Various ramblings by the small hobbit

I am the treasurer and a trustee for a local charity in Gloucestershire called Gloucestershire Bundles.  We provide clothing, equipment and toiletries, plus bedding and toys, to families in need throughout the county.

Apart from managing the accounts for our small charity the achievement I want to celebrate is raising £60,000 in grants for them over 2022.

As far as possible we aim to give out good condition pre-loved items which are donated by the general public.  However, this is not always possible and with falling donations and growing number of requests we have been forced to buy more clothing and equipment.  Some items, like mattresses for infant beds we always provide new for health and safety reasons.  Then there's the rent of our warehouse, wages for two part-time members of staff, all the utilities ....

Doing a quick catch up on those days I've missed!

Thursday's Child has far to go

Produce something that relocates the characters from their usual hunting grounds to another real life, consider your historical or future AUs.

A past creation, but it fits the bill: A Spooks historical AU The Blast of War


Saturday's Child works hard for a living

Tell us about something you’ve done well.

To go back to Gloucestershire Bundles - my grant application efforts this year have brought in about £31,200.  I've also had two grants for our Brownies (this year and last within 12 moves - I applied earlier this time) of £1,650.


And the child born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, good and gay

Produce something with a twist.

The drabble I wrote for this week's drabble_zone challenge: Hide [ACD Sherlock Holmes]

“Watch him carefully,” the man ordered.  “I don’t trust him.  He’s probably hiding something.”

Unconsciously, Dr Watson’s hand felt inside his coat pocket.

“See what I mean.  He’ll have a gun in there.  Get it!”

The man’s partner reached his hand into Watson’s pocket and then withdrew it, yelling in pain.  The distraction was sufficient to allow the doctor to reach into the pocket on the other side of his coat and withdraw his gun, which he calmly levelled at his assailants.

Inside the first pocket, the Ferret chuckled to himself, having taken a sharp bite at the man’s hand.

kat_lair has created a week of Squee and Creativity, so, since my plans for the week have changed I thought I'd play along.

Monday's child is fair of face

Produce something that focuses on appearance (of a person, a thing, a place etc).

At first sight Unit 2 Whitworth Court is just what it sounds like.  Just another warehouse unit in a group of such units surrounding car parking spaces.  Next door provides custom made doors and windows.  Across the car park there's a vehicle tyre place amongst other similar units.  Listen and you'll hear the sound of emergency vehicle sirens, because the unit which provides maintenance for ambulances and police vehicles backs onto these units.

Approaching the unit there is a standard roller door for goods in and out and a normal door for staff and public to enter and leave. There are glass panels in and beside the door so a caller can see if someone is coming to answer their ring of the door bell.  There's no difference between Unit 2 and any of the other units. 

Until one looks more carefully and sees a sign proudly proclaiming:



For this is the home of Gloucestershire Bundles. 

Enter the unit and one sees referrals lined up waiting for professionals to collect: pushchairs, Moses baskets, bags of clothing and toiletries.  Maybe there are boxes brought be delivery drivers containing more toiletries as a result of a recent appeal, and later in the year there will be toys for the Christmas appeal.

Up the stairs there is an untidy office, where all the finance and administrative tasks are undertaken, with the usual desks, chairs, printers, filing cabinet as well as items ready to be sold on Ebay as part of the fundraising effort.

Open the roller doors and there are travel cots full of donations of children's clothes which are waiting to be sorted.  Soon many of these travel cots will be replaced by wheeled dump bins making transportation easier.  Further inside the area is covered in racking, which is full of clothing sorted into age and type, toiletries, a myriad of baby/toddler equipment, toys and books.  One area of racking is empty, but this is only because it has been installed that morning and will soon be home to items that are overflowing their current shelves.

But that is not all.  At the back of the unit there are stairs which lead up to a mezzanine which is full of winter coats and other warm clothing and which will be swapped over with the summer clothing currently downstairs as the seasons change.

And amidst all this are the one part-time member of staff plus a few volunteers sorting items and preparing referrals ready for families who are struggling to provide the items every child needs and which no child should be without.

As I said last week, I took early retirement at the end of March.  I was only working part-time before, and at the beginning of November I had cut back from four 5 hour days to three 4 hour days.  That time was quickly used up by volunteering at Gloucestershire Bundles on my newly free morning and having a less rushed lunch break.

Now, I am 'free' all the time!  The plan was to take it easy, with no additional long-term commitments for a while, and just use the time to relax and catch up on the 'To Be Done' pile - see my goals post for 2021/22.  With the thought that given lockdown easing and better weather we could have days out whenever we wished.

However, in the space of about 50 hours that all changed.  Not that I'm complaining, just surprised at how quickly it happened.  First, I've applied to do a course on Growth in Reflective Living, purely for my own benefit.  That's an evening course, and if I'm accepted, I now have the ability to move evening craft and writing activities into the day.

Then Bundles asked me if I'd like to become the Treasurer, since I was doing all the finance stuff anyway.  It is a logical next step, especially as the grant applications I'm making ask for financial information so I might as well do the job properly.  And, of course, if I was to be the Treasurer, would I like to become a Trustee and join the Board.  From previous jobs I've done I've seen how important it is for trustees/board members to have an idea about the state of the finances, so yes, I want the charity to succeed, so it's a worthwhile job and one that my abilities suit.  It will require a bit of extra time, but I was already thinking that there were things which needed doing but I hadn't had time for.  This way I'm not volunteering for a third day (which is something I didn't want) but fulfilling my role as Trustee.  Semantics possibly, but the Trustee part I will do at home at times which suit me rather than saying I'm coming in on a particular day.

Finally, we saw my son and granddaughter at the weekend.  She begins school in September, so we have confirmed we will pick her up from school one afternoon a week to enable her mother to continue to work.  The other grandparents will do a different afternoon.  This is one thing I was sure I wouldn't be drawn into a few years ago, but now I have the time and it's my own granddaughter I feel rather different :)

When I was asked why I was retiring I used to say to have the time to do more crafts and other things I wanted to do.  At least I won't get bored!

In your own space, brag about yourself.  Tell us what you've done that you're proud of; the things that make you the wonderful person that you are.

Firstly, I volunteer for a local baby bank: Gloucestershire Bundles.  (Go support your own local baby bank!) 

Secondly, I'm an assistant leader of a local Brownie Unit and go by the name of Screech Owl (Brownies are the UK 7-10 year old section of Girl Guides - like Girl Scouts).  Give me a wave if you're involved in your equivalent. 

And my Day 8 Wish: I'm running the Thinking Day activity for our unit this year - by Zoom - and we'll be making a paper doll chain, with the dolls wearing the uniform of girls of the equivalent age from units around the world.  Ideally, I'd like links to shops so I can see the uniform clearly, but national websites would be good too.  I have a few from when I last did a similar activity, but a variety would be awesome.

Thirdly, I have created a few characters who are very popular in their own world: the Ferret who is part of a group of creatures who assist Sherlock Holmes/create chaos; his latest outing is here: Charades  The Ferret even has his own fan.  And Lucas the werewolf (Spooks [MI5]) who can be found here: Lucas the Werewolf   a werewolf like no other.

I'm now working fewer hours each week on my job, which is good.  The charity I work for agreed to keep me on until the end of March, so although I'm still counting the weeks, the number of hours is less which is great!

Inevitably, Bundles is taking more of my time - keeping the finances up to date, applying for a few grants, and also replying to a couple of requests for further details.  And on Monday - 'our referrals need updating post completion...'  By the end of last week they'd received 372 referrals since the beginning of April, which is the same number as for the whole of 2018/19. 

Also, our flowers have decided that it's November, and therefore time to bloom:

More new in the sense of doing things which haven't been possible for some months, but very little in the completely new stake.  However ...

First up story_works Take A Leap Challenge for the month was to find a new way of 'stilling'.  Probably for me lying on my bed completely engrossed in an audio book is the closest I come to being still.  But I sat by the canal and I sat on a bench in the park and enjoyed the outdoors, so at least I can say I tried.  I also had a go with an audio app which played calming sounds, but it wasn't easy to use on my phone and I was adding new sounds onto the ones I was already hearing, rather than replacing them.  I ended up giggling too much as the birds tweeted away in a thunderstorm with a heavy sea and pouring rain.  It works okay on my laptop though.  So, I aimed for something new even if it didn't particularly work.

Three FutureLearn courses:
Introduction to Intercultural Studies: Language and Culture by the University of Leeds.  Part of the same series of courses I did one of last month.  It was okay-ish and the discussion about how language influences and reflects different cultures was interesting but no more than that.

Introduction to Korean Philosophy by Sung Kyun Kwan University.  I signed up for this one because it looked very different.  I would have found it easier if I'd had a deeper understanding of Western European philosophy.  The basics were interesting and I have learned some things, but I have nothing really to connect it to.  If I do something else on the subject of Korea in the future it may well prove helpful.  For once I wasn't sufficiently confident to do the assignment - I really didn't feel I understood the concepts well enough to produce anything worthwhile.

Rome (A Virtual Tour of the Ancient City) by University of Reading.  One of the lecturers has constructed a virtual 3D model of Rome in ancient times, and this course is based around the model.  The course concentrates on the architecture of Rome, and shows pictures of modern day Rome and the ruins, as well as looking at coins and written records of Rome, mostly poetry.  My own interest is more the people, rather than the buildings, and although something about the people can be learned from the architecture I didn't feel my own knowledge was particularly advanced.  There were several opportunities to explore parts of the virtual model, but my laptop loaded very slowly, so after the first couple of times I decided my interest wasn't enough to justify waiting for it.


One other new thing:  some of you will recall I've spoken of Gloucestershire Bundles, a local charity I support.  I've now taken on the role of bookkeeper for them.  It's not an onerous task, maybe three hours a month, but that is certainly something new.

 Because my goal setting year begins in the middle of April.  There is, like most things in my life, logic to it - just not anyone else's logic.

Goal No 1 - Write all the things

I'm up to 110,000 for the year, which, considering two years ago I was happy with an annual figure of 120,000 is good going.  It also means there's something in the bank if I slow down for any reason in the latter part of the year.

Apart from my regular writing, I've written for Not Prime Time (including a pinch hit and treats), and also written a pinch hit for the Rare Male Slash Exchange.  I've also finished my second Gen Prompt Bingo with the second part of Happy Families, my Hobbit AU.

I also wrote a ficlet for Fan Flashworks 'Glass' Challenge A Handful of Beads which again is The Hobbit.  It's now my second most kudos fic this year - not bad for 538 words.

And speaking of Fan Flashworks, I have earned three more badges:

  


Goal No 2 - Write a monthly pastoral assistant post

I am continuing with this, and still finding it helpful to reflect on the month.


Goal No 3 - Try twelve new things

I have done three so far, and the fourth is booked.  I've also been sent the material for number five by the lovely Debriswoman. And I will be starting that next month.  I was going to say when it was cooler, but we're not exactly mid-heatwave at the moment.