Live to Love

The London Group of Live to Love met on January 17th 2010 in the centre of the city, near Victoria train station to provide food, hot drinks, food packs and clothes to homeless in the area.

It was already dark when we arrived at 5.30pm, after having prepared the food. The evening was dry and clear, and even though the worst of the cold weather had past it was still really quite cold.

It wasn’t hard to feel compassion for the homeless huddled in the shop doorways facing potentially another night outside in freezing temperatures – despite the fact that many charity groups open extra temporary hostels during the bad weather.

We set up our table, offering teas and coffees, vegetable stew, and jacket potatoes with cheese. Initially there seemed to be very few people around, but after a few minutes, more and more people started appearing, including quite a few young people. Everybody was interested in getting a hot drink and most people were also happy to have some hot food. However, it seemed that the real interest was in the clothes we had to offer – there were some thick jumpers and body warmers etc. Quite a few people asked if we had sleeping bags or blankets – which unfortunately we didn’t have. Several people who came to us that evening also seemed to enjoy just having somebody to talk to and share their story with. It was touching how polite and grateful everybody was to us. I think from our side we felt grateful to have the chance to offer a little bit of help and goodwill.

Next time we aim to collect more sleeping bags and blankets to distribute, as well as offering hot food and drinks.