THAT first night was the hardest. Callum had never felt so alone, so frightened and so cold. "The word alone' doesn't begin to describe how you feel," he says.

THAT first night was the hardest. Callum had never felt so alone, so frightened and so cold. "The word alone' doesn't begin to describe how you feel," he says.

"It was terrifying. I didn't know what type of people were going to be kicking about at that time of night or what they were capable of."

He was probably also still in shock that it had come to this and he had ended up having to spend the night in a tenement close doorway in Victoria Road in Glasgow's South Side.

"If I slept, I would have been doing well," says Callum - not his real name - with a shrug.

"Every noise, trains, buses, taxis, someone walking past, someone using a cash machine, anything has you wide awake again.

"And it was always at the back of my mind. Will the police move me on?

"You don't actually sleep your body rests and your eyes rest, but you don't sleep "

his voice trails away.

Callum is not the usual face of homelessness. He is not a drug addict, nor an alcoholic.

He is clean, pleasant, well-spoken, articulate, and the possessor of a respectable clutch of Standard Grades and Highers.

And he has a job as the duty manager of a shop in a village outside Glasgow, earning £14,500 a year and travelling there by bus each day.

You always think there is a safety net for everyone who falls on hard times, but sometimes there are big holes in it.

Callum fell through when his marriage broke up.

Since he was evicted from his housing association flat in May, in the West End, for falling behind with the rent, he has been sleeping rough or cadging a bed from friends.

He was advised to go to the Hamish Allan Centre, the council-run organisation for the homeless.

"Someone there told me I would have been better off if I had been a drug user, an alcoholic or a pregnant teenager," he says indignantly.

He has had more than two months of sleeping on friends' sofas or in doorways.

"Some nights the dampness seeps right into your bones. Sometimes, you feel so cold you're never going to heat up again. I have a blanket now," he says.

"But I refuse to buy a sleeping bag, that is admitting defeat."

Before we met, he had gone to Central Station to clean up. "You've always got to keep yourself smart because once you start to let go, it is easy to keep it like that.

"I want to go and look for flats, so I do not want to see people looking like a burst bag of dirty washing.

"I want people to see I have a job and that I am a respectable person.

"You have a better chance if you are well presented rather than strutting about with a fortnight's growth on your face and not having washed."

The trouble is a big deposit is usually required for a private let and he does not have it because his whole focus is on paying off the debts.

When his wife left him, she left massive debts. Not just the £4000 on the credit card he knew about, but nearly £15,000 in all.

"I have no idea what she spent it on. I was very, very angry.

"By the time, I started getting the letters, it was all red letter mail."

He has £900 left to pay off and then he can put his name on a housing association list for a tenancy.

Callum is 33, but to be honest, he looks as if he is hardly out of his teens.

He is as bemused as anyone else by what has happened to him in such a short time.

Three years ago, he was living with his wife in a housing association flat. They both had good jobs.

Callum had worked in the licensed trade in Glasgow for nearly a decade. "My wife worked Monday to Friday, nine to five, and sometimes, we hardly saw each other.

"She asked me to find another job, but I loved that one."

He did the right thing and explained the circumstances to all the debtors and over two years, he was able to pay them off, but there was no money for the rent.

Now he asks himself what was I thinking?' "I've been foolish. I'll be the first person to hold up my hands and say that.

"But hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn't it? I simply stuck my head in the sand.

"In the end, I owed the housing association just under £3500 and it sent a letter saying that if I was not able to pay at least half the arrears it would evict me."

He managed to borrow £2500 from friends, but through a mix of bad management and bad luck and a Bank Holiday, the offices were closed when he wanted to pay and the eviction went ahead.

He had a secure, happy childhood in Glasgow, but has no family left and there was no one, apart from close friends, he could turn to.

After sitting all day at Hamish Allan amongst the waifs and strays', he was told there were no rooms and advised to stay with a friend.

"But this really was an eye-opener for me. I noticed there was no compassion from the staff.

"I heard some of the names they were being called through the toughened glass and I suppose you just can't get involved emotionally."

A couple of days later, Hamish Allan sent him to a B&B for the weekend.

"It filled in a housing benefit form for bed and breakfast."

He reported back on the Monday morning, only to be hit with the bombshell.

He claims that staff told him that because he had run up big rent arrears he was reponsible for making himself homeless.

"The staff told me they had spoken to the housing officer at my last property and that I had intentionally made myself homeless."

"It was a case of you're on your own'.

"I was stunned. I asked for advice on what to do next and was told we've told you all we need to tell you'.

"I tried the Citizen's Advice Bureau, but it was as much use as a chocolate fireguard."

A city council spokeswoman denied Callum hadn't been offered help and said: "The council has a duty to provide advice and temporary accommodation to anyone who is intentionally homeless."

But more than two months after he lost his flat Callum still has no place to call his own.

He is careful not to overstay his welcome with friends. "I phone and ask if they have any plans and would they mind if I stay. It's embarrassing.

"I usually stay just the one night, two nights at a push."

He spends his free time searching for a bedsit or flat share in newsagent windows or newspapers. "But they are all looking for students and want ridiculous amounts of money.

"There was a studio flat in Govanhill which was £450 a month plus the bills and council tax. It was just one big room with a space for a bed. It was hellish."

Any landlord would find him a quiet tenant. Callum is an avid reader, with Paul Magrs and Christopher Brookmyre being two of his favourites.

"Joe Bloggs is not educated about the homeless," he says. "All they see is people who have a dependency problem hanging about, not people like me who aren't like that."

For now, he is probably the guy in the library until closing time or the one on his own nursing a coffee in Starbucks with his nose buried in a book, putting off until the last possible moment going out into the cold in a city with no room for him.