Another Good Reason To Live

Another Good Reason To Live
By Paul McCann

I had gone to London for a holiday and booked into St Pauls youth hostel in Carter Lane not far from St Pauls Cathedral . After I put my bag underneath the bed, I decided to do a little sightseeing so off I went form a walk around Charing Cross where I purchased a six-string guitar . I thought it might be a good idea to try busking some original songs I had written . I began playing and singing in a side alley in the West End and without saying too much about the experience I realised the people of London were a tough crowd to please , I made my way to the Savoy Hotel and played there for a while with a better response and after a few hours IO returned to the youth hostel to discover the bag I placed under the bed had gone missing . In the bag was all my money , my passport , all my ATM cards , other forms of ID and all my clothes . 
I reported the incident to the staff at the youth hostel and then the police however nothing could be done and as I had no money to pay for my accommodation , I was asked to leave . 
So off I went onto the streets like a beggar with no money , no food , no clothes , no friends or family . After sleeping rough for a while , hungry and cold I was collected by members of the Salvation army from Blackfriars . I was unconscious when they found me and not in a good state .  Luckily after some rest and food I was able to stand on my feet and walk again . 
I explained what had happened and they managed to get me some income support from the government . After I regained my strength, I returned to Belfast my hometown . I had been away for some years and most of my friends had either been killed or had moved away to start a new life elsewhere . 
Not knowing many people, I was homeless again and was unable to find a job because there were no jobs to find .
I was given a place to live in a shelter house that the Simon Community had in  Haypark avenue .
Most days I would go looking for work and one afternoon while I was wandering around the back streets of the Ormeau Road  .a car stopped and four young men pulled me and out me in the back seat between them . Two others were in the front of the car , they drove to a derelict post office and took me up a set of stairs to a room with a sofa and some chairs . They produced a handgun and started to ask many questions about who I was and what I was doing there . As they hadn’t seen my face before they suspected me of working as an undercover Brit . One of the gangs took the handgun and with a pillow over the end of the barrel he pulled the trigger . The gun failed to fire . 
They told me I couldn’t be condemned to die twice and they let me go free . From that moment I realised there was a reason I lived to tell the tale . That gave me a lot of encouragement and a purpose to what I now had chosen to do . I wanted to go busking around Ireland and sing and play the songs I had written to people in all the towns I could . After finding a job with a furniture manufacturer in Carrickfergus I saved up some money for my project . 
During the three year I was busking I met a lot of people and seen a lot of places , I had played my songs in some pubs and eventually was able to get back my passport to return to my family in Australia . In the darkest moments I experienced I kept seeing a glimmer of hope . That glimmer of hope kept me going . 
It was all I had but somehow I knew that things could get better and they did .

The End.