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 …)