He was just hungry

With thousands of job cuts and phrases such as ‘recession’ ‘banking crisis’ and ‘credit crunch’ in our media every day the UK is struggling.

This Christmas shops recorded their lowest spending yet and have bought the sales forward. However I am still seeing people take their two holidays a year, in the shops in my area people are shopping their bags are full. Yes the housing market has slowed down but still with all the government benefits being cut I just expected real visible hardship for people. There has been talk of many loosing their homes or being made homeless but I never saw any evidence of individual suffering until today.

Let me start by saying that I’ve lived in London about 13 years and being honest in all my time living in London I probably have only really ever seen a maximum 10 beggars on the tube. A couple have had music, a couple have been women with babies and then the rest have been single homeless men, I have only ever seen them in the afternoons or evenings and they have all requested money.

Today’s beggar was different first of all he was on the tube at 8.45 in the morning.  He stood up and explained how he was struggling generally in his life and told us how hungry he was and asked if we had any food.

WOW

Beggars in London always want cash, in the past I have heard tales of people offering them food and them turning it down. We have had hard hitting advertisements telling us not to give them money because they spend it on drugs so we are in effect killing them, but today this guy was just hungry.

It was my first wake up call, if people are starting to beg for food instead of cash, times are really changing and things are really getting hard for people. 

Hello

I'm not dead! I just write everything on my other blog!Sorry if you have missed me and my life stories here. 

But thought I should say to those of you who are still following this blog. Mr special and I got engaged in march :)

Open Racism

Today I went to the post office to post a copy of Lime Magazine to my Uncle I was in it recently talking about my natural hair. Anyway behind me there was a man, he was about 40 wearing a pin striped suit he had gone grey and looked like he was visiting during his lunch break. He was with another woman who looked like she was from the office.

He said to the woman “Did you hear on the news this morning, Israel might bomb (and I didn’t hear the country name but I think he said Palestine)” She didn’t reply but then he went on “Yeah I wish they would, I wish we could drop a bomb on all those countries we need to get rid of all the Muslims the (insert derogatory name for people from Pakistan here) the (insert derogatory name for people living in Japan here) and all of those (insert a derogatory name for black people here).

The woman went bright red and suddenly found something interesting on her phone to look at and said “I don’t want to talk about this right now”

I could not believe what I was hearing! All the people from behind the counter were the people that he was saying he needed to get rid of. I wanted to turn around and cuss him big time but I had to be better than that and they had not heard him so only I was offended.

I turned around and got one good look at him so I will always know who it was, smiled and put my angry fists in my pockets.

It was sad when I saw him go up to the Muslim girl behind the counter and say “Hi darling, how are you? Having a good day?”

I really hate people like this.

Ghosts & Spirits

Wow, blogging is time consuming, especially with two blogs but this one is about life and things so let me take off my natural head and talk about something totally different.

Ghosts & Spirits - Do you believe in them?

Recently I was chatting with some of my colleagues and we talked about this topic and it reminded me of two spooky experiences I had

The first was when I was about 11 living at home. It was late at night and I was fast asleep, I had a TV in my bedroom and suddenly it switched on. Power surge? To this day I don’t think so. The volume was turned up to the loudest point and it jolted me out of my sleep and my heart was beating really quickly. I stood up out of bed to run over and turn it off before anyone else in the house woke up and it switched off.  I didn’t have a remote control for that TV so it was not on standby. I stood there for a minute or two shaking and then I heard this knocking sound I looked over to the handles of my wardrobe and saw that they were swinging gently and knocking on the doors. That was enough, I grabbed my quilt and ran into my parents room, where I made a sleeping bag on the floor by the side of their bed and slept there until morning.

Nothing like that ever happened to me again, I do believe it was a Ghost.

The second – a much nicer experience happened to me when I was about 19 years old. I was living, working and studying in Chelmsford and times were hard, I was on my own and money was so tight My father had passed away a year before and things were not good. My family were struggling financially and not in a position to help me. My wages went on rent and living costs so all my food money came from tips at work. So if people did not tip me I did not eat (always tip your serving staff). Anyway one day I was walking down the street and I had it in my mind that I would go to the cash point and get £10. So I was walking remembering all the things I had to do including getting this money. Then suddenly the wind blew and a £10 note flew right into my face. It literally landed on my cheek.  It was the strangest thing to ever happen to me.  I looked all around and there was no one in the street, nowhere the money could have came from, it was so strange.

I believe that was a gift from my Daddy.

Has anything spooky every happened to you?