Our community

I should be writing lesson plans. I am clearly not.
I should be at book club. Ditto.
Lesson plans are why I am not at bookclub. We have a sort of mini inspection tomorrow. I was beginning to hyperventilate about being inspected, and then I thought.... just tell them you are doing your best, if they ask. So I will. That is the plan at the moment. But I will do the lesson plans in a minute. I promise.

Did I mention I killed the printer at work? Spectacularly. I was sending reports to it from another room, and after 10 mins or so, there was a horrendous noise, and ye olde printer upped and expired. Sounding like a demented woodpecker with a microphone to amplify its demise. I unjammed it, and then bits sort of fell off. Lots of bits. Bits I know nothing about and have no desire to know about. Important looking bits. It is a laser printer, and all the teachers in our department use it all the time. There is now a vacant space where it used to live, and I am the recipient of many accusing glares. Especially with inspectors arriving, and the need to print dozens of pages for them. Hmmm. Me too.

Let me tell you a little bit about the community I live in.

I live in a village in middle England, of about 6 000 people, between 2 towns. It has 4 churches, 2 supermarkets, a chemist/emporium, a butcher, a baker, an electrical shop, a home and garden shop, a florist, a patchwork shop, a gallery, a post office, 3 takeaways...chinese, fish and chip and indian. Lots of hairdressers. A beautician. Some other small shops too. A junior school and a library. Doctors and dentists, playgroups and accountants. There are youth clubs, ballet classes, community based clubs, cricket and football clubs and so much more. We even have our own magazine!

I have spoken many times about my friends here. They are great. I have always been very blessed to have wonderful friends, wherever I have lived, and here is no different. Maybe I am just lucky!

Two of my friends were with me when Geoff died.
Another came out at midnight to be with my son.
We have a shared lunch once a month, and all take food and share together.
We all help decorate each other's homes.
When painting or gardening needs to be done, the word goes out, and people turn up to help.
We look after each other's children.
We organise meals when people are ill or have new babies, and we all take turns to help out.
We look after pets when our friends go away.
We take care of the mail, and watering each other's gardens.
We take each other to hospital for appointments, and stay for unpleasant tests if we need to.
We are there to man the kettle and arrange food for things like funerals.
We all volunteer in one way or another, for local groups.
We give each other lifts to places like airports and stations. Anywhere, really.
We arrange parties for each other, and do all the decorations.
We all combine to buy presents for special events like weddings and birthdays.
We take older relatives out for tea.
We have a lot of fun together, and we all know that help is just a call away when we need it.
We have parties, and quiet dinners, and chatty teas.
We have house groups and book clubs.
Everyone helped to make my son's wedding absolutely wonderful, but that is another post in the making.

But most of all, we really know each other, and try to be aware and "care-full" of each other.

This is a good place to be.

Talents and possessions

I have been doing a lot of thinking recently, and in the course of many chats to friends, have discovered that we all have similar ideas. This is possibly why we are friends in the first place, of course! I have been thinking about community, and how we are all interlinked, and how we need to pool our talents, and possessions too, to a certain extent. Like, for instance, how many times do we use lawn mowers? Once a week at the most, (except in my case, as I have NO lawn), and why don't we club together, buy one and share? How many of us have ladders? How often to we use them? You see where I am going here. The more I thought about it, the more I realised we are already doing it in so many ways. Simon has a tyre pump thingy which automatically blows up your tyres. I can and do borrow it when I need to. I have a ceiling paint roller, which goes all over the place. It could write volumes on what it has witnessed! I have a gazebo from the wedding, which likewise anyone can use. Then I remembered how, years ago, 4 of us bought boxes of cheap wine glasses at Ikea and how we always use them combined for parties. I bought 72 place settings of cheap cutlery for my 50th party, and 10 serving dishes. They too can be and have been used over and over again. So without realising it, we seem to have started out on the combining possessions idea. Just think how much further it could go. I do remember when a few of us were doing renovations or extensions, and how we laughingly contemplated buying our own scaffolding. It would have been cheaper than all the hiring we paid for.

And talents. As in sharing and using what we can each do. We all have so many more unique talents than we realise. I pondered, many years ago, having a list of talents in this village, and how they could be bartered, for example, an old lady loves knitting, I don't knit, but I could do her garden. Or simply to have somewhere local to go to give my business. There again, in chats, we realised how much we are already sharing some of our talents. When redecorating is needed, a group of us go and do it. We have such fun at the same time, and it is much nicer painting someone else's home! We put up coving, repair vacuum cleaners. Change tyres. Give away jams, scones etc we bake. We make quilts or blankets. We feed cats and dogs, and move sheds. We give each other seedlings. We give professional advice. We act as counsellors for each other. We help landscape gardens. We do the teas at funerals. We help each other move. We help in schools. We train sports teams. We do the decorations for big celebrations. We water gardens. We alter clothes, and we babysit. We grow things to share.

But how much more could we do?? The sky is the limit. I happen to have an exceptionally great group of friends, and we all seem to be of like mind here. We really could make an immense difference if we consciously expanded our use of what we have been blessed with into the community.