A Day in the Time of Snow

Today, in the time of snow, a typical mixed-up day. I got up very late, as usual, having stayed up far too late reading online (www.kurtsaxon.com, oddly unavailable today) an account of the Roman circus, which reminded me in its institutionalised horror of the Nazi holocaust. It always seems extraordinary to me that promoters of the British Empire consciously modelled themselves on the supposedly civilised Romans.

After several hours wallowing in the appalling excesses of the arena, at 3:30 am I really have to go to bed. But first, I open the front door to check for the forecast added snow, which has not come. But the temperature is supposed to be minus 10, and I want to experience that. I put on my nasty blue Domino's Pizzas jacket, which is however quite warm, and set off toward the park.

Outside, it is "snowlight", not daylight, but not dark either, the street lights and the half-moon reflected and dissapated on the snow everywhere about, filling the air with a kind of white light, which seems more like an artificial sun than anything natural. I walk in the quiet, punctuated by occasional cars whose sounds die away at once in the enwrapping blankets of snow, in a way which serves to emphasise rather than break the totality of the silence.

After two minutes, I find that the chill is entering my body in a quite novel way, quite unlike the miserable damp we know so well - I was going to say, that we're used to, but actually we never get accustomed to it. This cold feels like something altogether harder, chilling the skin of my legs inside their thermals, tightening all my muscles, making my chest constrict, making my breathing seeming hard yet shallow, producing huge clouds of exhalation; I have the feeling that much exposure to this could become extremely uncomfortable, and without adequate protection surely life-threatening, and return home after a few minutes.

How many people are sleeping rough tonight? The Christian night shelter for (boaztrust.org.uk) destitute asylum-seekers will be well-needed right now, though scarcely warm. How many alcoholics and drug-users and ex-prisoners and veterans and mentally-ill and victims of violence have fallen through the safety nets again tonight? and how many people shiver in half-heated homes, worrying about bills, or even in homes where the heating is off?

And then I remember reading somewhere that the Russian POWs that constructed one of the early death camps in Poland were forced to sleep in the open through the winter - none of them survived.

And with these thoughts I go to bed, my muscles still tight from the cold, and sleep uncomfortably, waking not warmed through as usual.

I got up feeling rather depressed. I'm stressed about having to go to work, driving on sheets of ice late at night, and I feel that I'm letting my days pass without really doing anything. I've got my tax return to do, if I can ever negotiate my way through the "government gateway" to get on to the inland revenue website, I need to sort out some problems with the car, I need money for the house and more money.......

After breakfast, Helen called to say she was coming, and also Sakina's friend Jamila. I went to collect Jamila from the bus stop, and met Helen on her way. Helen just had some minor paperwork things for me to explain, notably good news about tax credits - the first time anyone I know without kids has actually got anything, and well deserved for someone that works hard to support themselves in spite of all kind of bureaucratic obstacles.

Tax credits really are the most unworkable system, being worked out on an annual basis, they only really work for those on steady incomes, and although they are amazingly expensive, they provide no incentive to work as no-one knows how much if anything they'll get.

Helen also had something else for me, a repayment of £200 I'd lent her to help her furnish her flat, which I was very grateful for; and I had something for her as well, a set of thermals to help her cope with her freezing flat, and with her early morning trek to work.

Jamila, who recognised me from before somewhere, truned out to be about thirty years old, her face looking very round by the way she wrapped her scarf around her, with very good English, and generally quite confident. She's been given status after nine years being pushed from pillar to post within the asylum system; now she is homeless, and still not got any benefits after two months. I lend her £40 . The council agree she is homeless, and a local resident, but have assessed her as "not vulnerable", therefore they have no duty to accommodate her, she should just find private rented accommodation, though she has no income and no deposit. She has been the rounds of Refugee Action, Women's Direct Access hostel, Town Hall, Law Centre - it feels like they all play pass the parcel, refer you on to one another, promise to call back, but never do....... And of course with the holiday period, and the weather, you've got to understand, not a good time........ Indeed, not a good time to be homeless. She's been staying with a friend, who's now moved to Birmingham, she's on the edge of sleeping outdoors, in minus ten, but she's not vulnerable. Perhaps if they pick her up dead, she will after all be found to be vulnerable.

I make a series of phone calls, find a possible hostel place in Salford, but not available immediately, and then get her an appointment at Shelter. I'm wary of simply passing her on to another agency to duplicate the work and wear out the client's patience; I write out a summary of all the relevant information for her to take in with her, and rather than just giving her the address and letting her get on with it, as they are in a tiny side street awkward to find, I take her there, grinding through nightmarish traffic: it seems that, after a few days of avoiding the roads, people have decided they can't put it off any longer, and the roads are heaving.

Taking her makes me late for my next appointment, or rather even later, they having already called me twice to know if or when I'm coming, but spending this time with the client is important in my mind: she talks about the nine years of her life in the asylum system, she tells me about her studying, we talk about mutual friends, all moving on with their lives; and the message in all this is, that I understand something about her life, that I respect her, she can trust me, she needn't feel alone and unsupported; and that, if all else fails, there's a place for her here, sharing a room, but where she can stay in safety and warmth and respect; and beyond that, that at the end of this process, life can be OK, that soon she can think about seeing her family again, and all this time will be behind her.

My next appointment is with my "smiley Somalis", a family I go to to help out with the kids' schoolwork. I take some credit for reversing the educational failure of the younger two; for the oldest one, we left it too late, but still I believe she has potential, and I have in part transmitted that faith to her. This was supposed to be a ten-minute visit just to glance over something, but it took half an hour to get there, then ten minutes turned to twenty, then their Mum called from the GP, where the youngest needed to go to the hospital, but there were no taxis because of the weather, and so, of course, I delivered them through more horrendous traffic, with work looming ahead, and the sick realisation I'd had no lunch.

I dropped them off, fot back into the trudging traffic, beginning to sicken with headache, feeling pale and cold, and desperate for a toilet. If I miss food, I can become very sick; I didn't have my migraine tablets with me. When I'm like this, it's hard to think clearly; but I had to concentrate on the icy road and the grinding traffic.

With difficulty, I stopped to use a toilet; made a decision to go to Chorlton for paracetamol, then coffee and food, even though it'd make me late for work; made an assessment that I'd probably be to ill to work anyway; and then took a call from Jamila, for some reason Shelter need my address.

After half an hour, gratefully, wearily, I arrived at Chorlton, bought some headache tablets and had one in the shop, and got to my haven, my favourite coffee bar, white and shaking. The beautiful Beth told me there was no food today; I was grateful to be allowed to buy a sandwich in a shop and sit there eating it with my coffee. Amazingly, the food and the tablet, the warmth and the music, the highly sugared coffee and the beautiful Beth, came in the nick of time to save me from a hunger crisis; after an hour I was well enough to make my way to work, though forty minutes late.

At Domino's Pizzas, there were a few drivers making boxes - not too busy just yet, then. I asked the manager if he needed me, he let me go, and I was elated. The point was, I'd made myself available, though late, which feels much more positive and less whingey than calling in absent; and they know, my sober assessment is that, although I really need the money, it's just not worth driving in these conditions; only last night one of our drivers slid into a bus.

So I was soon back home, checking my emails, and then unexpectedly Sakina appeared. Yesterday, she had talked about another girl Meseret, coming back to life now after a recent bereavement, "like a new flower"; and so I showed her the poem "Flowers of Africa" which I'd written about that bereavement, patiently explaining the words which were still beyond her grasp.

Today, Sakina tells me she hardly slept last night, the poem touched her too close, the words

the mothers and the fathers weep,
the children sleep, if sleep, all alone,
and we, we keep our hearts of stone

kept making her think of her own mother's tears, and our own tears called out to each other. I apologised to Sakina, feeling it was wrong to provoke her emotions so casually, but she was very clear that on the contrary she highly appreciated my words; sometimes, the right words heard from someone else amplify and validate one's own experiences, give them a kind of reality and truth separate from intangible feelings.

So, with Sakina I ate and ate again, and fully dispelled my sickness, and felt appreciated and cared for, and weariness turned to euphoria.

A good first day for this new blog.