STREET PASTORS
STREET PASTORS
FIRST OUTING! OBSERVATIONS
OUTING (B) ~ BOXING NIGHT, 26th DECEMBER 2008
We’re off! A year (very nearly precisely) of preparation, planning and training, and tonight’s the night! Fantastic! Lively and challenging – on getting home, about 3.30 am, I couldn’t settle to sleep with events and issues turning over in my head. On fire!
The police hadn’t arrived at start-off (though their training and encouragement have been fantastic) so we went to the Police Station to check in, having logged in with CCTV Control. The duty sergeant arrived for briefing: quiet to start. We split into two teams of 4 (normally one team per Friday night) to work the central area in a circular route around the CCTV area but in opposite directions.
A Boxing Night Ball was being held at the Corn Exchange Night Club, so there were loads of young people around later: like a normal Saturday night at the start (10 pm) building up towards midnight, very busy around the Corn Exchange and then when that closed about 2 am about 250 or more (I reckon) spilled out into the street, milling around and filling the Kebab and Southern Fried Chicken takeaways. Good humoured, welcoming (and apologetic!), loads of hugs and kisses (even for yours truly!). Conversations and discussions, two particularly poignant – the more so as they were not drunken but lucid and challenging: in vino veritas, they say, and honesty too. A good job it was a mild starry night, some girls would be more fully dressed on the beach in mid-summer!
One young man was concerned about a younger brother already alcoholic. Though with supportive friends around him, he clearly wanted to talk to us about it – at a loss as to how to understand and support his brother. Such issues are often the centre of a ripple around of those who are affected and who want to help but cannot until the persons themselves recognise the issues. The carers are victims too and deserve support as well. Another was becoming more loquaciously challenging – the language deteriorating, but clearly for effect so therefore not personal or offensive. It was expected, but the point is that if he didn’t really care he wouldn’t have bothered, would he? I have long believed that “ordinary” people have higher opinions and expectations than they are given credit for, and tolerate patronising blandishments only out of politeness. But the small hours are not a good time for theology discussion and there are others around too.
We come across a shouting match of home truths, evidently following a handbag duel (articles in the road) – not intervening we stand away, but possibly with a dented friendship one wobbles away whilst the other lights a cigarette to calm down and sits on a window sill for several minutes before toddling away in a similar direction. Two young men separately cause some concern for their safety – rolling drunk, they risk falling against a plate glass window or tangling with the slow-moving traffic of taxis and “chauffeurs”. One has mates looking out for him, whilst the other gets a takeaway and lurches down the street grasping it – a triumph of determination, and navigation, in the circumstances!
We lose count of the glass and bottles picked up and binned. One SP keeps hold of some discarded party glow-lights – as souvenirs or trophies?! We give away several pairs of flip-flops to girls who have given up an unequal struggle with their high heels – with giggles, hoots and smiles of thanks they toddle on rather more manageably and safely! No need tonight for thermal sheets, thankfully. But we leave behind at least two young men who have unburdened themselves to us – the perplexity and the simmering anger are still there though. However, as they say in the movies, “tomorrow is another day”.
