“Please Help Me”

It’s a Saturday in West London, people are perusing the high street, coffees in hand, bags of shopping in the other. It is the first day of a cold snap for the UK, which as I write this is resulting in flurries of snow outside, and a bitterly cold wind.

I’m looking after my favourite person in the world, my little boy Leo.

As I’m walking down the high street, thinking about what I have to do next, pushing the buggy with one hand, holding the shopping in the other, we walk past a homeless man.

He says something, but just like everyone else, I walk on by.

Then a few steps later I process what he just said:

“Please help me”

I kept walking, it’s freezing cold, I had my little boy to get home, I’m carrying a heavy shopping bag, and he’ll be alright, won’t he?

However, those words didn’t leave me. Please help me. Then followed a moment of introspection.

We turned a couple of corners, no longer on the high street and I stopped the buggy for a second before turning around. Please help me.

“Where are we going daddy?”

“We’re going to give some money to that man, Leo”

“Which man?”

“The man on the high street.”

So, we went to the cash machine and found the man a little further up from where he was and gave him some money. He nearly cried, and gave me a hug, a little pat on the head for Leo, who being two, immediately said ‘no’!

As I walked on home, I felt glad that I had opened my ears and just listened to what this man had said. Please help me. I honestly don’t think that as many people would walk by if they just stopped long enough to hear what was being said. But we are all so caught up in our own worlds, we often block out the far more fragile worlds of others.

The next morning, my little boy amazed me when I was making his breakfast, he asked me:

“Daddy, where is the man?”

“Which man, Leo?”

“The man on the high street. Is he with his mummy?”

I said I didn’t know, that hopefully, he was in a nice warm bed, and not outside where it was easily below freezing.

Leo seemed satisfied with that answer and reverted his concentration to his breakfast.

Two days later, I’m still thinking about the man on the high street. Please help me.

There may be cynics among you reading this perhaps many months after it was written, thinking ‘but how do you know what he’s going to use the money for’?

You may refuse to give money to homeless people on the street for fear they will spend it on drugs and alcohol – for those of you that still take that line (I used to do the same), ask yourself this: who am I to judge?

And this week, especially, please take that risk if someone is homeless and asking for help. Sadly, many people are likely to die by the time this cold snap leaves us simply because they can’t get enough money to get off the street and into a warm bed. Who cares if they use some of the money for some booze to keep out the cold? How do you really know what you would do put in their situation? I hope you never do.

For a few weeks now. I’ve been considering the Vertical Rush challenge, organised by Shelter.

My experience with the man on the high street made that an easy decision and on 15th March, I’ll be climbing all 932 stairs of Tower 42 in Central London.

If you’d like to donate you can do so here:

https://www.justgiving.com/John-Langers

Or donate to another homeless charity, maybe join me running up Tower 42?

But please, if you see someone on the street this week, do something. Buy them some hot food or drink, give them some cash, anything that might make the difference between them surviving this bitterly cold week or not.

Please help me.