The Festival Hall ' Haven and Home

The Festival Hall ' Haven and Home

As a writer of poetry and songs I came to write in London around August 1987 . I discovered the Poetry Library on the top level of the Festival Hall . There was always plenty of things for me to browse through in there .

Outside the South bank centre I spent a lot of time watching buses and cars all arriving and departing . Most places around the South Bank of the Thames were interesting and inspiring . Some days there would be movie crews filming there and other days skateboarders and buskers treading their way through the waves of people traffic . There was always so much happening if you blinked for a moment you might miss something about life on the Thames .

After being robbed from the place where I was staying in London I suddenly became a nobody . I had no ID because all my papers, documents and money were taken . There was I in London with no friends , no family and no job I was forced to live rough for a while . I was able to make contact with Australia House about my situation and was told to reapply for my Australian passport . During this period I had made the Festival Hall my home . I spend most of the daylight hours in there either listening to the day time concerts or reading in the Poetry Library . I must say I found the South Bank Centre far more appealing than Trafalgar square or the West End . It inspired me to write .
There were tourists sight seeing and orchestras overspilling the concert halls with streams of money flowing behind their productions .
As I waited for my new documents and paperwork to arrive from Canberra I found what I thought was my sanctuary from the empty derelict houses and the cardboard city shelter at Waterloo . I was a resident with the Salvation Army refuge on the Blackfriars Road for a while and then a resident of the parks and streets .

Sleeping rough in London is not safe . Once you find safe sanctuary it becomes your favourite little haven , for me it was the South Bank Centre and the grounds around the Festival Hall .
I was homeless in London for the majority of this time but my sanctuary from the daily banter was the South Bank centre .

I loved to write poems and little stories as I sat around the festival hall .
Some of these poems became songs and I went busking them around the South Bank Centre everyday .
One day on my wayback from the Festival Hall to Blackfriars Road I passed through Waterloo station and found myself sitting down with the homeless people in Cardboard City . I spoke to them at length about the exploitation of the unemployed . Some of them explained to me their personal tragic stories . More and more people were drawn to London hoping to find a job .
There was not enough accommodation for the million who were homeless in 1989 around London .
I met Jimmy Taylor who told me about a place he had come across near The Oval Tube Station . There was Digby and a few others had also looked at the site .Originally they were just going to strip it but due to the bashings recently and the cold weather it was decided to consider moving about a hundred of us homeless into the squat . The word was passed around and a hundred were chosen from the street to occupy the derelict Belgrave Hospital on Kennington Road . I was one of those to move in but even still I continued to spend much of my time in the Festival Hall . It was a special place for me .

It was 1990 when I was able to get my Australian passport back and had earned the funds required to get me back to Sydney . During this time my Father had died in Sydney .
I have never forgotten a special place in London called The Festival Hall .

By Paul McCann

http://www.lovethefestivalhall.org.uk/80_paul.htm