Richard Littledale
Richard Littledale
radio microphone
BBC Radio 2Sarah Kennedy Show
Pause for Thought
Richard Littledale: Series 10, Number 1
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Thursday 23 July 2009

Quarter to one in the morning is not a time when you would usually find me at a bus-stop surrounded by clubbers. But the other week, that's exactly where I was. Admittedly I stood out a bit, on account of not being in my party togs and being distinctly sober, but I was there.

I had just spent the evening with a team of Street Pastors - a group of volunteers who regard the 15 - 20,000 clubbers in the town as their parish. These are ordinary men and women - two of them elderly ladies on this occasion, who do this work on a weekly basis. Every week they are on patrol in the town from 10pm to 4am, helping out wherever they can.

Sometimes the help is very practical. They always carry flip-flops with them for the girls who have lost their shoes on a dance floor somewhere. They carry foil blankets too, to wrap around the shoulders of those who find its a lot colder at 3am than it was on the balmy summer evening when they left the house. Sometimes the support is more emotional - clubland can be an unforgiving place when your money's run out and your mates have lost interest. Occasionally they just need to steer a person who's worse for wear towards the next bus home or a safe place to sit down.

They don't judge, they don't criticise and they don't preach, but the staff on the doors and the youngsters in the clubs know they are around if they need them. I suppose in some ways they do preach. It was St Francis of Assisi who told the trainees in his order that they should "preach, preach, preach, and where you must - use words".

Clubland is not the place for all of us. In fact, judging by the way I felt the next day after rolling in at that time of the morning - its probably not for me! But showing compassion in that non-judgemental way, being there for people where they are rather than where we'd like them to be - surely that is something we should all be doing?

I'm not sure how St Francis would have fitted in with a bunch of late night revellers on the streets of my local town. But I'm pretty sure that his words ring true wherever you are. "Preach, preach and preach - and where you must, use words".

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© BBC 2009
This talk by Richard Littledale was first broadcast as BBC Radio 2's
breakfast time "Pause for Thought" during the Sarah Kennedy show.
It is reproduced here by permission of the BBC.