A tramp’s good food guide
Monday – Christ Church, Newmarket Road (Low Anglican). Volunteers include many students. Picked up ‘new’ pyjamas for nothing. Very good food. Slept well in sleeping bag, apart from noisy, drunken Poles who talked all through the night.
Tuesday – Wesley Methodist Church. Very well organised. Team leader named Andrew, ex-priest, who has an eye for details. Meal held up by health-andsafety woman, much to Andrew’s disgust. Very good food when it finally arrived, especially pudding! Black Forest gâteau with ice cream. Noisier Pole, Greg, banned! Thank God.
Wednesday – Castle Street Methodist Church. Again, very well organised with almost military precision. (Volunteers standing by to show us to our sleeping bags.) I have to hand it to the Methodists.
Thursday – Alternate Thursdays: St Mary the Great, big Anglican Church in town centre. Curate (former headmaster) in charge. Got ‘headmaster’ written all over him – super-efficient. Begged me to come to hear him preach. Good food.
Friday – Olem – Our Lady and the English Martyrs Roman Catholic church. Chaotic. Sleeping bags not put out till after meal. I’m given one right next to the kitchen, in which three young volunteers gossip all night long. So I get no sleep.
Saturday – St Philip’s. Middle-of-theroad Anglican. A very long walk down Mill Road but worth it when you get there. Health-and-safety turned up again, much to everyone’s irritation. (Food late.) A lot of volunteers from St Benet’s, oldest church (oldest building) in Cambridge, which has no kitchen and no room for sleeping bags – so can’t join the scheme. Good food; slept well.
Sunday – St Paul’s, untypical Anglican. HQ of Cambridge Churches Homeless Project. When I ask why the scheme doesn’t run all year, they say they don’t have enough money. They do an excellent job.
I sleep well, given the difficult circumstances.