Meet Matt: Tales from the Tent
CHRIS CONNELLEY
It’s a radiant Sunday morning – after months of greyness, spring has finally sprung – and Matt is in fine fettle.
For the last six years, he’s been living in a tent in and around the Morrisons store on Queens Road, where he has developed something of a reputation as a local character. He’s a born communicator and reaches out to anyone passing by and, over his time in the area, has got to know many residents, traders and shoppers, often by name. In the time we were chatting, pretty much everyone who passes greets him by name, often following up with a check in to see how he is.
Matt, who is in his mid-fifties, is a Londoner by birth – a Wandsworth boy – but has been living in Hastings since he was 11. He went to William Parker School and, on leaving, got married, spent some time in the army and worked as a car mechanic for 15 years.
His world fell apart in 2010, when his son took his life at the age of 22, catapulting him into a cycle of depression and decline involving acute anxiety and PTSD that eventually led to him walking out of his family home in 2016.
Since then, he has lived on the streets pretty much continuously, with a couple of spells in temporary accommodation and a period when he left the town to live in Weymouth. That didn’t last long and when he returned to Hastings, he set up his camp on the edge of the Morrisons supermarket, where he became a regular fixture.
That’s how I first got to know him, when I began to chat to him on my daily trips into town through the park via the Morrisons tunnel.
Despite the generally warm welcome, Matt tells me a couple of people complained and he was moved on, pitching up further along Queens Road near Cornwallis Street. This location proved less successful, however, with some incidents of harassment and abuse from groups of youths.
Last July, he moved back down to the pavement outside the Morrisons drive-in point, which has reunited him with some of his established ‘regulars’ and introduced him to a new audience on the main road itself.
Matt expressed relief that the long, hard winter months have passed, which this year were made even more challenging by the death of a best friend in December and mentioned that he is currently getting some targeted support, with the prospect of a room of his own if certain points of detail can be agreed.
Which gives him reason to feel positive.
“I hope for a better future, and if I get myself forward, the future is going to be better than the past.”
Good luck with that.
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