- Details
- Written by Super User
- Category: Uncategorised
- Hits: 2073
GLORIA’S CHARITY INTEREST
Dear FOG ( Friends of Gloria ),
Stand back and be amazed! Totally unexpected, this suddenly arrived through the Post one morning.
Not only this post card with a sundial picture on the reverse, but money, and I mean real money. Not just 50P but, believe it or not, Forty Pounds!
As you know, I have never had any money of my own, not a penny so far in all my years. Anything that comes my way is all charity
Suddenly I find I am worth good money with the commission to give it away, and not just to give it all away but to decide to whom to give it! This is tremendous.
My friend Frank in Cambridge has been having a delve into my collected letters, and this result is his wish!
On the reverse of his post card is this sundial
Frank had been asked to produce the design as a special memorial.
Then it was Annika who engraved the huge chunk of slate.
The more often I see this picture the more I think she could be an interesting person to meet.
The finished work can be seen high on a building half way along Newnham Walk, Cambridge. However you will be surprised to find it is not an ordinary dial to tell the sun’s time. It says it is an ‘Unequal Hours’ dial. Personally I can’t yet tell you what it tells you. There is a six at the bottom where any respectable sundial would have a twelve, so when you find out, you tell me!
But let’s get on with my interest with this considerable amount of Frank’s cash. A Gloria going around with real money in her hands is vastly more important in the public mind than a Gloria existing on absolutely nothing. Money for me not just to keep but to give away! Money is Power.
If you’ve got cash then you get noticed. If you plan to give it away, then you can become the centre of a screaming mob!
I will not bore you with choosing from the thousands of charities. In my time I have connected with several of them, but to cut a long story short I have decided to return to lend my aura of charm and regal air to Christian Aid.
As you know, there is nothing like a notable patron or president for raising the profile of a good cause.
Accordingly the district Treasurer for Christian Aid, Richard, has laid aside his commitments in order to visit, joining with the other local workers.
The question of course is what to wear in the circumstances. Not the bikini this time; the Treasurer is bringing his wife Kathleen. I have also been told not to wear a Christian Aid jacket because on this occasion I am not a worker. Today I am on the outside, doing the giving. I hope you like this smart suiting I have found. Rather special, although not quite over the knees.
I will tell you a strange thing. When asking for some Christian Aid display material for this special event it seemed it had all been sent back to headquarters and put in storage, being out of season! Same as Christmas! However, on applying pressure, gradually bits reappeared from attics and broom cupboards, particularly red carrier bags en masse!
Another friend, also called Frank, happened to be passing with his wife and grandchildren while we were being set up, and paused for a chat.
This was our chance to gather for the presentation
Rosemary, of course, whilst wearing her carrier bag, wanted to get a picture.
Then we could go ahead with the actual presentation hand over.
Richard was very grateful to Frank, and asked which fund should benefit, deciding on the Christian Aid Walk because that’s where I have helped with the marshalling, on four different years.
John was full of excitement, and, by the way, let me tell you he did an expert job making the supports for the background stay vertical in that dry soil.
It was good fun, and I enjoyed it. Now I can return to being regal without having any money whatsoever.
With much love to you in these exciting days, Gloria.
- Details
- Written by Super User
- Category: Uncategorised
- Hits: 1937
GLORIA’S LEFT ELBOW
Dear FOG ( Friends of Gloria ),
Guess what! My surprise Christmas present from Big Ron was a beautiful blue ball gown!
He said he didn’t need it any longer (!), and providentially this came just at the time when I was wondering what I could wear in church on Christmas morning.
Perhaps it was excitement, perhaps carelessness in getting dressed, but just when we didn’t want problems my left elbow came apart!
That’s just where my arm was broken when the hospital threw me out. Some five times it has been glued together again since then, the last time with a couple of pins for added strength, but now even one of these pins has sheared on the very doorstep of Christmas Eve.
What was it that the poet Burns said about the best laid plans of mice and men and mannequins?
So I arrived at church in my beautiful ball gown wearing a sling!
One very kindly gentleman visitor, seeing me sitting lonely at the back on my own had a mind to come and sit alongside for company until persuaded otherwise by his daughter, not to mention assorted grandchildren, also his wife. And me a blonde that day.
Rev David holds an annual ‘competition’ for pictures taken of members holding a church magazine in whatever locations they have visited during the year, the more widely varied the better. The results are shown on Christmas morning, when he hands out awards; nativity scene discs of olive wood that have come all the way from Bethlehem itself!
So I arrived at church in my beautiful ball gown wearing a sling!
Some folk would hang these on their Christmas tree, but to me they are extra, extra special – the equivalent of earning an Olympic Gold Medal, because they are the only thing that I possess in the world which I have earned by my own efforts.
As I tell myself, everybody needs to feel that they are good at something.
Now that the immediate excitement of going to church is over until whenever one might (or might not) be invited to be involved again, we can tell Ron about our trouble and depend on his specialist surgical interest in the problematic case of Gloria’s Left Elbow.
At least I have the rare ability to be in two places at once.
Not everybody can sit at home with their arm at the hospital.
One can appreciate temporarily how poor Venus de Milo is feeling, although they have been a lot more careless in her case. Both arms gone missing altogether, and not even the loan of a vest!
Surgeons can do metal hip replacements, but they will all tell you that elbow replacements are much more difficult.
Unperturbed by the responsibility...
Ron promptly selected a suitable thickness of metal....
and was soon drilling and grinding...
and welding and filing...
until, hey presto,....
an unbreakable replacement piece for the glue and plywood!
Now isn’t that marvellous?
With the attention of such a skilled surgeon, at last I can be confident that my left elbow will never snap again.
Of course instead it can unscrew!
Flushed with success, Ron carried on to improve my problematic knees, both of which already contain early metal implants done at different dates from the original plywood.
With appreciation to both Rev David and Big Ron, now I am ready to go about raising smiles once more.
And with whom better, sharing a Christmas cracker at Waltham Cross Pavilion, than the actual jovial Mayor of Broxbourne, Eddy Rowland with his delightful Mayoress wife, June?
Love to all my friends, from Gloria.