Unpaid work - never again
When I was about 14 in the August school holidays my mother thought it would be a good idea to send me off to do some voluntary work at an institution in Newport on the Isle of Wight that catered for children with special needs. So I got the bus from Cowes to the place and saw through the window what looked like a small gym with vinyl-covered soft cushions in various different sizes and colours. I wasn't briefed for what was about to occur but on entering the hall this child came up to me covered in snot and other stuff - excrement * ? I can't describe it but on a closer inspection the cushions had been affected with something similar and equally as horrible. The place was filthy. Then I had to help feed these poor children, they were very badly affected with all sorts of different problems......what a horror story.....anyway I don't know whether it's still there but I got out as soon as possible. When I got home I cried, mostly in shock as to what I'd seen, and begged my mother not to make me go back. She told me off for running away and I had to suffer and listen to the phone call she made to the warden to explete me from my duties.

Funny really because I asked her about it the other day and she can't remember any of it. Dementia must have set in. She remembers trotting little brother off to the garlic farms though where he spent 6 weeks picking the stuff, but he earned money, the brat.

* could have been mud though
( Tiggy the diver, Mon 14 May 2007, 12:20, Reply)