Every year Radio4 do a Christmas Appeal and this year it's the homeless charity "The Connection" at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London.
I just watched the video below, a 2min slideshow of pictures taken by one of the young men they've helped, 24 year old Jamie, and it made me think about something which surprised me when I first started working with or talking to homeless people...
It's not always the immediately obvious things which get to people sleeping rough in the end. We all know that if you're homeless, you don't have a toilet, you don't have a bed, you don't haave a front door etc... and can perhaps envisage how horrible and inhuman that can feel.
But it's easy to omit the things we barely notice. Mirrors for example. These people can go months without seeing their own reflection. Most passersby look straight through them, used to seeing the slug-like sleeping bags marooned on the pavement. But add to that not being able to look in a mirror, to have that little confirmation of 'yes, I exist, and this is me, with crooked teeth or a mole on my cheek.' Just invisibility, even to your own eyes.
I remember a long time ago talking to a couple of old men, who'd been homeless on and off for longer than I'd been alive, about how no one knew their names. Nobody had a) asked them their name and b) had cause to repeat that word back to them, for a very, very long time. What do you become without your name and your face?
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