Thinking outside the Box

I sadly have to report that following some 2 or 3 years of being completely teetotal, I have for some weeks now succumbed to the odd glass or two over the weekend!.

Being teetotal was great, I discovered clear headed mornings, I could stay awake through the whole of the 10 o'clock news, I could, should I have wanted to, drive anywhere at any time of the day or night and I could feel incredibly superior as I ordered an orange juice and said 'I don't drink'
but God, it was so, damn, boring !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

The other thing that I missed was the enlightening, highly intellectual discussions Andrew and I had, usually quite early on a Friday night. It was a platform for some of our best and, sadly, some of our worst decisions ........................ in fact there were very few 'best' decisions made at this time, they were mainly all 'worst' but every decision was made with hope and the reality that comes with being teetotal is unfortunately missing the rose coloured glasses that shroud everything with an element of hope.

Anyway, don't get me wrong, this is just a glass or two and circumstances are now such that we are unable to make any disastrous, well not too many, decisions. But there we were, just gone 5 pm and I had just remembered Andrew was there and that he is quite happy to help if he can. My problem is this huge, huge fundraising target we have set ourselves. I've been trying over the past few weeks to put together what I'm calling an Autumn Fair in Diss on 10th November. I thought that if I got several of the clever people I'm always hearing about who make amazing things and offer them a stall for just a small percentage of their sales  (so if no-one comes they won't have to pay anything out) they would be biting my hand off. Unfortunately this is not the case and clever people who make things appear to have disappeared without trace, I'm struggling to find many people willing to come. I've written to several local businesses for raffle prizes but again, not a bite. My fear is that four stalls, five or six cakes and a raffle made up of a basket of fruit and a tin of celebrations does not constitute a 'Fair'. Serious consideration is now being made to down-grading to a Coffee Morning.

Unfortunately, me being me, I find it very hard ... very, very hard, not to take this personally, which is ridiculous. You only need to look in the local paper to see the pages and pages of 'charity challenges' that are happening, it seems the whole world is walking, running, cycling, climbing for charity - people are charitied out. I think too that whilst you would struggle to find someone who hasn't been effected by cancer, homelessness is something many of us have the luxury of being able to turn away from and ignore. All of these observations led to us going into out 'thinking outside the box' faze - a second glass of wine was required for this. The Coffee Morning, as it has come to be known, is already committed to but I think we have to come up with some other more inventive ways of raising this money and my ebook could be it. I just have to find ways of promoting it and get loads of people buying it. I've sold 5 so far so £2.50 towards our massive target .............. ok, but it's a start!.