How it's Meant to Be?

There's one very important thing about being a volunteer ... personal power!  I don't mean power in the sense of getting everyone else to do what you tell them - far from it! - but power over your own person.  You get to do the things you want to do and have no responsibility for the things you don't.  At least that's how it seems to me.

Note, I said it's an important thing ... not a good thing.  Someone asked me the other week how I was getting on, did I enjoy what I was doing there?  I think she was a bit surprised by my reply, "I like to see a system working the way it should."  She had to follow up to get the response she sought.  "And what about this system?"  When I told her that in my opinion it worked about 30% of the time, I think she was surprised, but a conversation ensued that, I hope, will ultimately be to the good of the whole enterprise.

As I look back over my life, I see lots of separate strands: jobs that don't necessarily form a 'career path'; friendships and relationships that have been discarded ... few have survived the years; projects left unfinished that have eventually ended in the bin; skills learned, but not taken to a formal qualification or fully utilised. There have been so many ships that have been 'jumped'. In many ways I've been a drifter rather than a sticker.  

To read that summary you would think that my life is a misery but that's not true.  Yes, there has been unhappiness down the years ... whose life hasn't had some?  And there are regrets, things that, with the advantage of hindsight, could have been handled better.  But those strands have twisted together to make me what I am.  I'm independent, strong willed even if the body isn't so strong these days, can be stubborn or willing, selfish or considerate and compassionate according to the attitudes and behaviour of those around me.  For good or ill, I'm my own man.  And now I'm a volunteer.

Yes, I'm a volunteer.  I have quite a wide range of personal skills gained over the years and I'm free to offer them wherever they can be of use.  It's good to be able to sit at a computer for a day, confident in operating a particular system, but able to pack a box, fasten it securely and take it to the despatch area.  It's good to be able to spend a morning on a van, meeting people, moving bags and tubs of 'stuff', loading tidily and securely, unloading carefully and systematically, and able to drive it if required.  It's good to be able to offer a bit of management advice, form design and spreadsheet development skills where they're needed.

But I'm a volunteer.  If there's something I don't want to do, or feel incapable of doing, I can just leave it for someone else.  There's no compulsion to work until the day ends; I can leave when I want, and what's left undone someone else can pick up tomorrow.  And provided I don't breach the requirements of health & safety, endanger or injure someone else, and meet the basic needs of human decency and courtesy, there's no voice of censure.  

The outcome is, as I told the lady, a system that works properly about 30% of the time (my estimate, not a statistical fact).  Because there's no continuity, no enforceable plan, efficiency is sacrificed.  Resources aren't always to hand, but have to be sought, materials have to be conveyed to and from what could be an efficient production line.  Because it's a voluntary workforce, relying on donations rather than commercially procured raw materials, it is de facto inefficient.  

We have to ask, is the efficient production line a desirable situation?  Isn't it far better to have a happy, chatty workforce, in a situation where personal needs and wishes can take centre stage.  When a manager can ring me - as she did yesterday afternoon, while I was sitting at home at my computer as usual - to say "I have a favour to ask.  You don't have to do it, feel free to say 'no'."  The situation she faced was explained, along with the part I could play in its resolution, and I gave a willing - nay even excited - 'yes' to her request.  I wondered afterwards whether she had said to her colleague, 'I'll give Brian a call.  He's the chap to help us out.'  In a commercial situation, that would be called being taken for granted, undue pressure or favouritism (according to your standpoint).  In this case, far from it.  I was delighted to be thought of.

But I'm a volunteer!

Animal Magic!

Let me begin with the racing results ... I ended last week with the observation that one horse was becalmed mid-course, since I was awaiting the outcome of an offer of help.  The horse fell, and never finished the race.  I had a text exchange with my friend early this week, saying that the quantity of food involved was much more than a car could accommodate and a van had been arranged for the job ... oh, to have turned the clock back a few years!

I also mentioned last week the excitement of using on-line conferencing technology.  When the instructions arrived on Monday, I found them confusing and, being unclear whether I should need to use both laptop and phone, I decided to have a little run-through the link-up process before the event.  It was as well that I did for, although the program was simplicity itself to use, it did require a preliminary set-up to match the software with my laptop and a brief test with a picture of myself on the screen, asking 'what shall I say, then?' and waiting for the echo of my own voice (it never sounds right, does it?).  Once the second sound option had been chosen - I hadn't realised that the laptop has a hidden microphone to complement the webcam - all was well, and I was able to bookmark the configuration ready for the live meeting last evening.

The meeting itself went quite smoothly.  As the 'new kid on the block', I said very little and learned quite a lot, about the organisation itself and the ongoing business that the meeting was held to discuss, but also about some of the people involved.  I imagined the chairman to have been an engineer in his working life; he had done all the thinking and designing and now needed to write the whole thing up so it was in a fit state to make public.  The secretary seemed to take little part in the meeting, but at the end demonstrated her efficiency by being able to reel off a comprehensive action list of what each of us had agreed to undertake before the next meeting.

And the other significant follow-up is the business of changing horses mid-race.  The switch-back to BT will now not be going ahead.  The people at Virgin explained that there is much more involved than simply responding to BT and saying 'yes, please.' not least the fact that their contract requires 30 days notice of termination.  Other factors, too, are involved, including a new contract at a lower price.  A friend has made me a novel piece of furniture out of scrap wood, at the precise dimensions to fit between two bookcases and carry the Virgin hub in a sensible position instead of dangling on the floor like a dog straining to get off its leash.  This little 'dolls'-house table' will not now be suffering immediate redundancy.

The latest snippet of gossip to emerge from my now secured internet connection has taken nearly 136 years to reach me.  In an idle moment - yes, they do still exist - I was making yet another attempt to document the demise of my great-grandfather.  He was present at the census in 1881, ten years later his wife was described as a widow, and in 1892 she re-married.  Search where I might, for the last twenty years I've been unable to find either a death record for him or a record of his burial.  I decided this week to begin a detailed search of the newspapers that are available on line.  Searching for 'Evans' and the name of the village where they lived, 'Syleham', for the 1880s, I again found no trace of great-grandfather, but the first of about 40 results mentioned his son, my grandfather. 

The extract that had appeared in the results simply provided the text immediately surrounding the key words I'd submitted.  I saw "defendant.  Zechariah Evans, labourer, Syleham" and my immediate thought was 'Oh dear, what had grandfather been up to?'  Like you, perhaps, I hadn't spotted the full stop.  When I looked at the article, which actually covered several column-inches of the Ipswich Journal of 24th November 1883, I discovered that the word 'defendant' finished the previous paragraph, which had identified the man's solicitor.  My grandfather, 15 at the time, and his elder brother, 18, had seen the defendant driving two very lame bullocks along the road, and the defendant, a local farmer and dealer was brought before the local Magistrates Court for the non-reporting of a case of foot and mouth disease.  The boys had seen two of the beasts being brought home, essentially from market, and were the first-reported of a number of witnesses in a successful prosecution.

I'm now looking for more idle moments that I can use to dig even further into this rich resource.

'Racehorse Fits Car into Diary' Problem ... or Similar

There are weeks when the many strands of life resemble those racehorse games that used to be seen at the fairground.  Those of you of a 'certain age' may well remember them.  Each position along the front of the stall was assigned a horse on the big board at the back, and you propelled your horse toward the finishing post by means of scoring points as a result of rolling balls into holes in front of you.  Sometimes your horse would appear to have lost its legs completely, so long did it remain in one place; then all of a sudden it would shoot forward several yards, as the mechanism beneath jerked it into life.

Fairgrounds apart, there are days when I return home after hours away and say to an empty doormat, "Right, that's the post dealt with; what's next?"  After a sequence of such days, yesterday was definitely not one of them.  I returned home at lunchtime to find three white envelopes waiting for me.

Following the anniversary of my little sports car being written off, and the subsequent acquisition of a new replacement, the said replacement has just had its first annual service, and is resplendent in the afterglow of a professional clean courtesy of the local Volkswagen showroom.  As part of the anniversary celebrations, I had renewed the VW insurance policy, and the first envelope I opened contained all the confirmatory documents ... and the all-important Certificate of Insurance.

The second one was a leaflet from the National Health Service, distributed by my GP's office, offering a free general health check for an age range that includes me.  This seemed a very worthwhile service, so I rang the surgery immediately to make an appointment.  It's actually two appointments, because they do a blood test first and then chat to you after they've seen the results.  Coming only two days after I responded to an earlier letter about an annual Asthma Check, they would appear to have commandeered my diary for the coming month.

They don't get it all their own way, though.  A little over a year ago, I decided to change my broadband provider after being told by a nice young lady at Virgin that, when my introductory discount was about to expire, I could call their customer service number and arrange a new discounted deal to replace it.  Fool that I was, I believed her and, a week or two before the expiry date, I rang the number only to be told that nothing could be done, because my existing contract was still in force.  Though I pleaded my cause, I got nowhere and now that the full price has kicked in, they have e-mailed me to say that this will be increased even further from from September.

So, when I opened my third letter this morning and found an attractive offer from BT, I looked for the almost-hidden important phrase 'will revert to' and, having found it, did some comparisons.  The outcome is that I have now arranged to return to BT as a new customer and enjoy a discount for 18 months for their latest variety of high-speed broadband, before moving to a new price within a pound or so of what I would be paying Virgin next month.  And with BT there are a lot of hidden extras and good service, too ... the only reason I left them was the attraction of discount ... and a pretty voice!  Another appointment has been entered to my diary, this time not a go-out, but a stay-in event, just in case the engineer can't do all he has to from outside the flat.

The excitement isn't all over yet, however, for this evening I received a long-awaited e-mail from another committee I was invited to join a few weeks ago, inviting me to fill out a doodle-poll to say when I would be available for the first meeting to involve me.  This will shortly lead to another filled slot in the August diary.  This one will have the added excitement in that the other committee members are in Edinburgh, Bristol and a host of other locations I've yet to  memorise and the meeting will take place on line, using technology hitherto beyond my horizons.  Very much a case of 'watch this space'!

Of course, there is one horse in the race for my time that is presently becalmed mid-course.  Some months ago I attended a meeting in the town, where it was decided to produce cooked meals during the summer holidays for some of the less well-off families in the community.  Cooking is not my strong point - far from it! - but I decided I would be willing to help behind the scenes.  The other week I responded to an appeal to collect food being donated by two local supermarkets.  Last weekend, I was shifting chairs in church alongside a friend who is helping with the same venture, but wasn't the one who had sent out the appeal.  To my surprise it was this friend who apologised for not getting back to me with the details of what I shall be required to do.  It seems that, in that committee, the one who sends out appeals isn't the one who actually deals with responses!

No doubt there'll be more diary excitement next week.

The Shopping Dilemma

One of the perennial difficulties, it seems, of living alone is the whole business of food shopping.  I have long bemoaned the fact that things that have a short shelf-life have to dominate the menu from the day they are bought until they are used up.  The alternative is to build into one's budget - indeed into one's whole philosophy - the fact that enjoyment of a lone portion of commodity X will involve double the normal portion cost and the waste of half of the minimum buying quantity.

I enjoy a cheese and cucumber sandwich, for example.  My normal sandwich intake is one (i.e. one slice of bread, folded) per day for my lunch.  At this rate, half a cucumber - the minimum that can be bought, and that already more than half the cost of a whole one - would last at least a fortnight and economy would require that I have the same thing for lunch every day.  I fear loyalty would almost inevitably succumb to boredom.  The same pattern applies to a number of other perishable pleasures.

The other shopping feature to which I react with mixed feelings is one that has become quite popular in recent years: BOGOF, or 'buy one, get one free'.  Sometimes it gets modified to offer two for a reduced price, with that reduced figure being the one prominently displayed.  Hence the eye catches the headline '2 for £2', but if you only want one, you find that you'll have to pay £1.67.  My argument against this 'bargain' is one of storage.  Many such offers I will take advantage of, on the basis of welcoming the saving on something that I may well use over a number of weeks, but in other cases I just don't have space, e.g. in my fridge or freezer, for a larger quantity than I need in the immediate few days.

My local favoured supermarket is presently undergoing refurbishment.  Now, I understand that, when many shelves are on the brink of being shunted and perhaps some lines are being moved to another area of the store, on-shelf quantities might be reduced to make this easier. The occasional 'out of stock' I can live with.  But some items I buy regularly have disappeared completely ... and not for just a week or two; in the case of one particular type of cereal, I've not seen any sign of it for a month or more!  Has it been decided not to stock it?  Is it, in fact, no longer being produced?

A particular line that forms a regular part of my eating pattern is vegetable rice.  It's one of a range of four own-brand rice products of which a 105 gram packet is just right for a single portion.  These cost 47p.  This week I had to resort to a branded variety - just as good, I'm sure - which comes in a 250 gram packet, labelled 'makes 2 portions'; this sells for £1.55 which, by my reckoning is 38% more expensive, in addition to providing a larger portion (I'll come back to that shortly) and posing a storage problem.  It seems that the whole packet, once opened, has to be cooked at once so I shall have to find a space to store a cooked portion until I next want to eat it ... at the very least the next day.  It hardly makes for a balanced diet!

By way of a footnote: Tuesday of this week would have been my silver wedding; in point of fact we were divorced over twenty years ago.  One bone of contention during that time was the imbalance between, on the one hand, complaints about my increasing weight and waistline and, on the other hand, my wife's habit of making my portions larger than hers and then, when she had eaten her fill, passing the uneaten part of her meal onto my plate.  This was then followed up by a protest that I hadn't eaten all of 'my' dinner.  My complaints fell on deaf ears and, sad to say, often led to a row.

While I'm happy that, in my father's words, "Them days are gone!", it seems that food problems will continue ... perhaps it will always be so.

Summer Break with a Difference!

It wasn't quite a holiday, but the venue was beautiful; it wasn't exactly work because I didn't get paid and the whole time wasn't productive; and it wasn't an entertainment although for the most part it was pleasant and enjoyable to observe.  The journey to Llandrindod Wells was an adventure in the 'old style' that was my work for many years: to follow SatNav's instructions for the most part but then to remember when I was fighting him in order to go a different way, and therefore would need to maintain that disagreement until he caught me up.  Catching me up is more prompt now, however, than was the case with the older machine that I ditched a couple of years ago.

Out and return, although by different routes, were, within a mile or so, the same distance and took about the same overall time, despite the different times of day.  The outward trip on Sunday afternoon involved the M1, where I had forgotten the miles and miles of 50 mph limit which - though still faster than most alternatives - always seems so slow on a motorway.  When I returned on Tuesday evening, I left the M40 further down and took the country roads into Milton Keynes, by-passing the M1 completely.  The journey in either direction took about five hours, including stops.

The view from my window

I'd never been there before and found Llandod (as the locals call it) an attractive town (made more so, I suppose, by the sunshine) that appears to straddle the A483.  Obviously I only saw the centre and there are probably, as with almost anywhere, less alluring parts to it.  My lodging - product of my first venture into the domain of Airbnb - was both the cheapest I could find and also the closest to my target, which was the Liberal Democrat office for the present by-election campaign.  It was a well-appointed room in a clean home that was newly-carpeted, it seemed, throughout.  The view from my window was magnificent and there was even a desk on which I could catch up with my personal admin on both evenings.  I shall have no hesitation in using this resource again.

For physical and personality reasons, I don't undertake canvassing or delivering leaflets, nor will I agree to make telephone calls (which otherwise I could have done from home, avoiding all the travelling).  Instead, I offer my time for clerical work behind the scenes which allows someone else to do these things.  My reward is the interest in seeing the whole election plan unfold around me ... as I've confessed before, I'm a time-served people-watcher!

The sunlit Park Crescent

Following my experiences at Witney in 2016 and St Albans for the general election the next year, I thought I knew what to expect.  I say 'I thought I knew'; what actually unfolded was not quite what I had foreseen when I committed myself to these two days.  Although the office in Llandrindod Wells is the official HQ, a far bigger office is some 25 miles away in Brecon and, although I had explained in advance which office I would be going to (which was in accord with the policy of inviting people to go the nearest one from their direction of travel), it soon became clear that the majority of  clerical work was going on at Brecon.

It transpired, therefore, that the intensity of work was not all that I had anticipated.  However, I enjoyed the comings and goings, and learned something of the daily life in a different part of the country.  I also made the acquaintance - for the first time in my life - with a lady named Portia.  Like me, she has started learning Welsh; in her case it's in order to keep up with her children who attend a school where the teaching is in Welsh.  It wasn't long before this came up in conversation, and she explained that she had installed an app on her phone for the purpose.

Since my own studies in that direction have been somewhat becalmed for several months, I thought this might help me too, so I now have the regular ministrations of a little green owl (the app's user-friendly avatar) to encourage my efforts.  Faced with the initial choice 'start from scratch' or 'know some Welsh already', I opted cautiously for the latter; I was then confronted by a series of test questions at the end of which came the declaration, "We'll start at the beginning."  The aim is to spend 10 minutes a day on the work and, halfway through my first week, I'm now part way through lesson two.  It will be interesting to see how this progresses in the coming months!

Winding Down and Gearing Up

It may be due in part to the irregular but frequent appearance of sunny weather, but there's definitely been a feeling of lightness to this week.  On Monday morning we had the last of our men's breakfast gatherings until mid-September, finishing early this year because our leader's sons are all home from university (some for the last time!) and they're taking the opportunity for a family holiday before the boys go off to do their own thing.

On Tuesday, work at the hospice warehouse was a little bit slack to begin with, because there was no one sorting the books and electronic media that I spend my day scanning for sale.  However, after a brief lull when I came to a complete standstill, sorters had arrived in both departments and a steady trickle of work enabled my prayer to achieve something in excess of £100 for the day to be fulfilled for the third week running.

The home group that I lead on Wednesday afternoons has two more sessions planned before it, too, finishes until September, and I've already sown seeds for my alternative use of the six-week period.  I've presented a challenge to the warehouse manager to come up with a project that can utilise my Excel skills.  She is clearly giving the idea some positive thought, because she came up with some probing questions when we were chatting on Tuesday afternoon.

In many ways, therefore, life is winding down for the summer.  The progress is not all in one direction, however.  Looking further ahead, my favourite football team - along with countless others, I imagine - is already into pre-season friendly matches in readiness for the 2019-20 campaign.  They played one match this week.  I also had advice of another that has been re-arranged for the first Tuesday in August and has now been added to one already inscribed in my diary.

Now I'm going to risk alienating some supporters by early mention of 'the C-word': I've spent some time revising the church's plans for the 2019 delivery of Christmas cards.  Last year we started the campaign far too late, and some streets just didn't get delivered at all.  There were also complaints that the number of cards in each bundle was high enough to discourage otherwise willing helpers from taking part, so some of the larger areas have been split and the average bundle is now about two-thirds the size of last year.

That's two references to campaigns; here's a third.  I'm preparing to spend two days next week helping with the parliamentary by-election campaign in Brecon and Radnorshire in the same way as I did in Witney in 2016 and at St Albans in the general election in 2017.  While not willing or able to go door-knocking myself, I can at least help with the clerical work in the background, releasing someone else to do so.  It'll also give me more of the driving through the countryside that I still miss in retirement; it's the going, not just the being there that's part of the attraction!

Sons and Camels

The other morning I awoke with my mind filled by a story from the East that I heard long ago.  It bears repetition here today.

"A certain rich man had three sons, whom he loved; it was a realistic love that had regard for their strengths and their weaknesses.  One day he died and in his will he left a mathematical paradox for his sons.  He bequeathed them his herd of camels, and the formula by which it should be shared between them.  The eldest son was to receive half the herd; the second son to receive one third of the herd and the youngest son one ninth.  A few weeks after his death, an old friend of the family who had travelled from afar arrived for a visit.  To his dismay, he found the sons in agitated consternation over the camels.

"The eldest son explained, 'Our father had a total of seventeen camels.  It is impossible to follow his wishes without killing at least one of them.  He loved those camels and we are sure he would not have wanted this for any one of them.  We loved our father, and want to carry out his wishes, but we just cannot decide how to proceed.'

"The visitor reflected on this during his stay and, shortly before his departure, he replied to the sons.  'I'll lend you my camel,' he said.  'Then you will have eighteen.  Now, how will you proceed?'  The eldest son took half the herd, nine camels; the second son took a third, six camels and the youngest son took one ninth, two camels.  The visitor then took back his camel and left."

Like all eastern stories, this one is capable of interpretation on many levels.  The literal meaning is confused, since the proportions given in the will don't dispose of the whole of the herd.  There is the possibility that the father simply wanted to get his sons thinking about their respective responsibilities; the eldest son was clearly to assume control, while the youngest - and possibly the weakest of the three - would have but token influence.

Then we must consider the part played by the visitor.  Had he been primed by the father to visit after his death in order to provide a solution, or perhaps just to see that the sons hadn't done anything drastic?  Or was his arrival pure coincidence?

Finally, might there be a moral to the tale?  Are we, like those sons, too confused by the system, the minutiae of what is involved, to widen our outlook and see how the detail could be changed just a little to bring about a satisfactory improvement or conclusion to something?  Would we welcome someone like that visitor to cut through the red tape and show a better way forward?

Tomorrow there are market stalls across the country, 'from Cornwall to Norwich to Berwick-upon-Tweed'.  Their location is shown on a map here.  This 'Demand Democracy Day' is organised by Make Votes Matter, an organisation whose purpose is to give voice to an increasing majority of our population who recognise that the present electoral system in this country is not suited to a multi-party political climate.  It coincides with the signing earlier this week of a 'Good Systems Agreement' by Plaid Cymru, the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party, the Scottish Nationalists and the Brexit Party to promote a new voting system for Westminster elections that will ensure that every vote counts (at present up to 68% of votes cast in UK general elections have no effect on the result), while retaining the direct link between an MP and his/her constituency.

If this is something that is important to you, do go along to a stall near you, say hello and find out more about what's going on.