Last week I loaned a fellow member of the hidden homeless that I live with some money. Ordinarily I do not do such things, but I had come to know this person quite well so had no problem accepting their guarantee that I would be repaid when they recieved their benefit payment a few days later. I also stressed that this was my sencond weeks' shopping money and without it I would have nothing to eat for seven days.
As you can guess this person then vanished into the night, and I was never repaid.
  As hunger pains began to knaw at my expectant stomach (everything affects homeless people faster) I considered my options:

1)  Not eat for seven days.
2)  Beg.
3)  Steal.
4)  Rely on the misnamed "soup kitchen", a christian outreach project providing sandwiches, tea, coffee, cup-a-soup, biscuits and homemade cakes at 8:30pm each tuesday and thursday, leaving five days.
5)  Eat out of domestic dustbins and town-center litterbins.
6)  Visit the back yard of every restaurant, cob shop and supermarket and take what they have thrown out.

  I decided on number 6, knowing that even though I was still technically eating rubbish it was still good as it would have only passed its "best before" date that day.
I visited Pizza Hut, who told me that weekends were the best time to check there as they only really make mistakes with orders during busy periods, the Family Bakers cob shop, the owner of which decided that it would be funny to sneak up on me and slam the lid of the dustbin on the back of my head (revenge was sweet), and finally Sainsburys.

  Sainsburys throws out everything their bakery produces every Sunday night and at some point during the midweek. Mostly your reward for bravely hopping over their back wall is a pile of assorted "baked that day" breads thet have not sold. Sometimes you get some kind of bun, biscuit, cookie or cake, which is usually the result of someone ordering a bag of tooth rotting crap and then not bothering to pick it up. The night I hopped over the wall there was the usual assortment of bready goodness, and four or five pallets piled high with junk food.
Sainsburys has a nasty habit of leaving their deliveries out back for hours.
As you can guess I have done this before now, out of necessity I can assure you, and at no point have I touched the deliveies (It doesn't take a genius to figure out what will happen to me if I try to "live" off of a crate of Walkers Crisps for seven days) however I have had the opportunity to watch organised gangs of addicts steal nothing but pallets of Coca-Cola, or other such valuable brand named crap.

  So as I creep from around the back of the waste compactor I can see that the bread is within easy reach. What I didn't see in my haste is the manager waiting for me.
Busted.
Naturally I cooperate, after all what kind of prick is going to put me in prison for trying to survive? We have a nice chat in the security guards office while we wait for the Police to arrive, where I notice that none of the security screens give an external view of the building (no wonder their deliveries keep getting raped by the 'phet-heads), and I understandably fail to convince the manager that I'm only there for the foodstuffs they have thrown out (Every Sunday night and either Wednesday or Thursday night). The Police arrive, they talk, the manager gives me a letter that is clearly meant for shoplifters, and then I am taken to the police car, inside which the officer tells me that he "Isn't going to arrest some homeless for trying to take a few mouldy loaves of bread". But just to be sure we go back to the Station where he has a quick conversation with his Sarge, and I learn that the only prosecutable crime I have committed is Tresspass, which is part of Civil Law and not Criminal Law.
  I also learn that had I chosen to wander onto the back yard of Sainburys whilst their back gate was open, i.e. during a delivery, I could have taken a whole pallet of junk food and only be charged with something called "Theft by Finding" if I recall correctly, a minor offence with a very small punishment (Apparently the logic is that it is your own damn fault for leaving open access to things that are worth selling).

  On my way "home", still foodless, I walk through the town centre, past a bar cum restaurant as a gargantuan superchunk of a fat man leaves, turning to walk in the same direction that I am headed in. As he passes a litter bin he drops a receipt into it.
I'm an uncontrollably nosey bastard so out of instinct I grab it.
The gargantuan superchunk of a fat bastard has just eaten one Ale and Beef Gourmet Pie, one something-beginning-with-C Steak, and a side salad. SIDE SALAD!
In total that "one" meal cost the same, optimistically, as three weeks of my own food shopping.

I honestly considered mugging that bloated land whale. It is a good thing I didn't, I was so angry at him that I would have kicked him to death.

AvR