Well I let Chris order the food while I stayed with the suitcase securing a table. I told him to get a bargain bucket, but didn't specify a size. He got the biggest one and we couldn't eat it all, so we packed the leftovers (easily enough for a whole meal, no half eaten bits or anything yucky like that. Two or three pieces of chicken, a side, two bags of chips...) and gave them to the first homeless man we encountered.
He was SO grateful! He thanked us, we were in a rush, so we smiled politely at him and left, but I turned around to find him almost in tears eating the food we'd given him. I was shocked. Simply shocked. Homeless means something different locally, Chris was homeless before we met and what that meant is he lived in a shelter. Sure it turfed him out during the day, but he returned every night and he was ok. He had food, shelter, clean clothes...but this man in London was starving and it broke my heart. I literally cried all the way to the coach station.
Apparently there aren't enough shelters in London for the homeless and they end up getting lost and abandoned by the system.
I can't feed them all, but I came up with a plan. We're returning over Christmas, so we're putting together Christmas presents. Boxs with a pair of hand knit mittens, a high density food (probably home made flapjack), some basic toiletries (soap, flannel, toothbrush, toothpaste) and some treats for the dogs. I've currently got three completed mitts, one knit pair that needs seaming and one on the needles. I aim to have 25.
These I've made specifically for females. I'm only making five female specific pairs.


This one is a unisex one, I'm making more of these as apparently men outnumber women on the streets.
