It doesn’t add up …

If there’s one thing I really, really hate it’s bookkeeping. I’m lousy with figures. I’d go so far as to say that I’m number-blind. I read one number and write it down with digits transposed. I add up a column of figures and can’t get the same total twice. I have terrible trouble with my 7 and 9 times tables. My mental arithmetic is appalling. I forget what I’m doing halfway through the calculation.

I’d rather have root canal surgery than do bookkeeping. I’ve avoided figurework like the plague all of my adult life. I even turned down a job because they wanted to put me in the accounts department.

When I worked at Outward Bound, I had reciprocal arrangement with the bookkeeper there.  She did my invoices and I did her letters.  I hated numbers and she hated words.  It was a pairing made in heaven.

So - given all of the above - how come I’m sitting here, surrounded by our year’s figures and trying to put them into decent order to send off to the accountants?

How does stuff like that HAPPEN?

Muffled …

They spent all building an acoustic barrier around the pumps and stuffing the gaps with polystyrene.  And they turn off one of the pumps at night … which resulted in the whole site flooding last night.

Oops.

Manager-in-Hiding

I’m hiding in my office because we’ve been invaded by clergymen. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve nothing against clergymen and these are a particularly nice example of the species, it’s just that I don’t handle invasions well at the best of times and THIS is not the best of times.

To put it plainly - I’m puttered. I got hardly no sleep last night and it’s catching up with me. Thing is, you see, the bridge in my little village is being replaced, which requires the men to work in the river. In order to do that, they have to isolate the relevant bit of river and pump the water out … and keep the pumps running all night.

Our house is not called ‘Bridge End’ for no reason.  We’re right by the bridge works and it sounds like a squadron of Lancaster bombers going over - non-stop.

I went and had a word with the site foreman this morning, after I’d retrieved my eyeballs from halfway down my face, and he promised faithfully he’d do something about it. Switching one of the pumps off overnight and putting acoustic baffles up seemed to be a major part of the plan.

I do so hope it works. Lack of sleep does nothing for my sunny disposish.

The Gentle Art of Circumlocution.

By now, regular visitors (Hello, regular visitors!) will know that I help run a book review site as a sort of sideline. It’s becoming ridiculously and terrifyingly successful (11,000 views last month, and likely to be more this month, the way it’s shaping up) and one of the results of that is that publishers start wooing you to review their books. We currently have free run of the catalogues of several large publishers, which is nice, but a not unmixed blessing, as I am currently finding out to my cost.

I am presently trying to review a wildly expensive and glossy book sent to me by a publisher. I need to be honest without actually saying, “It’s a brilliant idea but couched in such horribly convoluted academic twaddle-speak that it’s borderline unreadable, and even the illustrations are - well - meh.” To do so would be unfair on the author and might also discourage the specialist readers to whom it will probably become a definitive work. It would also be a cheap shot.

I recognize, in other words, that it was not written for urchins like me in spite of the fact that the publisher breezily informs us that it’s suitable for the general reader.

I’ll make it. The review will be accurate and fair and informative, and will say all the things it needs to say without actually - well - saying them. It will be and do all those things because 20 years of working in THIS surreal joint have refined my diplomatic skills to the point where they have become second nature.

Somebody brings in a pile of jumble that is so foetid it virtually crawls up the front steps all by itself?

“Gosh - isn’t that an interesting …. metal thing?”

The entire contents of somebody’s grandma’s house arrives just after you’ve spent most of the day clearing the LAST delivery of tat from the front hall:

“Good timing! I’m in jumble-sorting mode today!”

(Don’t get me wrong -  we like and welcome jumble - it’s just that sometimes everybody seems to wake up on the same day and think, “Right!  It’s jumble to the Chase day today!!” - and there we are, hip deep in horsehead ice buckets …)

Twenty-five years’ worth of Pig Farmers’ Weekly magazines are proudly handed over in collapsing cardboard boxes with the sentiment: I was going to throw these out, but then I thought of you …

“Oh that’s wonderful … they always move very quickly.” (Straight out the back door into the wheelie bins …)

Or, of course, the ultimate catch-all that covers a multitude of situations:

“Oh - what a KIND thought …”.

It’s the Diplomatic Corps’ loss, I’m telling you . . .

End-of-financial-year

The end of the financial year was, of course, at the beginning of April. I’ve forgotten the byzantine reasons for this, but that’s when it ends, and it means that I have to get all our accounting bumf off to the accountants to be rendered comprehensible to those who need to comprehend such things (ie: The Charity Commission and the Inland Revenue).

Our book-keeping is done by my brother. As brothers go, he’s one of the better specimens, especially as he does our book-keeping for free.

I was getting the paperwork together ready to send off to said accountants when I discovered that I had a hole in what is usually referred to as The Paper Trail. A four-month shaped hole, to be precise, roughly the size of November, December, January and February. The aforementioned Brother was certain he didn’t still have them, so I spent a large chunk of Friday turning my office upside down in pursuit of November through to February.

Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

In desperation I emailed the Brother asking him to make quite sure that he didn’t have the missing paperwork - because if he didn’t my only other option was suicide.

That evening the ‘phone rang at home. It was the Brother.

“I seem,” he said, with an admirable attempt at insouciance, “to have found a large brown envelope …”

Pots and kettles.

I’m sure I’m in very good company when I say that one of my pet hates is cold callers.

In common with most people, I get them at work and at home . . . and the tenacity of some of them is absolutely breathtaking.

I was visited today - in person - by a very pleasant young man who works for one of the culprits (not the worst by any means … but still capable of being a complete pain in the proverbial).  He was actually trying to sell me an upgrade on what we already have, but as I made it very plain - and I mean VERY plain - even before his bottom hit the comfy chair that we had no money and therefore weren’t in any position to cough up £7.50 a month for a weblink or anything, he just fell to chatting over the coffee I had provided in a rare fit of bonhomie.

In the course of the conversation, he let it slip that if there’s one thing he really, really hates it’s cold callers disturbing him in the evenings and at weekends, just as he’s settling down to his hard-earned sausage and mash . . .

The morning after …

Oh the glamour …

The Centre - for those of you who don’t know - hangs out in a really handsome Victorian vicarage - sweeping staircase, high ceilings, tall windows, panoramic views across lower Eskdale. To the customers, walking in, all is calm and serenity and beauty.

I am, people tell me, so lucky to work somewhere so peaceful and lovely.

Allow me to introduce you to the bits BELOW the waterline … in the aftermath of the Festival of Fools:

The Butler’s Pantry (there’s a floor down there somewhere …):

My Office (legend has it there’s a marble fireplace  lurking somewhere in the area):

Now then people … You were SAYING?

Something is wrong …

It’s the last day of Muncaster Castle’s Festival of Fools.   It’s the most important day of the Festival, too … when the new Fool of Muncaster is chosen … and is thus the day that attracts the biggest turn out.

Sunday through Wednesday were bleak, windswept, rainswept, drizzle-soaked washouts, basically.  The final and crowning day should be accompanied by raging hurricanes at the very least.  I should be sitting up here in my nice dry office smirking as rain pelts against the glass and gale force winds shake the casements.

It is, in fact, a calm and sunny day.

Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

By the way …

It has nothing (much) to do with the Centre, but if you cast your eyes to the left, you’ll see a link to ‘Vulpes Libris‘, which is a book review site I’m Co-Admin of. It keeps me off the streets and pretty much out of harm’s way while I’m not at The Chase, or labouring in the garden at home, dontchaknow?

We’ve been bumbling along, amusing ourselves and wittering about books and stuff for about 7 months now, then all of a sudden on Sunday we noticed that our site statistics had gone ballistic.

Why? Check out this link: Chapter 8, paragraph 4 …

Oh help.

Real people are reading the stuff.  Hundreds of them …

Festival of Fools …

They’re all down at Muncaster, holding on to the gazebos with their teeth as a playful breeze plucks at the azaleas and tosses our gaily-coloured craft materials hither and yon. They’re also probably covering everything with polythene on account of the teeny-weeny amount of drizzle that’s pelting down.

From my choice of pronoun the more astute amongst you will gather that I’m not there with them.

Too right.

I’m not a masochist, I’m not gullible and I’m not going.