Homeless for the night

On Friday night I slept out in the centre of Sheffield with three mates, Andrew, Cam, and Harry. We did this to raise much needed funds — and awareness — for the Cathedral Archer Project, a charity which does brilliant work to support homeless and vulnerable people.

This ‘Sleep Out’ challenge was pretty simple — put yourself in the place of a homeless person and sleep outside for one night.

We rocked up at Sheffield Cathedral at 7pm, had a intro talk from the organisers and that was it. Time to get outside.

Fuck me, it was miserable.

It rained from the get go and, although the forecast snow didn’t fall, it was freezing. I was fairly dry as I’d brought a bivvy bag, but was so cold, even with five layers on. I’m not sure if it dropped below zero degrees in the night, but it certainly felt like it.

It rained all night and more than half the people moved inside the cathedral, which was sensible. There was no chance of that for me, so I was out all night. Harry spent the night in the pissing rain in just sleeping bag. Take a bow sunshine.

One thing that really surprised me was the noise. Trams, lorries, people. Constant noise, all night long.

I barely got any sleep and was happy when they called us in at 5.30am for the end of the event. I was back home before my wife and kids and woke and gave them an extra tight cuddle.

I’d recommend anyone giving it a go. It’ll make you take a step back and think. Things have been playing on my mind a lot this weekend, maybe more with the snow that’s fallen. There’s not a chance I’d cope being homeless and it’s essential that charities like Cathedral Archer Project exist to help those who are less fortunate.

Thank you to everyone that has donated, we’re blown away by your generosity. We’ve raised over £1,600, and if you’d like to add a few quid in we’d be really grateful. You can donate on our JustGiving page.

I took a few photos, the quality are shit, but you’ll get the idea.

Originally published at http://jonrhodes.me on 19 March 2018. I’m turning it off soon and copying across some of the articles I enjoyed writing.