Thread by @RoadsideMum

With all the rhetoric about scroungers living off fountains of welfare state cash and still grasping for free this and free that, soup kitchens, whatever... I decided to test one out.

Happened I parked my car beside one during opening hours and I ain't any kind of minted, so...

First thing was, me and the preteen (the one we call N here) were immediately out of place.

We shouldn't be. Lord knows we are skint enough for almost any poverty metric to count us, including "food insecure" and "free school meals", so we aren't taking the piss...

Also, this particular place isn't technically a soup kitchen, but the difference is mostly detail. What you need to know is it's "open to all" (not just the literally penniless), and it's Christian ethos (we are Christians, as it happens) so it should have been fine?

The building was presentable enough, clean, sturdy chairs/ tables, a counter offering a hot drink and some food.

We sorted out our order and sat down. The man serving said he'd bring it over, maybe because I was using the wheelchair?

I browsed some leaflets on the wall...

What struck me is the content of the leaflets.

I live in a *nice* place. I was lucky. Rent is affordable, landlord seems reasonable (yeah I know!), the place looks nice, quiet, friendly... no leaflets for any services where I live... some for the other side of town tho...

You can choose between leaflets for the foodbank, the advocacy service for getting your correct legal entitlement for benefits, or the Samaritans. There's a baby bank a little further away, or an old people's walking & social club. Mainly though, it's about how to not die...

I wondered as we went in if I was gonna have access issues. It's a charity type thing after all. They may very well not own the building. It may be temporary. You can't tell...

Needn't have spent any time on such thoughts- of 10 ish patrons, all but 2 appeared to be disabled...

And one of them was a baby of about 10 months!

He was accompanied by who I can only guess might have been Mum and Grandma. Grandma moves awkwardly with a wheeled walking frame, but it fits her properly. It's a bright colour and looks well maintained.

Mum looked burned out...

Better end of the budget range pushchair, with the tilting seat that makes it look like a car seat system but it could well not be. It might have been on it's second child. If it was it had been cleaned regularly...

I fear Mum hadn't been cleaned nearly as regularly. Lost in an oversized magenta hoody, with tangled mahogany dyed hair, and grown out roots, Mum barely looked up.

You will think I made it up but they about when Mum's next getting money (ages) and how she's short on electric...

Gran said "as long as he's alright", gesturing to baby, "that's what I care about, have you got milk for him". Mum visibly sank lower as she gesticulated with her hands explaining "well I have but I won't if the electric goes out". Gran brushed it off.

Mum dropped further.

A man of 60ish sat alone with his back to everyone but us, 90° to his side.

Pock marks.

I know ruined skin when I see it. What exactly ruined it isn't my business.

Dirty jeans. Walking boots. Faded black hoody. Rough sleeping maybe? Or manual work?

He ate quickly & left.

On the way in I had overtaken a woman using a cheap, foldable manual/attendant controlled wheelchair, she was paused in the street outside to text, so I swept by.

As she came in the door, I could see she pulled it with her foot. She didn't look like she was comfortable there...

I wondered if her mobility issue was temporary, as those wheelchairs are so cheap, so basic, so uncomfortable, that no one with options would select to use one long.

They're the wheelchair users equivalent of hay bale seating at events. It's no one's first choice but it's cheap.

Then I reminded myself to check my fucking privilege because even one of those is disturbingly much, if you can't crowd fund (and I resent that anyone has to crowd fund).

She may actually just have no more livable options. This is how it is for tens of thousands of us now.

She was meeting what might have been friends- 2 other women and a man. One was a woman on double crutches (standard NHS aluminium kind).

The other appeared to be with the man. She's the other person I don't think appeared to be living with a disability...

She was rough though. Easy to imagine she might have previously been in trouble with the law or she might be quite comfortable with starting/finishing a street brawl.

I'm not referencing the tracksuit or the pony tail when I say this, it's the expression you have to look at.

Two staff looked put together. A man, his shirt collar visible through a pullover neck and a lady in a mint green Mountain Warehouse sweatshirt, with the standard bobbed hair/ fringe combo anyone who's met church outreach teams will instantly recognise. Middle class people.

I asked someone working if we could have a cloth to wipe a mark off my table (the ring from under my mug). He said he would at the end. I said could I do it now though as it's where I rest my arm and I don't want to mark my top. He didn't understand. We got there in the end.

In all I think I saw 4 members of staff with what appeared to be learning difficulties. All perfectly able at their own station, on rhe till or making food, or clearing up, even if the cloth request took a moment to make sense.

After a while a woman stood up from a table and came over to collect the crockery. I went with it. "I keep forgetting I am not working" she said as she lent over the table "but I will take them over to help out".

There's no nice way to say this- she stank. Filthy nails too.

Usually when the foghorns of punching down open their mouths on the "living the life of Riley on handouts" thing, if pushed, they're forced to admit they don't actually go to such places, where tiny servings of cheapest own brand snacks are served by passive smiling dogooders...

Occasionally you will get someone who claims to "know" what they are talking about making such verbal assaults on reality.

They're lying.

What I've just described to you is so typical as to be painful. In every tweet I feel like imploring you that I did really see this today...

Anyone who works in survival level provision, even if it's dressed up as "all welcome", will tell you the same.

The people using these "handout" services, relying on them in fact, aren't taking the piss. They are experiencing complex and layered socioeconomic disadvantages...

I mentioned the food... It's almost nothing. My kids last ate that size a meal when they were 7 or 8. I woukd be surprised if the cost of production at home would be 50p a portion.

These are people for whom 50p is highly important. Would you chuck in your job to live like that?

As we walked away I asked N "would you eat there again"? N said no. The reason. "I feel like we didn't belong. I feel like they are all doing way worse than us".

N is right, of course, because I currently retain the ability to fund my own lunch.

This is the UK in 2023.