It’s a rainy morning in early November 2023. Warm for the time of year, but still it’s wet… very wet. Not an ideal time to find yourself homeless, or should I say almost homeless, but that’s the position I found myself in. I wasn’t under a bridge, huddled in a sleeping bag, drunk, stinking and dressed in rags… well not yet anyway. According to a letter I received from Flintshire Council. A letter entitled, ‘Notification under S63 of outcome of S62 assessment S66 Duty to help to prevent an applicant from becoming homeless’ (that’s really what it was called) I was threatened with being homeless. After much buck passing between various councils in North Wales, Flintshire had accepted the duty of care and I was now on their temporary accommodation register. Strange term, ‘temporary accommodation’. Isn’t all accommodation temporary? We won’t be there for ever. It didn’t feel like being on the verge of homelessness to me, but that’s what the official paperwork said so it had to be true.
I had travelled from The Glyn Ceiriog Valley that afternoon after moving out of a room I was renting in a country cottage. I had handed back the keys to my live in landlady without ceremony. “We will keep in touch?”, she asked. “Of course”, I replied. I don’t know why I said that. I had no intention of keeping in touch. You see, I had just been rather unceremoniously evicted. I don’t want you to think that this was a tale of desperation. I wasn’t feeling desperate, more like bewildered. “What the hell is going on with my life?”
So there I was in a hotel car park with a few belongings stuffed into a large suitcase and two plastic bags, staring at my new temporary accommodation. “Interesting name”, I thought, “The Holiday Inn”. It didn’t’ strike me as being a place designed for holidays, nor indeed for somewhere to live. It was part of a motorway service station. A site designed for those who are just passing through, so I suppose that the word ‘Inn’ is most descriptive of the place. Indeed it was difficult to do anything else but pass through. It was only easily accessible if you were travelling in a westerly direction and the motorway slip road was the only way in or out. Approaching from the other direction involved a drive for a mile or so to the nearest exit and then a joining the dual carriageway in the opposite direction. It was the same story if wanted to leave in that direction. It goes without saying that there was no train station and no bus stop. Lucky I still had the car. It was remote, like it’s own little self contained village. I glanced around to see what was in this village. A petrol station of course, the local shop (the shop on the forecourt of the petrol station), and two local restaurants (a MacDonalds drive through, and a 50s themed retro diner that sat proudly on the highest point of the site.). And then of course there was the ‘residential development’, the jewel in the crown of the site, the Holiday Inn itself.
So I took a few deep breathes and entered the lobby. As I approached the front desk I suddenly thought, “shit, I am Alan Partridge, have things got that bad?!. Later on I told a friend about this and he cheerfully asked, “Are you going to talk to the staff all the time and annoy them?” [Like Alan Partridge did]. I told him I had no intention, but laughed at the thought all the same. The thought of being like Alan Partridge did amuse me, and it’s worth pointing out that this was a temporary situation. Whilst serving out my notice of eviction I had secured the tenancy, with the help of the local council, in an shared house. Even thought I was moving into a shabby house of multiple occupation I was still being credit checked which seemed to be taking forever. So I was set to be staying at the holiday in for just a week or so, but of course my catastrophizing brain feared the worst, what if I’m stuck here for good, what if I fail the credit check? What then? Apart from the realisation that I had turned into a 90s sitcom character, I also realised that this was only the second time that I had ever signed a proper tenancy agreement in my entire life. It’s fair to say that official paperwork and myself have never enjoyed an intimate relationship. I’ve always fallen into casual agreements when it comes to housing. Flat sitting for a friend for a few months, that turned into seven years. Living in my wife’s house until we separated and I had to move out. You know, that sort of thing. Even at the age of 59 I felt naive about such wordly matters and feared the worse.
I checked in, and was greeted with an additional load of stuff for those of us who were not just ‘passing through’. There was an additional check in at night just to make sure that we were in as desperate a situation as we had claimed to be in. There was also a list of rules that included a ban on cooking in rooms and bringing in cooking appliances. It did strike me as a viable place to live in the long term, especially as I’ve always liked staying in hotel rooms. I stayed in them when I was touring a lot in the nineties and it always felt like you were on holiday. Even thought you were in some obscure town in Southern Austria on a work trip it was new and exciting. Apart from enjoying novelty, I’ve always found living out of a suitcase to be the easiest way of managing my life. You just had to get out of bed at the right time (usually late morning). That was the only worry. Everything else was taken care of. Most people seemed to work to be able to enjoy a holiday. My life at this time was the reverse. I worked to take a break from my life as a holiday.
But yet again I digress. Back to 2023.
In taking up my shiny new tenancy The Council would only help me if I produced a strict budget to see if I could live within my means. I’ve never been very good at doing budgets, nor indeed living within my means, so any credit check always throws the needle on my anxiety meter off the scale. Contemplating my budget and takeaway options I quickly changed my view about my new temporary home and it’s long term viability. Now the worry was that If I had to spend any amount of time here with just a MacDonalds and the OK American diner then I would cease to become the cheerful, optimistic looser Alan Partridge and would rapidly turn into Morgan Spurlock in supersize me. A junk food junkie, slowly committing suicide by binging on takeaways and beer.
I checked in, went to my room and then did something I never do. I fully unpacked. I never do that in a hotel room. Maybe, just maybe, reality was dawning. This was not like my touring days in the nineties. I went for a stroll around ‘the village’ contemplating both my life choices and my choices for dining out. For my first meal I decided to go with the American Diner, after all that would be my choice if I was just passing through. Feeling an increasing sense of worry I decided to gamify my experience even further by pretending I was in some sort of American noir type film. After all, it was now dark, it was drizzling and I was wearing a homburg hat (something I do often). Perfect conditions for such a conceit. I was a lone misfit. De Niro in Taxi Driver, or a hunched James Dean in the boulevard of broken dreams poster that I loved so much as a kid. I also decided at that point that if I was now living at The Holiday Inn then damn it I was going to take a holiday. Hadn’t had one of those for years. This would be an adventure. As I stared out at the drizzle it didn’t feel like much an adventure, or indeed a holiday, but I was determined to give it a go.
As it turned out the ‘adventure’ did only last for about one week and the rain relentlessly fell for the whole time in one of the wettest Novembers on record. Not the best time to be Alan Partridge on an enforced holiday in North Wales. Never the less, everyday I would take my car and drive out, (or drive up to the nearest exit and turn around, depending on the direction of travel) and visit various sea side towns. I’d sit in cafe’s, stare out at the rain, perhaps go for a short walk and through gritted teeth I would ‘have a holiday’. I then moved into my present home. An HMO in Flint.
Well, that’s another fine mess you’ve got me into ADHD brain.
Looking back I realise that my ADHD brain also got me through this minor ordeal as well. The situation I was in, well… it never quite sunk in. It never seemed quite real, almost like it was happening to someone else. Like my dreams when I often find myself starring in my own movie. And if there was ever a good time for my ADHD brain to refuse to face the reality of my situation it was now. Almost homeless. Running out of options and living in temporary accommodation at the Holiday Inn, A55 North Wales express way, Northop Hall Services, westbound…. By the way as fake 1950s American diners go The OK Diner really was OK.