One month ago two of Caley Waters team members swapped their beds for a place in Princes Street Gardens as part of the World’s Big Sleep Out. Rumored to be the last sleep out event that the Social Bite founder (Josh Littlejohn) will organize, the World’s Big Sleep out took place across 52 countries worldwide, a big leap from the preceding three sleep out events in Scotland.
With an array of performances on the night, the crowd was kept well entertained by the likes of Angie McMahon, Izzy Bizu and Gregor Fisher. Intermingled with the star studded line up were a number of local performers, including an upbeat show by the talented Tinderbox Collective and a heartwarming choir from the Salvation Army. One of most moving moments of the evening were the songs by Social Bites Mary, who has taken residence in the Social Bite Village, a safe supportive environment for vulnerable people funded by previous sleep outs. It was her performance, alongside intervals of speeches and stories from others directly involved with the charity that really brought home the message of the evening – the need to end homelessness.
The weather became fiercer as the night progressed, and what began as a gentle drizzle had soon escalated into unrelenting rainfall and bolshie winds. As the gales rocked the speakers and tried to grasp music sheets from the enduring artists, it became clear that sleeping would be a far greater challenge than anticipated. Waterproofs standing up to the test as Gregor Fisher reads the Polar Express to a crowd of sopping faces and the stages defenses become worn to the stormy gusts. Lights out, time for bed.
Challenge number one was identifying your emergency orange bivy from the sea of emergency orange bivys. Akin to remembering where you’ve pitched your tent at a festival, but with rain induced urgency, and more orange.
Challenge number two was sleeping arrangements. Both the Caley Water members had opted for opposing methods, with one stubbornly using a roll matt whose length rendered the emergency bivy somewhat leaky and the other clambering eagerly into their bivy without any attempts to arrange (or for that matter use) their sleeping gear. Both participants left the event far soggier than they had entered 12 hours before, but with the damp was a feeling of pride and accomplishment. Between them they raised over £300 for Social Bite, and gleamed an insight to at least one of the issues that people deal with when sleeping rough.