I’m sure my dog wouldn’t really have ripped the soft bits out of yours:  showing them all 42 of his splendid teeth like that was just his idea of being friendly.

I’ve bought him a new running lead and a good strong harness, though – just in case.  And I mean, really – look at him. Butter wouldn’t melt, would it?

Thank you.  *embarrassed cough*

Every day, being an obsessive sort of person, I check the statistics to see how many people visit the site, what they look at and what search terms brought them to us.

This morning, I checked the stats as usual and discovered that two visitors (or possibly the same visitor twice) had arrived after Googling: “Moira Briggs” lesbian.

I kid you not.  How wonderful is that?

Meanwhile, on a (slightly) more serious note … NOW is the time to get rid of re-gift all those unwanted Christmas presents.  We want them.  We need them.  We can fob them off on the unsuspecting for ready money.  If you’re too ashamed to reveal what seriously lousy taste your friends and family have, leave them under cover of darkness.

The presents, that is.  Not your friends and family.  Selling people is illegal.

ESKDALE PARISH NEWS – January 2012

Funny old things, fundraisers: you never know how they’re going to turn out until they’ve been and gone and done it.  Our Christmas Fair was a case in point.  After weeks of planning, organizing, wheedling, cajolling and heaving stuff around in cardboard boxes (almost none of which was done by Yours Truly, incidentally) when the day finally dawned – grey, miserable and distinctly unfestive, we had zero idea whether we were going to make any money, whether anybody was going to turn up or whether we were going to spend the next fortnight eating all the leftover cake and sandwiches, because it would be a terrible shame to let it all go to waste …

For the first hour, it looked as if the ‘massive loss/living off fairy cakes for a month’ scenario was the most likely outcome, until – emerging from the drizzle much as the Vikings must have done all those centuries ago – people started to arrive.  First, they came in penny numbers, but almost before we knew it, the car park was log-jammed and threatening to spill out onto the main road.  There were revellers shoulder-to-shoulder in the Centre, the kitchen was no place for the faint-hearted and it was like the first day of the Harrods sale around the Christmas trimmings.   They came from as far afield as Lancaster and Penrith by the car load.  A couple of strangers to the area fetched up with us accidentally, having set out to visit the Sellafield Visitors’ Centre (yes, the one that closed eight years ago), decided to try Muncaster instead and then met a group of happy shoppers on their way back to their car, who pointed them in our direction.  Then there were the escapees from the power cut – who knew where they could get a cup of tea and the determined ones who were visiting all four Christmas Fairs that were being held in the area that day …

By the time we’d strong-armed the last bargain-hunter out of the door at 4.00pm, we’d cleared £1,300.  Yes, you read that right.  £1,300.

Funny old things, fundraisers.

~~~:~~~

(The splendid Viking image is courtesy of neonbubble on Flickr and is reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence … Not that I’m suggesting that the punters at the cake stall in any way reminded me of Viking berserkers, you understand …)

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”.

Microsoft scam by Cumbria mobile

The call came about ten minutes earlier than I was expecting because their other interviewee dropped out … rather catching me on the hop and in a state of déshabillé.  I haven’t had the courage to listen to it yet.  Hope I don’t sound all snot-ridden and adenoidal, which I felt.  At 8.00am I’m barely focussing.

However, life is on a slightly more even keel again so here I am … and heading straight into Stressville again.

Thing is you see, a local radio journalist was asking on Facebook if anyone had encountered a telephone scam whereby someone telephones and claims to be from Microsoft, then proceeds to try to persuade you to grant them access to your computer, so that they can ‘fix’ it for you.  Ho-ho-ho.  Yes, of course you will, Sunshine …

Anyway, I immediately piped up that we’d been rung by them four times in as many months – twice in the last week.

“Excellent!” cried the journalist, “Would you mind being interviewed live on Radio Cumbria about it?”

Er … well …

Tomorrow morning.

8.10am.

Doh …

(Photo courtesy of OCV Photo on Flickr and reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.)

It all started very quietly, with us moping around saying: “Nobody’s coming …  They’ve had a better offer …  They don’t love us any more … We should have paid for that advert in the Whitehaven News ...”.   The next thing we knew, they were fighting their way through the doors.  The car park was log-jammed (because between us, Brains Trust that we are, we’d contrived not to put out the “CARS THIS WAY” sign) and people were shoulder-to-shoulder in the Centre, chatting to old friends, knocking back the fruit punch by the pint, necking sausage rolls and cakes as if they didn’t expect to eat again for a week and hoovering up the bargains in the sales rooms like crazed vacuum cleaners … It was all extremely  heartening, especially in view of the fact that Andrea and all our Volunteers wore themselves down to nubs organizing it and setting it all up.

The net result was a clear profit of £1,300 – which must qualify as a near miracle in the circumstances.

And the new Centre Dog?  What of him?  Well, Ben – predictably – was the star of the show.  Every time I turned around, he was sitting on someone else’s lap being told how utterly gorgeous he was …

After a four year hiatus, I’ve finally got another dog.  Like his illustrious (if three-legged) predecessor, he’s a rescue dog – a two year old Jack Russell, who is skin and bone and covered in bite marks.  The rescue centre (Matching Partners Canine Rescue of Armathwaite) say he was almost certainly used as ‘bait’ in illegal dog fights.  But never fear,  within a month he’ll be fat and smug and firmly convinced that he owns the joint …

His partner in crime is eight year old Daisy, who actually belongs to the Matriarch but will occasionally tag along to the Centre for the ride.  She was found starving and abandoned having been used for intensive breeding until she was too old to be of use.  She’s already living up to her alternative handle of “The Little Princess” …

Meanwhile, in between tripping over Very Small But Important Dogs, we’re in full swing with the preparations for the Christmas Fair on Saturday.  We have so much stuff that it’s getting hard to move without stepping over or around stuffed toys, books, toiletry sets, miscellaneous furry things and glittery doodads.  Which doesn’t mean that we won’t be delighted to see you if you turn up with More Stuff.  Please do.

Our new obsession (in addition to Bees and Very Small but Important Dogs)  is The Weather.  We click on the Met Office website every hout to see what fiction they’re peddling now.  Currently, they seem to think wind might be the order of the day.  Wind we can cope with.  Wind doesn’t stop people from turning up.  Unless it’s Storm Force 10 of course …

It started well enough.  Sort of.

Our lovely next door neighbours, John and Diane, are moving to their new home in Drigg and, such is the geography of the building,  the larger bits of their furniture have to come through the connecting door, down our stairway and out of the front door.  The Man with the Van was arriving at 9.00am, and I’d promised faithfully to be at the Centre in time to open the front door for them.

Right on schedule, I arrived at 8.55am.  So far so good.

I then went and unloaded the shopping from the car, and while blokes surged around with white goods and wardrobes put the food away in the fridge. In due course, Andrea arrived with Grace (aka: the Best Cleaner in the World) and checked the messages on the answering machine.  One was from Kirsty, who was en route from Scotland to help out at the Centre for a couple of days, saying that she was going to be arriving an hour later than expected at Ravenglass.

Okay.  No problem.

Things trundled along harmlessly enough with men going up and down stairs, Grace wandering around with the vacuum cleaner, Andrea muttering at the laptop and me sending off Press Releases about the Christmas Fair – until the time came to take Grace home and scoop Kirsty up en passant.

Now, although I DO know how to hotwire my car, I generally prefer to start it with the key … which was unfortunately conspicuous by its absence.  In fact, not only my car key, but my office keys and house keys too, because they’re all on the same bunch.  I scoured the car, I scoured the kitchen, I scoured the office … Nada.  Andrea did the same thing.  Same result.  Eventually, probably fearing I was about to go into meltdown, Andrea offered to take Grace home and collect Kirsty (for which I was pathetically grateful)  leaving me gibbering in the Centre.

I went out to the car.  I went back to the office. I retraced my steps.   I minutely examined the path from the car.  I checked in all the desk drawers.  Nothing.  And, gradually, the horrible thought occurred to me that the uber-thorough Grace might have scooped them up with the other debris and deposited them in the wheelie bin.  In fact, I’d just about resigned myself to an intimate inspection of the rubbish when I decided, in desperation, to ‘walk the course’ one more time, very, VERY carefully.

So it went like this:  I pulled up in the car park, I took two of the four bags of shopping out of the car and walked down the hill, across the rear courtyard, in the back door and through to the kitchen.  I then went out to the reception to let the removal men in and back to the car, to get the other two bags of shopping and my briefcase. I brought them into the kitchen and started to unpack them.  I put the perishables in the fridge, the non-perishables in the  ….

Hang on.

I couldn’t have, could I?  I mean no-one in their right minds could do anything that stupid, could they?

Cringing, I opened the fridge door …

You won’t tell anyone, will you?  Please?

For the past few years our Vice Chair (a job I always really fancied until I found out there was more than one definition of ‘vice’ …)  has been Dr Tim Sowton – a GP with the local  Seascale Surgery who did a couple of turns of duty with Médecins Sans Frontières in Cambodia and Afghanistan before marrying and settling down in West Cumbria.  We’re delighted to say that he has agreed to take over as Chair (and, of course, he hefts a fair whack of gravitas himself …)

Stepping up as Vice Chair is Rachael Polkinghorne the hugely (and irritatingly) talented and successful Interior Designer who owns and runs Polkadot Interiors.

Peter hasn’t left us completely of course – he’s still a Trustee.  I suspect he couldn’t bear the thought of missing all those post-Committee Meeting lunches …