You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2009.
Better late than never … (well – it IS still April … gimme a break!) our page in the Parish News for this month:
Centre for Complementary Care
Credit crunched …
We’re still standing – just – and that’s more than a lot of small charities both locally and nationally can say. The situation was recently described to us by someone in the middle of the war zone as ‘carnage’.
There are three main reasons for our continued survival:
(1) Sheer bloody-mindedness.
(2) We’ve been credit crunched from the day we first opened our doors, so nothing much seems to have changed. No money? And this is a new state of affairs how exactly?
(3) We have some of the most loyal friends and supporters in the entire known universe.
This doesn’t mean we’re not stretched financially – because we are. But with a bit of luck and a following wind we’ll live to see the upturn. In the meantime, we still need to find some ongoing funding. So if you hear of any ailing millionaires … just shunt them in our direction.
What the current financial chaos DOES mean is that we’ve had to look very carefully at how we spend what money we do have, especially in relation to fundraising events. The brutal, simple truth is that in the past some of our events have actually costs us more to set up and run than they made. You don’t need to be an genius to recognize that as economic suicide.
So – with regret – we’ve decided that we have to turn down anything we don’t believe we can make a healthy surplus from. This, in practice, means our fundraising events are going to be limited to the Muncaster Festival of Fools in May, our own Christmas Fair, a handful of sponsored runs, (which don’t involve us in any administration at all except for printing out and distributing sponsor forms) AND ….. a rather special one …..
It’s 20 years since Gretchen first set up shop on the Birkby Road. We were sort of half-planning to ignore it, but then the Cumbria Community Foundation popped up and said that 2009 is their 10th Anniversary and – as they are one of the above-mentioned friends and supporters to whom we owe our survival – the idea of the The Great 20/10 Birthday Party was born … to celebrate BOTH our birthdays.
You heard it here first: The Big House on the Dodgy Corner by Muncaster Castle is going to be THE Place to Be on Saturday, August 22nd – and everyone is invited.
Live music indoors and out (weather famously permitting), refreshments, some of our ritzier stuff for sale, raffle, tombola, garden tours, birthday cake for all … and anything else we dream up between now and August.
More details soon.
MKB
Last night Harry Enfield – along with long-time friend and collaborator Paul Whitehouse – won the BAFTA for Best Comedy Programme for Harry and Paul.
We’re all going around with silly grins on our faces. It couldn’t have happened to two nicer people.
Our warmest congratulations to them both.
… what I said to Radio Cumbria.
Radio Cumbria was here this morning, in response to our newsletter. I was entirely sanguine about this, because they’d come to talk to Gretchen (who insisted on washing and combing her hair, in spite of the fact that it was radio … “I have my standards!”, she cried, disappearing upstairs …).
Anyway, imagine my startlement when nice Sarah appears in my office, clutching a microphone, to ask me about when I broke my foot and Gretchen did the voodoo thing with it … “Why is what Gretchen does so important to people?” she asked.
I immediately discounted “Dunno” as a possible answer (even though it was the first one that popped into my head …), closely followed by “Can you ask me another …?” which was the second.
It’s not that I DON’T think it’s important … it’s just that having a microphone stuffed up my nose totally neutralizes all available functioning brain cells …
If you think about it for a while, there are a lot of words you don’t want to hear …
“It’s from the Inland Revenue.”
“Let’s have a sing-song.”
“The dog’s been sick in the picnic basket.”
“I thought YOU had the passports.”
“Is that Police car flashing US?”
But I can tell you that there are two words which – when uttered by your dentist as they’re gazing into your mouth – will freeze your blood:
“Oh … bugger.”
… to all the new readers who are turning up in droves in response to our latest Newsletter – both of you …
Here we are, the other side of the Easter Break, and virtually the first thing I manage to do is break a dental onlay (a sort-of-but-not-quite crown). All I was doing was brushing my flaming teeth, like what you’re supposed to.
Now I ask you – is that fair? I mean, if I’d been massacring a treacle toffee or something, I’d have said I was just asking for trouble … but CLEANNG MY TEETH? Where’s the justice in that?
Hmph.
Anyway … you’re not interested in my dental problems.
We’re already getting a remarkable response to the Newsletter … which is just as well considering how much blood was shed over it one way and another.
(Memo to self: Must deliver five reams of white photocopy paper to Muncaster Castle before they send the bailiffs round …)
So, the witty and sparkling Newsletter is all ready for the ‘off’. The photocopier has been serviced and is functioning flawlessly. The paper stocks were checked long since, we have plenty of toner, the envelopes have been labelled and stamped, the willing workers (cough) are primed and eager … everything, finally, is under control.
You don’t need me to say it, do you? Of course you don’t.
The cream A3 photocopy paper – supplied to us by the same people who supplied the photocopier – won’t go through the copier without wrapping itself lasciviously around the internal economy and bringing the whole show to a sickening and grinding halt.
Rapid rethink. The workers are going to love this, but we have no choice. We have to print the whole thing on standard A4 which will then have to be stapled together …
Problem: We don’t have enough A4.
Solution: Ring Muncaster Castle and bleat. Works every time.
Shoot down to the Castle, wave arms around pathetically, looking dishevelled and tragic, and remove most of their remaining stock of photocopier paper.
Return to Centre and shut self in office so that when the workers revolt, they can’t get to you.
You can do someone a nasty injury with a stapler, you know … 
I’m trying to get the annual newsletter written and printed in time to make use of the tame work force currently resident at the Centre (ie: Gretchen’s grandchildren). I have to be spontaneous, concise, witty, sparkling and informative for FOUR A4 sides.
Grim.
