On this reasonably mild and dry Saturday night shift, it was a relief for this 'Team leader' to know that the new, and unique to LNL, code for the pedestrian access barrier worked.
Once our six-person team had set up, the first person to approach us at the table turned out to be local Councillor Darren Ennis, who was very appreciative of our presence as part of the City's night-time economy. He stayed and chatted with us for about ten minutes, even though he was meant to be on his way home after his evening in town.
Next we met a young man who had had a little bit of similar involvement with community support through meeting a workmate at HomeServe who then went on to set up Midland Langar, a Sikh organisation in Walsall. This young man, Jason, was plainly impressed by such altruism.
Then we had a trio of rather 'well-refreshed' older gentlemen (putting it politely) who spent a good fifteen minutes with us, insisting on giving us a generous donation and praising us repeatedly. Turns out that they were from Kingstanding and having been out all day, were full of the 'joys of Spring' but we suspected that sore heads were likely to greet them the next day.
We were approached by a distressed and very drunk man who was worried about his elderly Asian father who was in need of some kind of care at home locally. Tearfully he announced quite loudly and repeatedly that he had a large amount of cash on him and wanted to pay us to help him. Despite all of our helpful suggestions, he eventually went off, still upset, but seemed to meet up with another group of helpful folks with whom he stayed talking with for a long time. We hoped he was sobering up and gaining a sense of perspective on all his troubles.
We did note that having an extra team member resulted in rather a lot of 'orange' around our table though it did allow us to have three people on our 'walk-abouts' whilst three of us remained at the table. But we were a friendly crew with a good vibe. Two of the team had to leave slightly earlier due to early morning engagements but despite this, as the evening came to a close and the Blessed Bobby came with hot chips, we were glad to have been out serving our community.’