The hand on the shoulder

Some time ago we had a clothes sale at Zac's, you may remember. Afterwards we decided to try and sell a couple of designer label items on social media. Last week when I was on holiday we finally had an offer on a pair of Doc Marten's shoes. I wrote back saying I was away but would sort it out this week.

The buyer contacted me again this week to find out when she could pick them up. As they were still in Zac's I asked her to wait until I was there to pick them up - last night. 

The room that the clothes are kept in is crowded to begin with. A few weeks' neglect when bags of donations are thrown in makes it worse. The result being I couldn't find the shoes.

Went back in this morning, spent nearly an hour scrambling around, coughing and sweating, and was on the point of giving up when I found them!

That long and boring story was just to explain how I happened to be in town and walking into Tesco's when the door alarm went off! I nearly had a little accident.

Everyone turned to look at me, and I in turn waited for a hand on my shoulder.

It's a good job I don't have a dodgy heart.

But back to last night.

Jan, the homeless nurse, gave a talk to volunteers at Zac's about the current drugs situation in Swansea. She is an amazing woman, sensible and no-nonsense but very obviously loving the people she deals with. In case you're interested, crack cocaine is the drug of choice on the streets at the moment.

The drug team had just about worked out a system for dealing with heroin when, in the course of about three months, it changed to crack cocaine. Horrendous. And while it is possible to wean users off heroin the only thing for cocaine users is to give it up. Full stop. 

Some people use little canisters of nitrous oxide to get high. These are the canisters that are used in cans of squirty cream to make them squirty. I don't know, given the choice of inhaling the gas or having the cream I know what I'd choose.