We all know the importance of kindness and find ourselves questioning why it is such a rare commodity nowadays when social media has made trolling a real thing. We know live in a cancel culture, if you are a public figure and make one mistake then cancellation follows. For some heinous people this is absolutely correct - my post in David Walliams around Christmas demonstrates this, but I have also exhorted in a previous post that we simply need to #BeKind to one another.

A bit of thoughtfulness and courtesy isn't exactly rocket science.

However, I recall vividly an occasion in my life when my kindness and compassion had to be curbed and I have always wondered how the situation ended.

It must have been about 7 o'clock one evening, many years ago when I suddenly noticed a young girl wrapped in a sleeping bag and trying to keep warm in a shop doorway. When I say young I would estimate that she was 16 and my heart went out to her as I immediately thought what kind of shit show has led to such a young and vulnerable person being on the streets.

I approached her carefully, being a 29-year-old man at the time, and asked her if she needed some food or something. She said, "Maybe a small sandwich".

I asked her to come with me to a shop that was barely 20 metres away and I asked her to take what she wanted. I immediately noticed that she chose the smallest cheapest sandwich she could find and I said that she could have something more. For me her attitude confirmed that she was actually 100% genuine and not on the take. I rather suspected this to be the case anyway as it was I who had gone to her in the first place. After some persuasion she finally took a sandwich, a chocolate bar, a bag of crisps and a warm drink and we went back to the shop doorway.

While being careful to maintain a safe personal distance (for her sake - I wasn't a threat) I asked her how she ended up here. She explained with tears how she had been brought up in care (in the US you would say "in the system"), but the governmental duty of care ended when she turned 16 and so she moved in with her boyfriend. He quickly became violent and abusive towards her and she left in fear of what might happen and that had happened only earlier the same day.

My heart broke for her. All I wanted to do was give her a cuddle and take her home and look after her - with no expectations on my part (obviously) - but there was simply no way I could do this. I was totally the wrong person at the wrong time and there was nothing I could do about it.

I kept her company for a while longer before making my excuses and leaving her exactly as I had found her, although she now had a full belly.

I have always felt like I failed her, yet another person in a system that had reduced her to this state and I never did know the end of her story. She might not even remember, but I always will, until my dying day.

As always stay safe and well my friends