Sometimes the smallest and almost insignificant actions we take can have a dramatic impact on others and in my particular case, on someone I didn’t even know! Read on…..

This morning, having paid for my petrol i was walking back to my car when a woman stopped me and said she recognised me but I most likely did not recognise her. She went on to say that 5 years earlier I had been walking along the Morledge in the city centre and was asked for ‘any small change’ by a woman who had been homeless and was quite hungry. For reasons only she will know, she had left her family a few days earlier and one thing after the other led to her being homeless.  Apparently, i walked straight past her then walked back and gave her 50p. Adding this to other change, she went and got a sandwich and a drink and sat on a bench nearby where she decided to think.

Being a disabled person, people remember me by my ‘unique walk’. This woman remembered instantly in the petrol station years later and said that she felt strange taking money from a person who she felt was also disadvantaged although not through homelessness but by being disabled. She decided to go home a few hours later and decided to face her demons. Apparently things did not work out at home and she moved in with friends – but was no longer homeless. Today she has a job in a supermarket and is thankful she did not spend any further time ‘roughing it’ as she described.