You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December, 2008.
… for people to start remembering us.
It’s always fun when the Christmas cards start arriving. Quite apart from the annual guessing game of “Esmeralda and Quasimodo? Who the HELL are Esmeralda and Quasimodo and why have they sent us a photograph of their exceedingly ugly rugrat, Mungo?”, it’s also tantalizing to open them up and see if there’s anything inside (apart round robin letters solemnly informing us that poor Reverend Eternal-Damnation has been a bit poorly all year).
This being Credit Crunch Christmas, we weren’t hopeful, but in fact it’s all been rather touching. The occasional three-figure cheques, but mostly small offerings from people who have big hearts and stretched finances – real widow’s mite stuff, bless them.
… how a client reacts when they discover that I like rock music …
Gretchen’s gone out to see her housebound clients, leaving her previous client asleep in the treatment room, to the gentle strains of Brahms or something similar.
She just woke and came into my office to make a donation – to be greeted by Annie Lennox belting out ‘Missionary Man’. She sort of stopped, blinked, then said mildly:
“That’s very – different – music.”
“Ah. Yes.” I replied. “I suppose it IS a bit unexpected.”
“I couldn’t hear it next door.”
“No. I keep the volume turned down when we have clients in.”
“Do you play it all the time?”
“It depends on my mood …”
“Oh.”
“I’m dealing with the Companies House paperwork at the moment.”
“Oh.”
“That really NEEDS rock music …”
“Ah. Yes. I can imagine. I’ll – just go and look at your secondhand books …”
A funeral on a freezing cold day isn’t the best way to start the week, but when a long-standing client and friend of the Centre dies, we feel we have to. And so it was that Gretchen and I drove to the other side of the Lakes, to Milnthorpe, this morning – to say goodbye to Dave K.
It did have its moments. My favourite, I’m afraid, was when the coffin arrived.
From the general direction of the back of the church, there came this sort of regular “thwump-thwump-thwump-thwump-thwump” sound.
It took me ages to identify it as the beautifully behaved black labrador of a church regular, sitting by a rear pew, wagging its tail in recognition of one of the bearers …
