Wednesday, 5 September 2012

The tools of my trade, phone on Tuesday, sickle and shears today, and some bad news

Yesterday there were four short stop referrals! Luckily three of them were able to go back to Monday's hosts and the last was also found a room for the night very quickly. Lovely people prepared to offer shelter, often for night after night. I am happy to do the phoning, but don't know how easy I would find taking a stranger into my home. Once again PAFRAS www.pafras.org.uk/ the referring agency.

My asylum seeking friend has had good and bad news in the last week. She passed her Level 2 in Health and Social care with flying colours, distinctions in all eight sections of the course and has been offered a place to study for Level 3. However the Home Office, after many, many months has decided that she may not stay in this country. After everything she has been through and all her hard work over the last two years, not to mention what she is already bringing to our society and how much more she could bring...............  All her friends are desperately hoping that she will be able to appeal. Watch this space, I may need help. LASSN lassn.pir2.info and Solace www.solace-uk.org.uk/ are amongst the organisations supporting her.

Today I tried to put all that behind me and helped to clear a path in the shadow, literally, of the Boulby potash mine. Potash is in the news at present as plans for another mine near Whitby have just been announced. It seems that only agricultural type sheds will actually be in the National Park, modern sheds like this are fairly hideous, but if they were really agricultural they wouldn't need planning permission at all! The sun is shining and the view in front of us is of a lovely woodland and a field of sheep, behind us the bulk of the mine buildings, it all seems rather incongruous. New steps are put in and old ones cleaned up and repaired, but there is still much to do. I use an old fashioned sickle and rather blunt shears to clear a way through the mini jungle that is now the path.
after

before

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