A first-person account recounts years spent itinerant, sleeping in casual wards and dosshouses and eking out an austere living while pursuing verse. It blends episodic anecdotes of travel, friendships, and the practical difficulties of life on the road, including a disabling injury, with reflections on class, respectability, and the small kindnesses that sustain him. Interleaved poems and observational passages record landscape, city life, and the dignity of ordinary people, yielding a spare, candid portrait of wandering, creative striving, and modest survival.