A lovely letter from the Vagina Museum – which I’ve not had the opportunity to visit yet – came through my letterbox:
“Yours quim-cerely,” doesn’t appear in any style guide but is now the best sign-off in any letter I’ve ever received.
This moment of joy was kick-started when I casually dropped in on a conversation about printer recommendations. I’ve got a big
ol’ Brother printer here, and it’s great, not least because even though it’s got a tonne of features like duplexing and (double-sided) scanning and photocopying and it’s even
got a fax machine built in for some reason… it doesn’t try to be any more “smart” than it needs to be. It doesn’t talk to Alexa or order itself more toner (it even gets-by with knockoff
toner!) or try to do anything well… except print things, which it does wonderfully.
For this and other reasons I recommended they buy a Brother.
Then, alongside some other Fediversians, I chipped in to help them buy one.
Totally worth it for the letter alone. Now I just need to find an excuse to visit an exhibition!
You know how when your life is busy time seems to creep by so slowly… you look back and say “do you remember the time… oh, that was just last week!” Well that’s what my life’s been
like, of late.
Enjoying a beer at the launch of Milestone: Jethrik, the latest release of Three Rings.
There was Milestone: Jethrik and the Three Rings Conference, of course, which ate up a lot of my time
but then paid off wonderfully – the conference was a wonderful success, and our announcements about formalising our
non-profit nature and our plans for the future were well-received by the delegates. A slightly lower-than-anticipated
turnout (not least because of this winter ‘flu that’s going around) didn’t prevent the delegates (who’d come from far and wide: Samaritans branches, Nightlines, and even a
representative from a Community Library that uses the software) from saying wonderful things about the event. We’re hoping for some great feedback to the satisfaction surveys we’ve just
sent out, too.
The Three Rings Birthday Cake. It boggles my mind how they’ve managed to make the icing look so much like plastic, on the phone part.
Hot on the heels of those volunteering activities came my latest taped assessment for my counselling course at Aylesbury
College. Given the brief that I was “a volunteer counseller at a school, when the parent of a bullied child comes in, in tears”, I took part in an observed, recorded role-play
scenario, which now I’m tasked with dissecting and writing an essay about. Which isn’t so bad, except that the whole thing went really well, so I can’t take my usual
approach of picking holes in it and saying what I learned from it. Instead I’ll have to have a go at talking about what I did right and trying to apply elements of
counselling theory to justify the way I worked. That’ll be fun, too, but it does of course mean that the busy lifestyle isn’t quite over yet.
My sister Sarah, with TAS managing director Adrian Grant, prepare to announce the winner of the Peter Huntley Memorial Award for Making Buses A Better Choice.
And then on Tuesday I was a guest at the UK Bus Awards, an annual event which my dad co-pioneered back in the
mid-1990s. I’d been invited along by Transaid, the charity that my dad was supporting with his planned expedition to the North Pole before he was killed during an accident while training. I was there first and foremost
to receive (posthumously, on his behalf) the first Peter Huntley Fundraising Award, which will be given each year to the person who – through a physical activity – raises the most money
for Transaid. The award was first announced at my father’s funeral, by Gary Forster, the charity’s chief
executive. Before he worked for the charity he volunteered with them for some time, including a significant amount of work in sub-Saharan Africa, so he and I spent a little while at the
event discussing the quirks of the local cuisine, which I’d experienced some years earlier during my sponsored cycle around the country (with my dad).
So it’s all been “go, go, go,” again, and I apologise to those whose emails and texts I’ve neglected. Or maybe I haven’t neglected them so much as I think: after all – if you emailed me
last week, right now that feels like months ago.
In April, my dad’s off to the North Pole, in another of his crazy expeditions! Long-term readers might remember that he and I cycled around Malawi and attempted to canoe down the Caledonian Canal, but his latest adventure makes those two look like a walk in the park!
It’s particularly challenging, I think, because he’s having to walk there. It turns out that there isn’t a regular bus service to the North Pole, which I think pretty-well represents
everything that’s wrong with the bus industry these days. I worry about the poor old lady who lives at the North Pole – you know, Santa’s wife – and how she gets out and about when her
husband is out in their only flying sleigh.
My dad, dragging a tyre along the edge of the river in Gateshead.
But in any case, dragging a sled behind yourself which holds everything that you need to survive for over a fortnight on the Arctic ice is a monumental challenge for anybody. As part of
his training, my dad’s been dragging a tyre, roped to his waist, around Gateshead. This apparently approximates the amount of drag that is produced by a fully-laden sled, although I’m
not sure that the experience is truly authentic as polar bears are significantly less-likely than geordies to mock you for dragging a tyre around. Also less likely to maul you.
In fact, now I think about it, the dangers of Arctic exploration – with its shifting ice, temperatures below -30°C, polar bears, and blizzards – are actually quite tame by comparison to
going for a stroll in some parts of Tyneside.
In any case, I’m incredibly proud of what he’s doing. His expedition is self-funded, but he’s also accepting sponsorship to raise money for an organisation called TransAid,
who help provide sustainable and safe transport solutions in the developing world, where they can make all the difference to people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to reach a hospital,
school, or work opportunities.
I learn today that the funding may be cut *again* to the Nightline here is Aberystwyth. I don’t care what the reasoning is – cutting the funding anymore is plain dangerous.
Its lie after lie in the Union. I have seen little in five long years that has actually impressed me about the way it operates or the people involved (bar a few notable
exceptions). Its a lie and an illusion to sit and pretend that cutting all budgets evenly is fair. Its actually lazy. That’s all – its the simplest “no brainer” approach to
finance ever. I mean look at it another way – would a company do that? I know some have – but clever ones do not. They look where the money is being spent, and they look toward
efficiencies. They also look for people who are misusing, under-using or inappropriately / inefficiently using their funds. You don’t simply hack money from everyone and expect
them to cope.
Until now we have simply been a soft target. Time and time again they have cut our funds and received nothing but us working harder and harder to make ends meet. We have ended up
funding things ourselves, supplying our own resources or equipment. This has to stop here and now. We are going to have to fight and push this back. The tide needs stopping here
and now – as else we are simply not going to exist anymore.
Words are easy, action more difficult – but we have a load of strengths the union hasn’t got. We need to persuade them to cut somewhere else instead of us – yes its that bad, but
I am afraid I see an even straight line cut as being an insult to the 2600 hours of open time (let alone meeting and organisational time) we put in. No other club and society is
open *anything* like that long, or does anything for every other student.
I am bloody annoyed.
Current Mood:infuriated
Current Music: My fishtank filtration units
From my understanding, Nightline provides a listening ear to every student at the university for at least 12 hours, every night during termtime, run entirely by volunteer students – the
money is spent on such necessities as a phone bill and publicity materials. No other student-run organisation on campus: the sports teams, the clubs and societies, etc., provides a
service which is accessible to all, and saves lives. It’s outrageous that the Union don’t see the importance of things like this until they’re gone.
infuriated