literally another aussie in london

jrod helps the homeless part 3

Finally everyone left the kitchen, probably because there was real work to do, and the head cook told me all about how Christians always help Muslims, but Muslims never help Christians, I tried to tell her this was not true, well I did tell her it was not true, what a waste of breath that was.

We started feeding them after that, and that went well. One guy came in with a full plate, put it in the bin, and asked for another plate, we gave it to him, later I saw him throw that out too.

A few asked for seconds, the older ones just wanted the meat or the vegetables. One guy came in to complain about the salt, he didn’t like sea salt, the other shelter had proper salt. I resisted any urge I had to tell him to fuck off to the other shelter.

When everyone had finished, I took out Apple pies, it would be fair to say that they no one really wanted them.  3 of the 12 or 13 ate them.

The one decision I made was the apple pies, and it failed, perhaps if I kneeled before Jesus more often I would not made such a mistake.

It was ok though, as there were heaps of “helpers” in the kitchen at that time, so they ate the pies.

This should have been the easiest part of the night, the cooking serving, and cleaning had been done, but the Christians wanted to give me a show, and a show they did give me a show.

It all started with discussions over the fact their church needs a new Priest. A loud red haired lady (3 pies) started it off saying that she wanted the young priest who had filled in a few times, because he was ‘well fit’.

The head cook chipped in that she didn’t care who it was as long as it was a man.

The forewoman, proving she did have some intelligence, said she would love it if it was a strong black woman was the priest as a role model to her children.

She was then abused by pretty much everyone in the room, luckily this quickly turned to mocking her opinion. She deserved everything she got though, as she was eating the spaghetti in the kitchen, even though she was the person who said that I wasn’t within the spirit by not eating with them.

Then the African women started saying that if you don’t want a woman as priest, you must vote, as we cannot let this happen.

Someone decided to chip in with, “what about a transsexual priest”, which actually started the African women shrieking instead of talking.

That died down, and red haired three pie woman put in her two cents, “what about a Chinese Priest, Father Chong, Father Ching Chang Chongy”.

I know.

And everyone laughed, well except me and the forewoman, she was too busy eating her hypocritical spaghetti.

The father Chong shtick went on for about 15 minutes, I shit you not.

It only stopped when the gentleman greeter popped his head in to say he was off. When he left the forewoman said that he had greeted two people, and then gone off for the best part of two hours to get one of the people foot cream.

They all went on about how useless he had been, even though for the whole time we were there, there was generally between 5 and 10 people in the kitchen, that could have gone in and helped.

The night was almost over now, just had to wait for the over night sleepers to turn up and relieve me.

There were a painfully middle class couple, who, I promise, brought their whole duvet set, mauve if I’m not mistaken, two pillows per person, and a spare blanket.

Generally the people who stay over night sleep in the same room as the homeless, to look over everyone and make sure there is no problem.

This couple slept locked up right in the office, which mean them being there was mostly a ceremonial position, as they couldn’t really overlook anyone.

When they got there I pissed off quick, I couldn’t wait to get away from these people.

I was only there for 3 and a half hours, yet by reading this you would think it was a year long adventure.

I did come away with a two things, Church going Christians really are as annoying, racist, sexist and full of themselves as I always thought they would be, and that homeless people are pretty well dressed.

The next week I had to come back and sleep over night, I was not looking forward to it.

Surprisingly.

TBC…

March 12, 2009 Posted by Jrod | living in london | christians, food, homeless | 2 Comments