I was at a community event today where at times there seemed more Police there than punters, there were ordinary plod, plod cadets, plod support officers, dog plod, and a plod van with loads of loudspeakers in the back (propaganda plod????) It wasn’t an event organised by the Police unlike the Bridgend one the other weekend, there just seemed to be a lot of them there doing their bit for the community.

If you look on the left you can see the ‘baby’ plod, I think they have to wear the yellow coats so that the bigger plods can see them at a distance. Its a rite of passage they progress from yellow to black…

 I noticed another relatively new phenomenon, something only recently rolled out around here…Street Pastors…this is taken from their website…

A Street Pastor is a Church leader/minister or member with a concern for society - in particular young people who feel themselves to be excluded and marginalised - and who is willing to engage people where they are, in terms of their thinking (i.e. their perspective of life) and location (i.e. where they hang out - be it on the streets, in the pubs and clubs or at parties etc).

It seems to me that, they are, by engaging with the young in pubs, clubs or parties, trying to ‘convert’ people, I wonder how many off their face people will take any notice of them and what exactly is it they are engaging, is this another word for preachign?  Maybe its the cynic in me, but i’m not sure that I’d want someone coming to me whilst I was in full on party mode trying to ’save’ me. There again I’m too old now for them to even bother…

 

Now for the exciting bit…..the snail, yes, snail racing…first they prepared the contestants…with picture framing tape and a pen

then the snails hung around in the pits…waiting fo people to bet on them…there was no form book, and they all pretty much looked the same…except for the numbers, no doubt snail aficionados would be able to distinguish one from another, but to me they all looked the same…

then they raced and yawn, yawn…it was all over, the winner got a lettuce leaf and the losers went into the oven for Baked snails with goats cheese (not really, I’m only joking).