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It brought back memories I’d never thought to revisit. Yesterday on this programme we heard how Limarra and her daughter will be spending Christmas. Three months since they’ve had a home; sleeping on granny’s sofas; not knowing where they’ll next call theirs. Nuveyuh, nine, said poignantly, “I would like a house”. On the ��ѿ��ý news page, Carly Stutter’s three children haven’t opened some of last Christmas’s presents, still in a friend’s shed; they’ve had to give away their dog. “The kids keep me going,” she admitted. A hundred and thirty one thousand children without their own home this Christmas, according to Shelter. Five in every school. Nearly one per cent. You won’t see them sleeping in doorways, thank goodness. As we ourselves discovered, you cast around for friends – or grannies – with sofas. Most people didn’t believe it when it happened to us. Perhaps they still don’t. My husband Shaun is a clergyman so we’d never owned our own home. Some time ago he accepted a new church post and at first we were placed in temporary rented accommodation. After eight months the rented housing ended and we were told we were “camping out”. For the next eight months Shaun and I and our five children, two with disabilities and a toddler, were split up; hundreds of miles apart; borrowing sofa beds and spare rooms; some of us, sometimes, with my parents. Everything we owned in a kind friend’s barn; losing much-loved pets; wearing borrowed clothes. Only for Christmas, were we together. Three homes borrowed in succession, from generous people we didn’t even know. Month after month, Shaun kept himself going by picturing our youngest: her smile of pure joy when she would next see him. Many, of course, are far worse off than we ever were. Our previous vicarage neighbour, once a concert pianist, lived in a car... till someone towed it away when he was in hospital. Our friend Tony’s only shelter was Putney Bridge. On your way to work this morning, you may pass several huddles under archways. And yet I still hear, “People choose this lifestyle”. Move them on. Spikes in doorsteps. Board up portals to preclude even such poor shelter. A council contemplates a bylaw banning feeding. As if people were pesky pigeons. Or human beings, vermin. Another tried to fine them for cluttering up the streets. Living souls as litter. You and I? We look away. Hurry on. Never dream we might be brought so low. I think of One who gave up everything at Christmas: to be laid in straw; under a borrowed roof; before going on the run. When the King returns, we may ask Him: when did we see you hungry and feed you? Or a stranger, and take you in? Or sleeping rough and smile, and ask how you are? Truly I tell you, when you did it for the least of my brethren, you did it unto me.