INTENT is a powerful beast.

It can turn a pen into a sword with a flick of its wrist, while paving the road to hell with the other. And I’m pretty sure it means every word it says.

I’m not sure if you’ve heard recently but there’s been a little bit of talk about building a big ol’ wall somewhere between Arizona and insanity. You have? Splendid.

I’m guessing I don’t really need to add my dulcets to the discussion, given that debating an architectural plot that Hasselhoff hammered in the 1980s seems as pointless as a Transylvanian stake. So I’ll try to divert resources instead to a fight in which walls can still be the good guys.

For the honest brickie, this international development must be devastating. I mean, for years, you work hard to provide the most secure accommodation that a little pig can source, and then some trumped-up salesman repurposes your bread and butter into a poisonous picnic for the free world.

Sure, the building trade has its sins – some more deadly than others – but this proposal from Donald Trump has the potential to crumble the very brickwork of our society; to turn a wall into a weapon with just some ill intent.

According to statistics from Shelter Scotland, every 18 minutes a household is assessed as homeless. Now, of course, the housing crisis comprises more than the many who sleep rough: crippling rents, fuel poverty and substandard accommodation all contribute to the growing number.

But this week, I made the decision to stare down its business end, by leaving behind my home comforts and facing the uncomfortable reality of sleeping on the streets.

By 8pm, the night was drawing in like an entry-level art class, and although weather reports will tell you that the temperature dropped barely to a low of seven degrees, I’d swear the frost was biting my every extremity.

Without money or, gasp, phone, I wandered into a city that, even at its cruellest, has always felt friendly to me but which, at that moment, seemed suddenly distanced and outwith my reach.

Finding a space to settle, in which I wouldn’t readily be seen but neither would I be hidden from safety, was a bit beyond my skill-set.

Through the prism of despair, everywhere looks uninviting; even the brightest spot darkened.

I stayed in Glasgow but away from the city centre, which scares me even in the welcome of daylight, finally landing in a doorway that was forgiven the worst of the wind. Wrapped in a blanket normally reserved for beach trips and stargazing, I hunkered down into the least crusty corner, wishing that padded pants came as standard. And so began the longest night of my days. Believe me, I’m in no way imagining that spending 12 hours shivering in suburbia is anything akin to rough sleeping; just a very bad camping experience, I guess.

But, as feet occasionally shuffled past, oblivious to my presence – as feet so commonly are – I was soon reminded of the very fragility of my place in my own world.

Over the last year, life’s little hiccups have at times become prolonged coughing fits, almost breaking the ribs of my comfortable existence.

There’s no doubt in my mind that each one of us, from ivory tower to bedsit bunk, is, at any time, barely a triple jump of bad luck away from having society’s door slammed firmly in our bewildered face.

No matter the picture painted of the deserving homeless, no matter how far we distance ourselves from the cardboard signs and cups of coppers, we’re only ever round the corner from the reality – and it’s always easier to tumble downhill.

By the early hours, my bones protested their position and the cold had taken root and blossomed somewhere around my spleen.

Somehow, though, I was reluctant to move; unsure exactly where I would move to or what good it might do me anyway.

Sleep, of course, wouldn’t find me, since it was probably off looking in my usual cosy bunk, so my addled brain spun between sorrow and incredulity.

For me, this was a sojourn from my careless reality; a problem that I could leave behind in a 40-minute walk and a warm bath. For those in the doorways across the road or across the world, that walk might never come.

When the watery sun finally quenched the night, I bundled up my belongings and set course for home.

On the way, I spoke to one man for whom a marriage breakdown was all it took to pull the carpet swiftly from beneath him.

We shared only a smile and a thawing hug, since he wouldn’t accept the blanket, but the moment said more than I ever could.

Folks, walls are good, walls are beautiful; let’s take back walls and put them up not with the intent to isolate or divide but to nurture.

Then, brick by brick, we might just build ourselves a fairer society.

Payment for this column has been donated to Shelter Scotland: scotland.shelter.org.uk/donate