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The Centre’s been closed this week because Gretchen’s spending Thanksgiving with her family (she’s American – she can’t help it …).
With no clients around, I get to let my hair down a bit. You see, during a normal working week, clients in the treatment room are soothed by gentle strains of innocuous classical rhubarb and I have to keep my musical tastes turned down very low.
On closed weeks, however, I can crank up the volume to my heart’s content (as long as I don’t disturb the neighbours).
I often wonder what some of our clients – who mostly consider me to be a slightly distant, vaguely odd but reasonably civilized and normal person – would think if they walked in unexpectedly to be greeted by unexpurgated Amy Winehouse at full blast, Bruce Springsteen down at The River, Meat Loaf blowing the circuit boards … or even Tim Curry belting out ‘Sweet Transvestite” …
I’m almost tempted to find out. 
Having survived all of our ‘big’ stuff … the St Francis’ Fair, our AGM, the Cumbria Community Foundation’s AGM, I now have time to catch up on all the ‘housekeeping’ … the everyday paperwork that’s been shelved for ‘when I have time’ – and it’s a really blood-curdling experience.
You can virtually guarantee that somewhere halfway down the mountainous pile of felled rainforests I’ll find something that makes me break out in a cold sweat.
Something that I should have done yonks ago.
Something that could have grim-faced people asking through thinned lips where Form 98(c) for 2006 to 2007 (including Annex 223-C-xii) is, and do I know that it’s an offence under Section 9934 of the 1998 We’re Going to Make Your Life a Burden to You Act (as amended by the Bits in Very, Very Small Print Act 2007) not to file them within 18 months of the death of your budgie?
Or whatever. You get my drift.
Now, I’m sure I saw the Schedule to Annex 223-C-xii around here somewhere …
Gretchen, Andrea, Richard and I trundled off to the AGM of the Cumbria Community Foundation yesterday evening. It was held at the Sellafield Business Centre – a place of appalling acoustics and overcranked heating – and it was an interesting experience, to put it mildly.
There seems to have been something of a mini seismic shift in the way the Centre’s being perceived locally, which is frankly a little unbalancing.
The Cumbria Community Foundation has been a great supporter and friend of the Centre for years. It’s out in the community itself – amongst the great and the good – that we’ve had a bit of an image problem. I didn’t help, of course, by using the word ‘weird’ in a newsletter … a term which has come back to haunt us more than once since.
Last night, however, (where Gretchen accepted a cheque for £1,000) there was an obvious shift in attitude. I think we may be in danger of becoming fashionable, or glamorous or … something. People were talking to us as if they took us seriously. They knew about us. They knew what we do. Us. The Eternal Urchins.
I may have to buy a suit. 
(PS: I made the acquaintance of the splendid Dick Raaz – the amiable, jolly but steely gentleman who is now Managing Director of the Low Level Waste Repository at Drigg. He promised faithfully to come to lunch one day soon, with his wife … the redoubtable JD …)
On my ‘to do’ list today and tomorrow:
Finish off the last 20 (of 67) applications to charitable trusts, asking for money, honey ….
Do the week’s banking.
Get the float for a fundraising bash in Windermere on Saturday (to which I am, happily, NOT going).
Finish off the ‘Abandon Hope’ trivia quiz. I have a standard to maintain. If at least a handful of people don’t end up as quivering, dribbling wrecks, I know I’m losing my touch.
Sort out the paperwork, financial information, and general gubbins (excuse me for blinding you with science …) for the AGM on Friday.
Find the original of the Annual Raffle poster for Saturday. (It’s on this computer somewhere, I know it is. I’m positive. Really. I am.)
Start to bend my mind to the question of the AGM, at the Sellafield Centre, of Cumbria Community Foundation, to which the Centre has been invited. It’s going to be a chance to schmooze with the great and the good (or at least the ones with the money … which is more to the point) in the local business community, including the new American masters at Sellafield.
I need to revamp the display stands because they’re a bit out of date. I also need to find a pair of black court shoes that aren’t going to completely cripple me … I’m not good at being charming to suits if my feet are killing me.
I don’t suppose my walking boots would do, would they?
No. Thought not.
If you have nothing better to do, you might find this passingly entertaining: Interview with a Fox.
The blatant plug was not, in fact, any of my doing. I didn’t exert any pressure on Emily to ask the question … she was just curious.
