Fundraising

Feeling a lot better today, I was able to get up early for a visit from a BT contracted engineer. I have to report an improvement in BT’s service. Despite the wait for an appointment for someone to check the Youview box, Spencer, the specialist, arrived on time, carrying a new box in case of necessity. In the event the problem was not in the box itself, but in one of the cables supplied with it. It was replaced and all is now working. The engineer used a tablet for the multitude of ‘paperwork’. This required three signatures from me, all to be made with my fingertip on the screens. All I could produce were disjointed, widely different, squiggles bearing scarcely any resemblance to anyone’s monicker, let alone mine. This is apparently quite normal.

Yesterday BT, the provider with the most complaints, bought EE, the one with the least. Maybe the new acquisition has worked a little magic.

Much as I have been drawn to venture out in the glorious sunny, yet cold, weather I have seen through the windows this week, I am still not up to it, so I undertook more scanning, this time moving forward a couple of decades to an event covered by Chris on 2nd July 1987. Having looked for one of Elizabeth’s ‘through the ages’ series, I discovered that number 69 was from Chris’s series: 

As I have a portfolio of 37 prints my brother gave me after the event, I scanned a selection for this post. You may well ask where I am and what I am doing there. Well, I am in a side-street just off Oxford Street in Central London. So close were we to the main thoroughfare that the watchers in the window must have been in an outlet in Oxford Street.

During the morning notices fixed to the bath announced the event and the charity, Westminster Mencap, of which I was a Committee Member, for which donations were sought.

Volunteers poured in the various ingredients and stirred them into the consistency of porridge. It was a pleasantly warm viscous mixture into which the chosen victims lowered themselves for their allotted stints.

Two slang words for a prison sentence are in fact ‘stir’ and ‘porridge’, which fact you may or may not find interesting.

Most people dressed down for the performance. It was Chris’s brilliant idea that I should approach Moss Bros to ask them to donate an ex-hire morning suit, complete with topper, for the event. I therefore dressed up.

The system was two in a bath for, as far as I remember, each ten minute period. My companion was Jane Reynolds, the then Director of the Association. That wasn’t particularly arduous, now was it?

Tubs of rather colder water were provided for a clean up afterwards. There was no shirking that.

Finally, Fiona was on hand with a collecting box, hopefully relieving spectators of the money they had saved in the Selfridges sale on the other side of Oxford Street.

Fish, chips, and peas from the freezer was what we enjoyed for dinner this evening. We then watched the opening match of this year’s Six Nations rugby tournament. This was England v. Wales at Cardiff. England won 21 – 16.