Life's a Treat With Shaun the Sheep

I've been told off in the past by friends and parents for doing voluntary work in the industry. However, as I have only recently moved to Manchester, giving a day or two of my time every now and again to a worthy cause can be good for my soul, it gets me out of the flat and gives me an opportunity to work with people in the industry.

As soon as I moved to Manchester at the start of November I was constantly badgering the BBC to help out with Children In Need until eventually I was pointed in the right direction and added to the list of volunteers. When the day came around, my designated job was chaperoning Pudsey Bear around MediaCity and also helping out with a teddy bear's picnic event put on for two sets of pre school kiddies. This however was over by 11am (and Pudsey had been whisked away by someone else) so I set about finding other things to do. The guys from Aardman Animations had some rather exciting games going on outside on the Plazza including Welly Wangling and  Championsheep competitions which involved running around an obstacle course rolling a sheep that was a metre and half in diameter and a coconut shy type welly throwing thing. It was all crazy fun and although they had designated people working on the games I helped out here and there  inbetween selling Children in Need merchandise. At the end of the day I helped them pack up all their gear and just happened to be there when the lady in charge passed round a piece of paper so we could write down our email addresses for any other future Aardman events and thought nothing more of it.

Fast forward four months and out of the blue, in amongst all the spam that Linkedin send me on a daily basis, I found an email in my inbox from the very same lady from Aardman who was looking for people to work on an event for a week over the summer down near Luton. My initial thought was "it's too far away" and then remembered that one of my best friends lives not so far away from there who hopefully wouldn't mind putting me up for a week and a bit. Then I read to the bottom of the email and saw how much they were willing to pay for me to stand in a field and have and awesome amount of fun (with extra money for travel expenses) and I thought that I needed to do it no matter if I have to live in a tent for the duration . Basically, with my really pathetic temping wage I would get the same amount for nine days work as I would sitting behind a reception desk for a month so it's a no brainer really. It has only taken me four years of working really low paid jobs whilst trying to fit it around slightly more secure mind numbing temping jobs and trying to scrape together enough pennies to pay rent and bills but this is my first paid job that I can comfortably afford to live off that will last longer than a day. I know it might not seem like much (after all it is only going to be for nine days) but I feel it's one huge giant leap in the right direction towards an actual career for me and it's a very exciting thought.