Today

Rushed home tonight as there was a meeting of the Police Community Support Officers' Steering Group. Rapidly heated up some home-made cauliflower soup (very good and actually made of cauliflower leaves left over after yesterday's cauliflower cheese) and poured it rapidly down my throat. Grabbed the minutes and agendas I'd taken time to prepare. Quickly checked my emails - meeting cancelled.

Mixture of relief and irritation. All that work to no purpose AND I'll be away on the revised date. My stomach glooped with hastily eaten soup. On the other hand, an evening at home during which I could do important things like watch "The Bill" and start the next issue of the Parish Council Newletter ("The Lychgate") of which I'm rather vain.

From which you will gather that I sit on committees. Not so many as I used to - I've ditched being choir secretary after 15 years ("You can't!", they all cried. To which I replied "Watch me.") and was voted out of being wine circle secretary. But I do sit on the Parish Council and hold the PCSO portfolio.

In My Day

My mother was a great organiser. She and Daddy ran the Henry Wood Gramophone Circle (To raise funds to rebuild the Queen's Hall, but that's another story). This group met every three weeks at our house to listen to music on gramophone records. It was a great day when they migrated from 78's to long play (none of that changing of discs every 4 minutes). Mamma and Daddy would prepare a programme along symphony concert lines, write programme notes, print the programme and present the music.

They ran a chess circle at one time. My main memory of this was the float they put into the local Festival of Britain parade, with live chess players - my father yelling out the moves, with Mamma and ANother playing a real chess game as a centrepiece.

Mamma was an illustrious member of the Townswomen's Guild. She was chairwoman of the local branch and trotted up to AGMs at the Albert Hall most years, where she would frequently make speeches. She was very scathing about the WI (surely just the rural equivalent), especially their adoption of "Jerusalem" as their theme song. I've lost count of the initiatives she started or got involved in. The Croydon Millennium celebrations, fetes and fund-raising events, lecture tours and group holidays abroad. She absolutely loved it. No wonder it was difficult for her to find time to do housework.

Anyway, I had an evening off tonight.