For whom the bells toll ... they toll for me

Tony is homeless and he isn't very happy.

He's turned up outside Sheffield Cathedral at his usual spot and there are around 30 rather nice middle class people in sleeping bags on his patch.

Ironically they've come to help the homeless.

They have each paid 100 to join The Big Sleep Out, raise cash and let the rest of the city know there is a real problem with people sleeping rough in Sheffield.

So Tony ambles off chuntering to himself and looking for somewhere else to bed down.

His can of Special Brew will help him forget, as it helps him and many like him, forget everything bad that happened to them.

Until the next day.

It is that cycle of addictive, destructive behaviour that the Archer Project, a Sheffield Cathedral-based programme for the homeless, seeks to break and replace with self-respect and somewhere to live.

James is an alcoholic who self-harms.

Nine months ago he was on the verge of recovery and about to start volunteering to help to the project.

Now he is back in the cycle of drinking and violence.

"You would not think it was the same person," said Tim Renshaw, Archer Project co-ordinator.

"Nine months ago he was doing really well. Then something goes wrong in his emotional life and he's back down again. It's a real shame."

Right now James is looking menacing and wanting to know why he can't join the group sleeping on the grass.

"Why can't we come in there? We are the homeless ones not them, what's going on?"

Tim Renshaw says calmly: "If you really are determined to come in here you can, but just for tonight I'm asking you not to."

James is disarmed by Tim's tactics and walks away to join a group of young street drinkers on a bench nearby - the next generation of homeless?

The pattern of behaviour is already taking shape.

"Alcohol and drugs change people's lives and personalities, when you see it enough times you can see that it is an illness," said Tim. "People change unbelievably, they lose themselves."

Paul lost himself years ago.

He was a social worker who used amphetamines to get him through a difficult time in his life and became addicted.

Now he is a street drinker who lives rough.

"I have died twice," says Paul to the gathering on the grass. "I died twice and had to be resuscitated.

"I messed my life up and I know I did. I have done all sorts of drugs and here I am now an alcoholic," he said in a voice tinged with sadness.

"He's a lovely bloke," said Tim Renshaw. "He's used up two lives really. Sometimes he talks positively about his life, other times he just wants it to end. We estimate that there are here are at least 20 people living rough in Sheffield city centre at the moment.

“For most there is a pattern of abusive parents, relationship breakdown or crisis in their lives and drug or alcohol abuse, background plays a big part, but sometimes small successes can turn it round again.”

Back outside the Cathedral it was more lying-awake-rough than sleeping rough.

For the non-addicted a double Special Brew nightcap might have been a good idea.

The last time I slept under the stars was behind a toilet block in Stoke after getting stranded hitch-hiking home from Wales when I was 15. Now it’s not easy for a middle-aged, quilt-loving wimp to get to kip with a cool summer breeze blowing in his face, bats flying overhead and a sudden recall that rats come out at night. Then there were the bells.

I half expected trouble with the real homeless, I anticipated rain, cold weather, tram, bus and drunks’ noise but not the cathedral bells.

Four times an hour all night those beauties chimed - or at least a tape recording did. We were like chrysalis Quasimodos hunched in our sleeping bags begging for morning to come.

Which is what homeless people do most nights and is why, despite the unlikely alliance of cynicism between the homeless themselves and their harshest most dracononian critics, nights like this one are worthwhile.

If nothing else it raised 8,000 to help feed, clothe and keep clean someone living rough. It helps to give them access to medical help, counselling and rehabilitation.

The only people who can change the lives of the homeless are the homeless themselves. Sometimes that happens. Until it does it’s organisations like the Archer Project that help keep them alive.

n If you would like to make a donation send a cheque payable to The Cathedral Archer Project to THE BIG SLEEP OUT, Sheffield Cathedral, Sheffield S1 1HA.