Back in 2017 I worked as a volunteer at the homeless charity, Crisis

Crisis always have a hub at Christmas where the homeless are invited to get out of the cold, get a shower, a haircut, some food and some companionship

The 2017 winter had a particular bad flu bug going around, it knocked me out for 2 weeks before Christmas

It meant that the Crisis volunteer numbers were done by 40% - this hit them hard

The way it works is that all the volunteers are told to go to a holding room and every now and again the Crisis people come to the room and say “I need X number of volunteers”

You don’t know what you are volunteering for 

I asked the people next to me, “how does this work?” the people had been doing it for 20 years

They said, “just volunteer, it could be cleaning the toilets, the more you volunteer the Crisis people will recognise you then you might get a better job”

I could see that some people were just there to drink the free tea and coffee, but I was there to volunteer

Every time a Crisis person wanted a volunteer, my hand went up 

By mid-morning, I volunteered and as we walked out the door the Crisis person said “you've all have hit the jackpot” I thought they were being sarcastic, I thought “cleaning toilets for me”

In fact, it was serving breakfast, the best job

The job of carrying plates of English breakfast to smiling homeless people, has to be one of the best, if not the best in the world … writing that brings a tear to the eye

I also got to serve lunch; I did offer my place to somebody as I has served breakfast but they were so short staffed that I served lunch to

In the afternoon, I was a bouncer on the main door 

You can imagine once the drug dealers find out that there are a large bunch of homeless people in one place, they think they’ve hit the jackpot. Sad but true

I highly recommending volunteering for Crisis, just be aware that getting a place is a bit like getting Oasis or Taylor Swift tickets

The places are advertised on the 1st October and you need to be there ready at your computer