My life fell apart in a week but charity helped me off streets
ROGER HAS REKINDLED LOVE FOR ART TO HELP HIM CONQUER ALCOHOLISM
WHEN Roger Williamson was in his late teens, he had finished an engineering apprenticeship and an art course.
He had a decision to make – pursue art full time, or choose a career which would provide him with a salary and a steady income.
Roger chose the safe option and went into business. But it was an option that, 30 years later, would see him homeless on the streets of Nottingham.
Roger was working 80 hours a week running a metal finishing company. Then, in 2018, his relationship broke down and it all fell apart.
“I crashed my car, lost the business and ended up homeless within about the space of a week,” he says.
Functioning alcoholism, which equated to “a few before bed,” descended into a complete addiction. Days consisted of drinking a litre of vodka and “walking for miles”.
He ended up sleeping under a tree on the banks of the River Trent. When he wasn’t hiking around the city, he would rest there, in the cold summer night air.
It was there that he “used a life” when the very tree providing his shelter fell down while he was in town. Had he been there, he would have been dead.
“It would’ve squashed my head and crushed me. It landed exactly where I was laying,” explains Roger.
One day, one of his walks led him to The Friary on Musters Road in West Bridgford. He got there on a Thursday – but it was closed.
Luckily, Ann Bremner, who had founded the organisation 30 years earlier in 1988, was around. She let him in for a shower and provided him with some new shoes.
A few weeks later, Ann gave him a watch, so he wouldn’t miss his job centre appointments. It meant he no longer had to rely on the chiming bells of city churches or the clocks at tram stops to tell the time.
The Friary also provided him with clothes, food and a place to shave. The organisation helped him “immensely,” says Roger.
He later found accommodation through homeless charity Framework and made it off the streets. But it turned out his near miss with the tree was not to be his only brush with death.
Roger ended up in hospital in 2020, hallucinating and suffering from delirium tremens – severe alcohol withdrawal – when he attempted to give up drinking. Luckily, he pulled through, and he has not drunk since.
The encounter provided the impetus that Roger, then in his late 40s, needed to finally turn his life back around. It was a new start. Three years on, its no longer 12-hour days that Roger sets his mind to. Instead, he has revisited the art that he knew he had a knack for all those years ago – and realised his talent had been wasted this whole time.
His newfound spare time means he finally has the chance to “reexplore” his skills. It might not end up being a career, though it would be “lovely if it takes off”. “Artists are usually only really famous after they’re dead”, quipped Roger – but it’s not about that for the 51-yearold, who now lives in the Arboretum.
“I’m not bothered about earning money from it,” he says. “It’s very therapeutic and it helps me not thinking about drinking any more. I do get commissions now – people are starting to ask me to do things. But I don’t charge a lot. I’m more interested in the charity side and giving a bit back.”
He dabbled in airbrushing before setting his sights on his first oil painting, which he is now raffling off to raise money for the Friary. He feels it is the least he can do to give back to the people who, in some ways, saved his life.
“They’re a fantastic service,” says Roger. “I can’t fault them. Ann is an angel. I don’t think she’s had a day off in 30 years.”
You can donate to The Friary and enter the raffle at justgiving.com (search for Roger Williamson).