EDITOR'S PERSPECTIVE: This could be anywhere alone

Somewhat pretentiously perhaps, I had always wanted more time to learn, improve myself, consider the world, rather than just race through the day worrying about the practicalities of shopping, cooking and cleaning.

Can you have too much time to think? Can it harm you? You have no job, no home, are maybe spending your day seeking shelter in a doorway of a disused shop. What are you thinking about? I could ask you, but I don't.

Hopefully it's something to take your mind off the situation you are in, but I imagine it's mostly about how you got there, why, because of who.

It's something most of us ponder. Why are we in Rotherham? Because we live it? Because we're not good enough to be in London, Manchester or Liverpool.

There are a myriad of reason. We can't all be in the same place and someone needs to look after it.

Then it hit me. Well, it almost did. The bike, I mean.

There's a bit where the path next to the extensive cycle lane becomes almost non-existent and I was about to swerve someone coming in the opposite direction when a cyclist of all things came racing past me.

He was on one of those electric bikes, so it doesn't really count as exercising. He missed me by inches and, just as I got over the shock of seeing him, across the road using the facility to travel uphill was another one. Well, it was a bloke on one of those scooters, so I'm not sure that counts either.

Then lightning struck a third time, a genuine cyclist, only he's not using the lane but is in the centre of the road and actually overtaking a car.

I carry on walking and the smell of weed hits me and acts as I prompt: "This could be Rotherham or anywhere, Liverpool or Rome..."

In fact, just give me seven minutes or so....................................................... – I’m arrived now – and I can add the canal which, give or take a few waterside cafes and bars and a few less seemly establishments, and I'm there. Rotterdam, Amsterdam... anywhere but home.

Where is home? It’s not where it used to be for most people. That’s why we are where we are. There’s more movement these days, there are more Dick Whittington’s, but there are way more for whom it doesn’t work out, stuck in a life they didn’t really want, hadn’t really considered. They just needed to do something different, look for something that would be perceived as better than what they had.

That’s why some of us are in Rotherham, Burnley, Batley, Dewsbury, while others are in sparkly new city centre developments or in the suburbs of London, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, or just in the doorway of a disused shop. Thinking.

Maybe that’s the answer. Thinking is good for you when things are going well, but when you’re on the slide and the bottom is coming into view it’s hard to come up with anything that will put the brakes on. That guy on the E-bike on the cycle lane certainly couldn’t.