my life. I’m not sure that the seven or eight people who will be shivering in doorways in my local town will give much thought to me either.
Labels: destitution, George Orwell, London, Paris, reading in bed
