There was an unspoken undercurrent of gladness that the weather for this night was nowhere near as freezing as the last shift (that in the end had to be cancelled because of the temperatures and the danger underfoot for a number of our volunteers).
Almost from the moment we were set up people were at the table. It City did seem to be a well-populated one this particular night.
There were a bunch of young people who found, to their surprise, that the drinks, biscuits and Quality Streets were all free and set about with their orders whilst thanking us profusely for the 'nice thing we are doing'.
Councillor Dean Robertson had been promising us a visit one of these nights and tonight turned out to be the night. It was good and productive to chat with him as he is a very convivial chap! He said it was great to make the effort to get out and see what we actually do. This offer is also open to any of you Councillors who fancies a late night cuppa and a choccy biscuit.
There appeared to be a lot of people (mostly ladies) dressed in cowboy-themed apparel and when three of them approached our table for a bevy, we enquired as to the Western regalia only to find out they had been in attendance of a Country and Western event at Lichfield Cathedral (a seeming paradox, if ever there was one). We were hopefully presuming the amount of alcohol they seemed to have imbibed had not been issued at such an establishment of reverence.
We did note a couple of Police vans doing their rounds and later two young lads came to ask if we had observed a young lady come past as they had seen her earlier and she seemed to be on her own, very intoxicated and seemingly unsure what she was doing but was telling the lads that she had to get back to her car (!) as she lived in Birmingham. They (bless them) tried to distract her from the car search to get something to eat and after that she seemed to disappear. It was just before they came to us that they had called the police, hence the additional van driving around. A couple of our team joined in the hunt for the young lady endeavouring to cover the areas out of the main busy part and away from CCTV cameras but our searching proved unfruitful. We are praying she took a taxi back to wherever she lived - but you never know.
It was observed that the 'Taxi Marshalls' were not on duty tonight. But the taxi's parking did not seem as chaotic as it has been in the past.
A couple of ladies wanted to show their appreciation of us with hugs and kisses (on the cheek).
One guy asked about the possibility of volunteering with us and was given a card with our email address.... let's hope he could still find it the next day!
Bobby came with a box of Millenium Chicken's finest chips for us just as a glut of people came to the table for drinks etc
And as our portion of the night time economy had come to an end, we packed up and headed back to base.
Night, night.