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I went out to my car just after lunch with the intention of going and fetching Amazing Grace, our cleaner. I turned the key in the ignition and …… nothing. Not a murmur, not a groan, not so much as a valiant heave.
Left my lights on, hadn’t I?
So … I fetched Grace in the Centre car, then called the breakdown service. Within moments, a local(ish) garage was on the ‘phone taking the details and saying that my Knight on a White Charger was on his way. He’d be with me in about 30 monutes.
An hour later … no sign of him.
The telephone rings. It’s the garage.
“Where exactly ARE you again?”
“Muncaster Chase, across from the Castle …”
“And the car’s in the back car park?”
“Correct”.
“Well, I think our man’s in the front car park, but he can’t see a gold coloured car.”
“He isn’t in the front car park.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’m standing looking out of the window at the front car park and there’s nothing there apart from a couple of jackdaws, a grey squirrel and a lot of grass. He’s almost certainly in the main car park at the Castle. Tell him to leave the car park, turn left and then, when he gets to the bad right hand corner up the hill, he’ll find us on the left in the trees … The name sign is outside on the wall.”
Ten minutes later. Still nothing.
I don my jacket and wander down to the road … arriving just as the rescue lorry hurtles past.
I wait in the rain, knowing he has to turn around and come back. Five minutes later, he does and I virtually throw myself into his path. It’s a bit like landing a whale with a bit of string on a bamboo cane …
“Good job you did that,” he announces cheerfully, swinging into the driveway, “I’d have missed you again for sure … the sat nav kept taking me back to the castle car park.”
“Didn’t you get the instructions about the bad corner?” I ask, through gritted teeth.
“Oh aye,” he replies, attaching the crocodile clips to the battery, “…but they’re all bad corners …”.
Thanks to Al-Qaeda I’ve just spent most of the afternoon ploughing through a many-page Mandate Form so that we can get our own money out of our own account to run our charity with. Under recent legislation, we have to prove that we are who we say we are in spite of having been who we say we are – as far as the people with our money are concerned – for about 18 years.
It necessitated three telephone calls to the investment company to establish what exactly they meant by “Position” (no snorting at the back, thank you …), how many trustees’ details they wanted in which part of the form and whether they really, really needed the trustees’ middle names on account of one of them having avoided telling me for years. (My bet is that it’s going to turn out to be the whole 1955 Manchester United football squad …).
I somehow managed to resist asking why they couldn’t have made the form just a hiccup clearer in the first place. I mean … “Position” … how helpful is THAT as a request for information? Position in society? Position in the charity? Position on the legalization of cannabis? Give us a clue, guys …
End of rant.
Thank you.
You may (or more probably may NOT) know that the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (known to its friends as the NDA) recently announced the “winner” of the bid for the mega-million pound contract to clean up Sellafield … a consortium led by the URS Corporation’s Washington Division.
This morning in the local petrol station, beside the Westmorland Gazette and the Farmer’s Weekly, I found a copy of the International Herald Tribune …
No flies on them, eh? 
The calm after the storm.
Perfect picnic weather …
We give in.
We know when the Universe is trying to tell us something.
We’ve cancelled “Music for a Summer’s Evening”.
Everywhere is absolutely sodden and there’s more rain forecast for tonight and tomorrow morning. Even if it DOES clear tomorrow afternoon/evening, as they think it will, it’ll be too late – especially as they’re ALSO forecasting 40 mph winds.
We’ve done the “holding onto the gazebos with your teeth” gig. Don’t want to do that again.
So – we’re rescheduling it for October 4th, in a slightly revised form …
Meanwhile, I have caterers, musicians, volunteers, radio stations, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all to contact …
You think you want to work in this idyllic location? Commune with nature in the paradise that is the Centre for Complementary Care?
You do?
Okay … I’ll swop. Whatever it is you do all day … I’ll swop.
This morning saw Gretchen and me trailing around the garden in a deluge working out where the gazebos are going to go for the music evening on Saturday. Two dejected women and a scarcely less-dejected gardener in the rain, huddling under a golf umbrella, peering into the murk and deciding that the Teddy Tombola could go in the Secret Garden and the musicians had better have a gazebo to shelter in, unless we wanted their sound system to kill them.
My first aid is good, but if you think I’m going to touch an electrified corpse, you’re nuts.
Then we got a telephone call from the poor soul who was our midday client. She was lost. We gave her directions. She ‘phoned back five minutes’ later even more lost. In fact, she was halfway up Muncaster Fell on a cart track. We told her to stay put, donned our coats and trekked out into the rain to find her …
Hardly had we got her back to the Centre and assured her that Mountain Rescue comes as part of the service, than Gretchen spotted three sheep on our back lawn. It’s bad enough that people are going to be sinking into the mud on Saturday – we don’t need them sinking into sheep pooh as well … So, Gretchen ‘phoned our friendly neighbourhood farmer and the conversation went something like this:
Gretchen: Hello there, friendly neighbourhood farmer. It’s Gretchen! How are you?!
Friendly Neighbourhood Farmer: I’m fine thank you Gretchen. How many sheep is it this time?
Cue arrival of slightly grumpy looking farmhand in pursuit of three sheep that are perfectly happy where they are …
Then we realized that we’d forgotten all about the necessity of feeding our volunteers on Saturday. I said, rather sourly, that we’ll have to buy sandwiches in because I’m not going to bloody well turn around and MAKE them … which is why I ended up down at the local petrol station sussing out who THEY got THEIR sandwiches from.
I got the information, rang the place, explained the situation, waited for the laughter (“Summer Concert? Saturday? Really??!!”) to die down and ordered 18 rounds of assorted sandwiches on white and brown bread. They’re being delivered to the petrol station on Saturday afternoon so that I can pick them up on my way past.
It’s 4.00pm.
Only another hour to go …
I have a little story to tell you.
We once had a client. Let us call him Tom.
Tom came to us, a long time ago, with his health in tatters through no fault of his own. He hadn’t worked in years. He hardly ever went out anywhere. He was a mess.
He started pottering in our garden. Eventually, we began to pay him for a few hours every week. At length he was strong enough to take a part-time job at Muncaster Castle (which we were partly instrumental in getting him). At length, he was well enough to take a full time job with the local Council, which is where he is now.
In the latest edition of the council magazine, they ran a two-page feature on him … one of their star pupils. During the interview, he tells us, he made many grateful references to The Centre and what we’d done for him. Again and again, he sang our praises – good lad that he is.
And what did the council magazine article report?
That he was at Muncaster Castle before he went to work for the council.
Er … excuse me!! Coo-ee!! Over here!! Hellooo!!!
As regular readers will know (greetings again, Regular Readers!) in between managing the Centre I help run a book review site call Vulpes Libris.
Part of my reason for saying “Yes” to it in the first place was that I thought it would be an opportunity to drive a little more traffic to the Centre’s website. This has actually worked fairly well … people are curious enough about the opinionated dingbat with weird tastes in reading matter to check out my “About Me” page and follow the links on it. Harry helped, too, of course …
Sometimes, however, a wee gift drops in your lap. Heaven smiles upon you. Or – in this case – Mark Thwaite … who contacted us and asked if one or more of us would like to do a mini-interview for his Editor’s Blog on The Book Depository.
Dear Leena at Vulpes immediately saw it as an opportunity for me to raise the profile of the Centre a bit … and happily Mark left all my links in, even though they were quite blatant plugs (thank you, Mark …!). This was the result:
Fame at last.
(Oh – and the site stats? Developing nicely, thank you.)
We’ve had confirmation that all three musicians are coming on the 19th.
I looked in the mirror this morning.
I’m sure I wasn’t a wizened old woman LAST Tuesday.
Who can I sue? I must be able to sue someone … (wanders off in a tragically distracted manner …)
Andrea and I have been working on the arrangements today (well, chiefly Andrea, but I like to give the illusion that I earn my keep). Fizzy plonk, plastic wine glasses, plastic bowls, plastic spoons … No expense spared, I’m telling you.
We haven’t heard from either Andy or the person who’s organizing the music.
I’ve set Andrea on chasing down the latter … We really, really need to know who’s coming, when they’re coming and what they need in the way of power cables, tables, chairs, refreshments …
Gretchen, meantime, is engaged in twitching-at-a-distance. She’s with her younger daughter for the week over the other side of the Pennines, near Newark.
I suppose I could always emigrate … but I’d need to go further than Newark.
I hear New Zealand’s very nice this time of year.
