Don’t know about you, but my over-riding memory of Christmas and New Year is one long storm.  I suppose it MAY have stopped raining and blowing a hoolie at some point, but if it did, I don’t recall when exactly it was …

And now the New Year dawns, I’m back at work and … it’s blowing a hoolie and chucking it down.  Oh, excellent …  Right about now, I’d be quite grateful for some of that snow and ice the Met Office told us was on the way.

However – back to business.  It occurs to me that I’ve been a bit dilatory in posting the Parish News Copy on here, so – here’s December’s and tomorrow (because I know you love this stuff) I’ll post January’s …

Eskdale Parish News – December 2011.

It’s that awkward time of year again: when the time lapse between writing our page for the Parish News and it being published becomes a bit of a logistical headache.  While I’m writing this ten days before the Christmas Fair, and it’s therefore what’s dominating all our thoughts at the moment (those of us who aren’t obsessing over bees, that is …), there’s no point in talking about it, because by the time you read it (listen to the poor, deluded soul – she thinks people actually READ this stuff …) it’ll all be over. And I can’t talk about how terrifically, wonderfully fabulous it all was because … it hasn’t really happened yet.

Of course, I could take a leaf out of The Beano Guide to Tabloid Journalism and make the whole story up, but if I wax lyrical about how lucky we were with the weather, I’m going to look pretty foolish if it turns out that a Siberian weather front dumped six feet of snow on us.  And vice versa.

So instead, I’m going to talk about something almost – but not completely –  entirely unrelated.

A couple of years ago – perhaps a little longer – Kelly MacVean entered our lives.  Her husband Stuart had come over from the US to take up the position of Executive Director, Spent Fuel Management at Sellafield and she had accompanied him.  Equipped with an apparently endless supply of unchanneled energy, a ferocious work ethic and a terrifyingly organized mind, she was rendered speechless by the chaos that was our “filing system” (and I use those quotes advisedly) – and immediately set about teaching it who was boss.  For two years she wrestled our Mailing List into submission, meticulously filed and recorded all of our client records and – in her spare moments – organized and hosted stupendously glamorous tea parties for us.

And now she’s gone. Stuart has relocated to Savannah River and Kelly has finally returned permanently to her beloved home in Aiken, South Carolina.  I’m sure she’ll tell you that we gave her as much as she gave us, but from where I’m sitting, it doesn’t feel that way – which is really all just a long-winded way of saying “Thank you”.