Austerity and the Soup Kitchen

Austerity for us means taking a bit more care over shopping, avoiding waste, making the best of our allotment and the beds we've made in the garden, and cheap protein from our own eggs. A friend who works for a soup kitchen offers another perspective on what austerity means for some less fortunate.

She volunteers as a cook and server. The people who now come to the centre for a good meal have changed of late, the numbers increased. The dyed-in-the-wool street-livers are still there, and the homeless who are getting by on friends' sofas. But they have been joined by people who are simply struggling to find the money to feed themselves and more poignantly their children. We picked the last of our potatoes yesterday, they won't store so we will send a small sack to help the kitchen out. And when I look at our cupboards, there's plenty more that we can add to that.

Such a situation makes you think. The other day passing through London the contrast of the Hilton near Euston being across the street from a church porch where people were sleeping rough was a snapshot of Britain in 2012.