Number 4 My Lovely Life

My lovely life. That I appreciate it. That I get how lucky I am. That I didn't choose alcohol as my drug of choice. Before I woke up.
That I have the time and money to 'do' the Artist's Way and take my creative self on 'creative dates'. Where I pass homeless men on the streets, sitting on the streets in this weather. One older man standing like a statue in the door of a church. His red bulbous nose turning blue. Not moving, no expression, not even begging. Still there, two hours later, as I'm walking home from the Moscow ballet, thinking that the theatre was chilly tonight.

When I stop and give a young man some money, he's sitting on pack ice, it's snowing, his pallor is blue as a corpse, and I ask him "You're not going to sit here all night are you? and he says, "Oh no, I go and sleep in the car park out of the weather.
He'll die.
"Is there not a shelter you can go to?
He shakes his head, "They closed two of them and the other one is fully booked.
I don't know what to say to him. 'Good luck' doesn't seem to cover what he needs.
I want to get away, before I take him home. Coz then what? What can I do?
As I'm walking home I think if it was me, I'd break in to council offices, squat there, make a fire with their paperwork, heat myself until I was in jail or got a flat. If I was going to have to live rough, I'd be a bandit, live in a cave, take books and chairs out the library to burn, wreck the council, die frozen to their doorstep. Something. Anything.

The Glasgow City Council stopped the Christmas Eve soup kitchen because it was being run out of a church hall that didn't comply to standards for food preparation.