Saturday

So Saturday…

I had a friends wedding Friday night so didn’t get home till very late. All week I’d had one of those hovering cold things where one minute you feel fine and the next you feel dead, I thought it had gone but by the time I got home the next morning I felt like rubbish and it didn’t really go away till about today.

So Saturday, later (but still early) that morning I headed up along the coast to a farm to spend the day there in the hopes of capturing some footage of lambs being born. I didn’t get an actual birth but I did get some newly born ones with their mum, which was pretty cool. I couldn’t believe how quickly after they’re born they get up and get going, it was pretty amazing to watch. Most of the day was spent with the farmers wife, showing me round the field and barns, feeding sick lambs, eating soup, and generally getting aquainted with the whole sheep lamb thing. I had no clue how much work was involved and definitely have respect for anyone who does it.

In the afternoon we spent a good few hours watching one particular ewe that looked as though it might lamb. (I became very aware of the fact that I’ve never stared so intently at anyone’s bum before.) It was a bit chilly so we spent the second half of the watch in the farm van in the middle of the field. Some time had passed when I suddenly realised that I was asleep (more than a little embarrassing, even if I wasn’t well, given that I was trying my hardest to pretend that I wasn’t, and they were surviving quite well with lamb induced lack of sleep.)

Since last September, every four weeks I’ve been helping with a prostitute outreach thing. It’s a bus run by a rehab centre and is essentially just a place for them to go and talk to someone, get help if they need it, or just a cup of tea and biscuit. It’s been going on for years and has been pretty awesome. As much as I look forward to my shift, I was pretty whacked and didn’t want to drive the hour there and again on the way back (finishing early Sunday morning) but I’d left it too late to swap with anyone so had to go.

Quite recently some laws were changed (that make me angry so I’m not going to go into them) but I means that where there was a relatively safe tolerance zone, now there isn’t and the girls are being arrested. In theory it sounds fair enough, but it means they’re being pushed into unsafe areas, or underground which is even worse. It’s been a total out of sight out of mind move by the government in my opinion and actually a pile of rubbish [insert rant here].

So yeah, the only reason I’m mentioning it is because it was decided on Saturday night that the bus should come to an end in order to re-evaluate the situation. It was a pretty sad moment, but a necessary one, the only girls left at the old tollerence zone are the occasional really young one who hasn’t been arrested yet, or the occasional older one that has been away for a bit and come back. Sometimes I find it hard to believe how much good can be ruined by the actions of just a few.

That said, it’s had it’s season and has done so much good that it could never be seen as a waste of time. Makes me really happy to know that there are people out there who care enough about people to set up and stick with projects like that.

It also meant I got to go home to bed an hour earlier than expected which was no bad thing.