Serendipity
| Hello again,
I’ll spare you the rant (well, most of it at least - I could go on till midsummer…) but Companions on a small allowance who want a tv in their rooms have to pay the same for an individual licence as a millionaire with a dozen tv’s in their 25-bedroomed mansion. We’re lucky - the Trustees agreed to pay for them - but I was so incensed at the unfairness that I decided not to have one in my room. My son delivered one I inherited last Saturday! Then on Wednesday, Mike’s new all singing-all-dancing widescreen with inbuilt digibox arrived, and he passed on his old digital box to me! Aren’t I lucky? Simon arrived when I was up to my elbows baking cakes for the Dulwich Run the next day. Yes, Sunday - that rainy day. Yes, we manned the water stations, with Mike selling umbrellas almost as fast as (by then not-so-) hot cakes! Companion David managed to complete the full 10k run in just an hour, whilst Trustee Lorna joined Majonne and Chris in the 1 mile Fun Run - congratulations to them all. I’m glad to say Mike treated us all to a meal at a local restaurant after we had cleared up and changed, a very welcome and delicious event, with much merriment after a successful day. Companion Harry and Deputy John started it at 7.15, in order to get the gazebo up etc, and Harry was back on scaffold-building exercise again, for the finishing line tower. I had hoped it would divert him from thinking about Monday, when I escorted him to King’s College to have some teeth extracted - but its effects wore off too soon - or the anaesthetic wasn’t strong enough to knock him out. Net result, he gave the whole Department of Dentistry (and me) a scare, which saw me and a dozen doctors, specialists, nurses, auxiliaries and the dentist.. escort him off to the Resus Unit in Accident & Emergency. I’m pleased to report he is fine now, came home on Wednesday having been bored to tears, and of course he still has the teeth! On Tuesday one of our Volunteers sweetly brought me some freesias to cheer me up after Theo’s departure, but the serendipity didn’t even end there, for on Wednesday we received great boxes of lovely gifts from the Harvest Festival collection at St. Peter’s, a local Church, which were wonderful. I got up to the allotment for the first time in ages on Friday, and prepared another bed for onions which will be planted on Saturday. Then I will have to devote time to the original allotment which I’m hoping to terrace - but I’ll be drafting in help through the next few weeks for that. It involved clearing the runner beans, to the delight of a robin who stood on the boundary post and sang to me as I worked; I found myself searching for worms equally eagerly - in order to bury them again before he spotted them! Have a good week till we meet again, Elizabeth |
