Marketing and meetings

Manjusri, Adhisthana, April 2024

Another role I have in the volunteer job is to send out marketing emails using a system called Email Octopus, which is an evocative name but brings to mind anything but mailing lists. The messages contain images and videos and carefully designed logos and layout, and a number of them are pre-prepared and scheduled to go out automatically. 

I have had to create a new marketing email within this system, and to do that I've obviously copied an existing message and edited the content. It's one of those platforms that perhaps isn't all that robust, and a stray keystroke can destroy the appearance of the whole thing. Then there's the public nature of sending messages out to large mailing lists and the potential for sending to the wrong people, or to the whole world. Just knowing this makes me especially cautious, although making a mistake isn't a disaster. I'm only a volunteer after all.

I had a series of different sorts of meeting waiting for me at home in between stints of volunteering. First there was a Buddhist team meeting, then one about the upcoming Warwick Folk Festival, a couple of walks with friends, coffee with someone else to plan a possible film festival event within the franchise established by Lola II and Mr M, my board games group which this time ended up being just two of us, and the usual badminton. And I cleaned the car, inside and out, which is a tough job but makes me happy afterwards when I drive.

The Folk Festival meeting was quite interesting, in that the Communications team leader and deputy team leader are both retiring. Another volunteer and I would be happy to carry on volunteering for the Comms team, but neither of us wants to take on the team leader role. It looks as though someone else has been found, and what's more he looks younger than me (most of the people in the meeting looked significantly older) which is a Very Good Thing. They are a nice bunch of people on the whole.

A different blog

Adhisthana, April 2024

One of the main things I'm doing in my volunteering job is blogging, for which I do feel well qualified. It's a relatively new development for the retreat centre, having started a monthly blog just this year. So I can start my week by wandering around the site taking pictures of the spring flowers on a morning when the sunshine makes everything look its best. Or when the mist adds atmosphere to the burial mound.

The text content of the blog is more challenging, given that I'm not there all the time and not integrated into the community well enough to know what exactly is going on that's blogworthy. But there are people to ask, and my first attempt seems good enough. After it was published on the website I posted links on Facebook and another online site, which is quite complicated and has the potential for mishap, but again I think I managed it without incident (57 'likes' and counting).

This month behind the scenes there's been a lot of new technology, updating cabling from the 1980's that links all the buildings and should make it possible to maintain and manage the heating system in a 21st century way. And there's a big project to install rooftop solar panels - when I arrived this week the scaffolding was going up.

I discovered I had a flat tyre just at the point when I'd offered to give someone a lift from the retreat centre to the station at the end of the week. Luckily someone else was on hand to provide them with a lift, they caught their train, and it wasn't too late for me to get to a garage after I'd changed to the spare tyre.

Back home, my music group went ahead on Saturday and despite knowing how tricky the sax pieces are I still didn't bother to practise. But it will be fine. I did two sessions in the garden, weeding the paving and cutting back shrubs in the fine weather, but there's more to be done there. On Bank Holiday Monday I drove to see friends in Nottingham for the day, and on Tuesday I had another appointment at the orthodontist and a blood donation, which was unexpectedly dramatic when my donation continued at the squash-and-biscuits table. I was fine but my trousers and fleece were liberally spattered and I think some blood ended up on the biscuits too. It was spectacular, but it's the first time this has happened in more than 50 donations so probably unlikely to recur.

Second and third weeks in the office

Adhisthana, March 2024

There's a completely different atmosphere in the Adhisthana office compared with the office work I used to do long ago. For a start, I have colleagues who care about my welfare and happiness more than they care about getting the job done. I'm also aware that I'm a stand-in doing a job that I'm not altogether suited to, so it won't always be done well. But that's OK, whatever I do will probably be better than nothing being done at all. Unless I completely destroy their website. When I half-jokingly mentioned this to one of the IT guys, he said they'd seriously considered the possibility, but don't worry because there's a backup.

One of my first tasks was to start contacting people using an email distribution package that was new to me. Most (but not all) of the fairly complicated emails that need sending are ready and waiting, with only slight tweaks and checking to do - inserting links to a video, for example. With hindsight I think I was more nervous about this than I needed to be, but clicking the button to send emails automatically to 145 people felt quite significant. The next one I sent this way had over a thousand recipients...

Another similar job is to use mail merge to contact people who might be interested in attending particular retreats. I haven't used mail merge for decades, so I was deliberately slow and careful while I was working out how to do it with a version of Microsoft Office that is probably four or five upgrades on from when I last tried. Identifying people, extracting their details, constructing the mail merge, excluding various categories (e.g. those who had not ticket the box saying they were happy to be contacted in this way) and clicking 'Send' took about two days.

Back at home I was asked to look after a trainee guide dog, and for the first time in nearly a year I was able to say yes - I'd kept the weekend deliberately clear and even cancelled a trip because of trying to keep my commitments within an achievable range. This particular dog needed supervising whenever she did a poo, and my instructions were not to take her out until she had performed, so I spent most of Saturday periodically letting her out into the garden (it was freezing) and watching her resolutely fail to oblige. When it started to get dark I decided to take a chance because I needed to post my vote, and got away with it. Next day I had the offer of a walk with a friend, so took a chance again and got away with it once more - it was either that or stay indoors all day. At least it was a little warmer. Apart from the poo thing she was good company.

After I took her back to the Guide Dog Centre on Monday I headed down to London to take part in another demonstration outside Parliament along with Lola II. Assisted Dying made it into the news again thanks to Esther Rantzen going on TV to tell her story of having terminal lung cancer and joining Dignitas, which prompted another online petition calling for a parliamentary debate (but no vote). The petition had gathered enough signatures to make that happen, and significantly more signatures than the last time two years ago. Speakers who addressed the small crowd included Jonathan Dimbleby, some MPs including Caroline Lucas (who's about to stand down from her role as head of the Green Party), human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell and Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain. There was a counter-demonstration which was considerably smaller than ours, and a separate crowd from Humanists UK.

The next day was a celebration of Dad's 91st birthday, when Lola II and Sister D and I all descended on the family seat and had lunch and cake, and in my case, a haircut from the Random Cuts salon. And then I had the journey from hell back home because the M40 had a blockage and I unwisely decided to follow Google's directions around it along with all the other cars following similar directions through tiny villages and I definitely should have just stayed on the motorway because it couldn't possibly have held me up the extra hour and half that it took on my misguided route.

What I've been reading

The Way We Live Now
by Anthony Trollope

narrated by Timothy West

"The story concerns Augustus Melmotte, a French swindler and scoundrel, and his daughter, to whom Felix Carbury, adored son of the authoress Lady Carbury, is induced to propose marriage for the sake of securing a fortune."

I finished listening to this on the drive to my two-week retreat, and then indulged in an orgy of book-reading during the retreat (see below). Obviously I love Trollope, but two weeks is a long time before coming up with a 'review' so I can't write anything very profound except that he writes a cracking story with believable characters and generally the good guys come out on top. Like a version of Georgette Heyer that your English teacher would approve of.

The Odyssey
by Homer

"Odysseus' reliance on his wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces, during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, is at once a timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance."

Having read the Iliad first with some idea that one should read a series in order, this was the better story (and no long lists of which tribe came from where with how many ships and warriors). Structured as well as any modern book, starting with Odysseus's son and wife in the present, then switching back to the past through the device of Odysseus telling the story of his journey, before the two strands meet and the Suitors get their just deserts. It was a bit bloody at the end, but it is Ancient Greece after all. I really enjoyed it.

Sangharakshita: A New Voice in the Buddhist Tradition
by Subhuti

"Sangharakshita has established a successful Buddhist movement, pioneering a living Buddhism that seems well suited to our times. Here, one of his closest disciples offers a comprehensive account of Sangharakshita's evolution as a thinker and teacher."

This one took a while to get through, but it helps to put the thinking behind the Western Buddhism movement into context with other, more ancient, traditional and monastic communities. A very useful and timely perspective for me; not recommended for the casual reader.

The Empty Mirror: Experiences in a Japanese Zen Monastery
by Janwillem van de Wetering

"This book tells of the year and a half the author spent in Japan as the disciple of a Zen master in a Buddhist monastery, illustrating the struggles every Buddhist monk has to solve his koan - the mysterious and often illogical question which every Zen master asks his disciples, and to which they are irrevocably bound."

Lent to me by a Buddhist friend, this is a short book that sheds light on what actually went on in the monastery. Zen seems to be designed for hard-core Buddhists who need to feel pain in order to make progress - any tradition that insists I sit in the lotus position is not going to get its spiritual message across to me any day soon. But this guy had a good go at it, and wrote an interesting book.

Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness
by Sharon Salzberg

"The author draws on simple Buddhist teachings, wisdom stories from various traditions, guided meditation practices, and her own experience from twenty-five years of practice and teaching to illustrate how each one of us can cultivate love, compassion, joy, and equanimity—the four 'heavenly abodes' of traditional Buddhism."

This book was recommended to me by a friend in Birmingham because of the trouble I was having with one of the key meditation practices. It's been eight years since I was introduced to the 'Metta Bhavana' meditation and despite trying all sorts of different approaches, I've never quite been able to engage with the principle of developing 'lovingkindness', which is the untranslatable concept of metta. This book together with being on retreat has led to what I think may be a breakthrough. I'll give it some time and see whether it is a lasting effect, or just seemed that way because of being on retreat.

Atlas Shrugged
by Ayn Rand

"In an alternative recent past USA, the innovators, producers and creators have mysteriously disappeared. With the economy now faltering, businesswoman Dagny Taggart is struggling to get the transcontinental railroad up and running."

A truly immense book at over 1100 pages, recommended by another Buddhist because he felt he could draw some parallels with what he has been learning about Buddhism. I read it within the two weeks of the retreat along with finishing five of the other books in this blog post, which just shows what a lot of freedom there is to spend time reading while on retreat. I didn't discern anything relating to Buddhism and there is definitely no need for the book to be that long.  The author is famous for developing an approach to politics and society that is labelled 'Objectivism', and the essence of the story is pretty good if you take it just as a story, but I had to speed-read through the bloated sections where her views are expounded at great length by one or other of her characters.

The Essence of Chán: A Practical Guide to Life and Practice according to the Teachings of Bodhidharma
by Guo Gu

"Legend has it that more than a thousand years ago an Indian Buddhist monk named Bodhidharma arrived in China. He paved the way for a unique and illuminating approach to Buddhist teachings that would later spread across the whole of East Asia in the form of Chan—later to be known as Seon in Korean, Thien in Vietnamese, and Zen in Japanese."

Another loan from another friend, mercifully short and fairly impenetrable to me. I don't think there's much point me reading books about Buddhist teaching without someone to explain it all.

Volunteering in the office

Adhisthana, April 2024

I started my volunteering at Adhisthana, the retreat centre where I'm now based in the office on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday until mid-June. I'm staying there for the two nights rather than commuting back and forth, and I've been given a bedroom in the resident women's community so I don't have to worry about moving rooms. The usual occupant is on sabbatical in Australia, but has left most of her things in the room, which is a bit odd but not a problem. The main challenge is finding my place in the hierarchy of the community - having a room there is a tacit acknowledgement that I'm now accepted as someone worthy of living there, but not completely integrated as they still have a few community events that I'm not invited to. We eat meals together, but at least for the first week I retreated to my room in the evenings to get some of my own admin and work done.

When I arrived there was a mini-emergency as the most enormous food delivery had just been deposited outside the kitchen, so I helped to put that away. Then there was a serious shortage of labour in the kitchen with 100 retreatants expected that evening, so I eased myself back into the life of the volunteer with some vegetable chopping. But then I made a good start in the office, reminding myself of what I'd been shown and what was ahead of me.

I have an adjustable standing desk! and thankfully no phone nor any expectation that I would need to answer a phone. I have access to the 'communications' email address so I had a look at that first, and all of the messages waiting just needed to be forwarded to the 'admin' person who deals with all the bookings and queries about bookings. There's an 'Out of Office' response on the comms email address saying that the usual person is away and giving alternative email options, so I don't feel too much pressure for that part of the job.

I won't write about other aspects of the role yet because there will be ten weeks ahead of me for which I will need to find some content, but some of the most interesting aspects of working in the office rather than the kitchen are glimpses behind the scenes. Although in theory there are about eight people in the 'Operations' team who do the practical work to support retreats, there are usually no more than three in the office at any one time, and most of the time I was there on my own this week (but with good access to people if I needed to ask questions). So I was on my own when the pest control man came to hand over his short report - good news on the whole.

On Friday I drove off to London to spend the weekend with Lola II and Mr M, but with one of the Adhisthana residents in the car because she was also spending the weekend in London but had missed her train! On Saturday Lola II had booked tickets for us both to go to a special exhibition about the Roman Legions at the British Museum. [When we arrived the entrance line was around the block, but with our tickets we could jump the queue.] Mr M joined us for lunch at a Burmese restaurant, and then left us again while we went to the cinema (Civil War - very good but with a lot of shooting and violence). The next day I was needed to help move furniture and all sort of other stuff in advance of carpet fitting this week - Lola II and Mr M both have shoulder problems and only have a couple of good arms between them. They rewarded me with Chinese food for lunch.

Now I have two days to catch up with everything at home, and go to my U3A board games afternoon, go to Monday badminton, take a call from the Homes for Ukraine scheme organisers to mark 18 months that UJ has been living here and check that all is well, prepare for Tuesday evening when I'm in charge of the local Buddhist group programme, and then it's off to Adhisthana again.

Back from the retreat

Tiratanaloka, March 2024

I was pretty apprehensive about the two-week retreat, because I didn't enjoy the last one (over Christmas and New Year) all that much. This time, however, it went very well. The topic was the ten precepts upon which Buddhist ethics is built - three about action, four about speech and three about the mind. The weather - well, it was Wales, but it didn't rain absolutely all of the time, and I managed a couple of long walks.

The main influence on whether I experience a good or bad retreat is the discussion group that I'm placed in. Last time there were only four of us, of whom one struggled to express herself in English (which is not her first language) and another just didn't seem to want to talk, leaving me and one other to carry the discussion, which was pretty tough. This time there were five of us, a very varied bunch, but everyone contributed in a constructive way. 

I came back from the retreat with a stinker of a migraine that put me in bed for the rest of the day. I'm convinced it was caffeine withdrawal, although during the retreat I always chose the teabags that were labelled decaff. This is the second time this has happened so in future I'll be avoiding doubt and taking my own certified decaff drinks.

When I got back it took a while to get through the accumulated messages that had piled up in all my different communication channels. I have visited mum and dad, mowed the lawn (but not trimmed the edges or done any weeding), went for a walk with a friend and his dog, went to Monday badminton, and had a lovely chat when I bumped into a previous landlord of the Pub Next Door. I also went to my monthly clarinet and saxophone group, and was reminded that the sax music is a lot more challenging this term for some reason, and I'm going to have to practise and perhaps even simplify some of it. 

UJ and I are not at home at the same time all that often when she is not working, but we started watching the new series of Taskmaster which is something we can do together. We also did a bit of coordination over our respective schedules for the next few months. UJ will be in charge of the bins and recycling for the next couple of months, because collections are on Thursdays and I will be away volunteering at Adhisthana (the retreat centre) from Wednesday to Friday for almost all of the next 10 weeks. 

I won't be in the kitchen this time, but in the office, trying my hand at marketing and publicity. The person who usually performs this role has gone to Spain for a three-month retreat, during which she will be ordained (accepted into the Triratna Buddhist Order and given a new name). Meanwhile, I will be doing my best not to make a mess of it all because I think I probably have the power to entirely destroy their website, and the access I've been given to their Facebook page and email account is quite frankly foolhardy.

Needing a break

June 2023

Since finishing my badminton volunteering I haven't been feeling like my usual enthusiastic motivated self. Not eating or sleeping well and just a bit reluctant to get started on three different bits tasks relating to the Buddhist group. It's a shame when Buddhism, which has become so important to me, feels like work.

UJ has gone back home to Kyiv for Easter and the house feels strangely quiet and empty without her. I agreed to play two badminton matches in one week which made me tired and I've been doing a lot of driving too - to mum and dad and to Adhisthana, the retreat centre where I previously volunteering in the kitchen but have offered to do some different work for three days a week for ten weeks. More details of this when it happens, but I needed to spend some time there learning about the role. I wake up at the usual time, so there is a cumulative weariness. 

Mr MXF won an award for something he did, and will be at a big exhibition in May. Despite having done some work around the product and the concept, I still have very little idea of exactly what it is, except that it involves metadata in broadcast media. I even managed to do some proofreading for him, which proves that you can proofread without really knowing what any of the words mean, and we had a quick chat about the exhibition and what role I might have there. Again, more will emerge about this if and when it happens.

I managed to schedule a day with nothing in it at all and quite a few walks and coffees and lunch with friends, so that helped a bit, and I'm about to check out for two weeks on a retreat. I look forward to more rest, more time for reading, walks, good food, and much less chocolate and Wotsits.

What I've been reading

What Just Happened?
by Marina Hyde

"Marvel at the sights, from Trumpian WTF-ery to celebrity twattery. And boggle at the cast of characters: Hollywood sex offenders, populists, sporting heroes (and villains), dastardly dukes, media barons, movie stars, reality TV monsters, billionaires, police officers, various princes and princesses, wicked advisers, philanthropists, fauxlanthropists, telly chefs, and (naturally) Gwyneth Paltrow."

Another library book, this time from an author whose politics sketch column I enjoy in the Guardian newspaper. But it's a whole other thing to put all those columns together in book form, and there were a few times when I really thought I couldn't bear to read any more about political corruption and incompetence, even while she was satirising it all. The answer was to read very short amounts at a time, because the writing is good and worth reading, and in the end I did finish it.

Moonfleet
by J. Meade Falkner

"A thrilling Victorian adventure story of smuggling, cursed treasure, code-cracking, injustice, revenge, and friendship. Beginning as a mystery and an adventure story, this tale of smuggling is set among the cliffs, caves, and downs of Dorset."

Borrowed from Lola II when I ran out of reading material at the end of the skiing holiday - I remember the book on the shelf when I was growing up and somehow I don't think I ever read it. It was published in 1898 but set in 1757, which is interesting in itself, comparable to writing a story today set in 1883. Easy to read and follow, it kept me interested from start to finish and that's not been all that common with my book choices recently.

Clouds of Witness
by Dorothy L. Sayers

narrated by B. J. Harrison

"The Duke of Denver, accused of murder, stands trial for his life in the House of Lords. Naturally, his brother Lord Peter Wimsey is investigating the crime - this is a family affair. The murder took place at the duke's shooting lodge and Lord Peter's sister was engaged to marry the dead man. But why does the duke refuse to co-operate with the investigation?"

Apparently this was her second book featuring Lord Peter Wimsey and I was surprised not to have read it before - I thought I'd read all of them. There are a whole array of stereotypical characters: apart from the posh set there was a bounder, an aggressive farmer and his abused wife. It was OK, not one of her best in my opinion.

The Event Control Room

Event Control Room, March 2024

When Badminton England accepted me as a volunteer at the Yonex All-England Open badminton tournament in the Event Control Room, very little further information was given about what the role would entail. I think the application process made it sound a bit like my role in the Radio Room at the Warwick Folk Festival, and that's pretty much what it turned out to be.

The event was on about the same scale as the Folk Festival but lasted a week instead of just a weekend. There were similar volunteer teams overseeing liaison, comms, transport, stewarding and management, but with elite athletes from around the world and their managers looked after by the Field of Play and Team Liaison team rather than musicians and their instruments looked after by Artist Reception and Venue Management. The event is celebrating its 125th year and more than thirty years with the same sponsor in the same venue, and at the induction meeting on Monday evening it transpired that there are people who have been volunteering at this event for fifty years. Fifty years! It's a good sign that they want to keep coming back.

It turned out to be a delightful experience. As expected, the Event Control Room (ECR) was deep in the bowels of what used to be the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham, subsequently known as the Birmingham O2, Barclaycard Arena and now the Utilita Arena. The arena usually hosts large concerts, and in fact I went to see a band playing there a few years ago. 

At the induction meeting before the tournament started I met the team leader, who gave me a backstage tour of all the key areas it would be useful to know about. I have a terrible sense of direction but a very good memory, so I ended up knowing about all sorts of interesting locations but not having a clue how to get to them. It was quite a triumph to actually locate the ECR when I came back the next day for my first shift.

There were just four of us on the ECR roster to cover the whole thing, and then one dropped out. I was a little concerned that this didn't seem to be very many for such a big event, but in fact it would be possible to run with just two people if we had to. Our job entails listening in to all the radio traffic and acting on some of it, mainly in passing messages between the event team managing the badminton and the venue team managing the arena. We check whether everyone is ready for the doors to be opened, and field queries from any team, from finding where a delivery of flowers needs to go to checking how many rows of seats need to be reserved for the royal visit. For there was a royal visit - the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh (Edward and Sophie, for those like me who are somewhat behind with all the current titles). Apparently they are 'badminton people', according to the Badminton England team, and they stayed for a good chunk of the day.

Most of the time it is quiet in the ECR, and the IT guys set up a couple of screens so we could watch the on-court play and the practice areas downstairs - there are seven practice courts in the basement as well as lots of facilities for the players (gym, lounge, physio areas etc.), and two courts for final warm up on the same level as the show courts. 

When it is not quiet in the ECR it can be a little frenetic, especially when more than one call comes in at a time or when someone with sub-optimal radio skills and a particularly difficult accent is trying to pass on a message or ask a question. It became very tense on Saturday when there was a morning and an afternoon session scheduled, separately ticketed, and the arena was supposed to be emptied in between. The games in the first session ran on so long that by the time everyone was supposed to be outside there was still one more game to be played. What made it particularly stressful is that broadcast schedules are notoriously inflexible, and it was looking as though the last game would still be on court when the first game of the afternoon session was due to start. People for the afternoon session had started to arrive with the expectation that doors would be open, but because the morning session hadn't yet finished they were kept waiting outside. It was all right in the end, but it was probably the most difficult situation that arose all week.

It's really interesting to see how this type of event runs, and we tend to get all sorts of visitors - the CEO and directors of Badminton England and the tournament itself, the head Referee, the Logistics team, the Stewards, the Volunteer Manager, all of whom come with interesting stories to tell. We had some lengthy discussions about how the Prayer area (created for those celebrating Ramadan) could be kept as quiet as possible in a very noisy venue. One of the most interesting visitors to the ECR was one of the Referees, who described some particularly difficult incidents to do with umpiring, interspersed with some of his personal views on the players. 

Our team leader was also the Health and Safety contractor, and he knew the event well and could probably have done the ECR job alone if everything had gone very wrong. Of the other two volunteers, one had been around badminton for many years, as an umpire and line judge when he travelled internationally, and then in many volunteer roles at this event and others. Some of his anecdotes were well worth listening to. The other volunteer was a medical student who has had to have a break from her studies, and previously was a promising player in the English national juniors before a knee injury took her out of competition. She knew quite a few of the current squad and also had juicy stories to tell.

But all the visitors to the ECR have been universally lovely, whether employed by Badminton England or a contractor or a volunteer. I had learned enough about the job by day 4 to be left on my own at a quiet time while the team leader was at a meeting; luckily I had nothing to deal with beyond a hotel key card being found in one of the practice areas. I was also treated very kindly by the head of Hospitality (quite a senior personage) when it turned out that the pair of free tickets I had been given in return for my volunteering were in a position where the view of play was completely obscured. For my own part I could have found somewhere else, but I had two different friends from my two badminton clubs using the tickets and I thought they deserved a better experience - the head of Hospitality agreed and went to some lengths to find better seats for me.

It was a very time-consuming job, and lots of my jobs at home were neglected for a week, but I enjoyed it immensely and would definitely do it again next year (if they'll have me).

More volunteering

Adhisthana, March 2024

I know you are due a blog, but I've been busy. I have experienced several sorts of busy since leaving formal employment, and I think I have mostly found the right balance. With too much to do I become tetchy and uncooperative, and with too little to do I become lethargic and antisocial. At the moment, I have about the right amount of busy-ness, but also I have temporarily found the right mental attitude to try and avoid the tetchiness and lethargy. I hope it lasts.

I did some more volunteering at Adhisthana, the retreat centre, where I happened to catch some snow - the only snow of my winter this year. I do like snow. Anyway, they wanted help in the kitchen for a large event over a weekend, and part of my my role is to focus on the restricted diets. Most people are allergic to or intolerant of just one thing - gluten or wheat, soy or nuts - but a few have a whole list. This weekend had been planned without any gluten or wheat, and the main things I had to think about were alliums and tomatoes, but two people had a whole string of intolerances to so many ordinary foods, like cauliflower, mushroom and courgette. They got a lot of carrot, sweet potato and squash and probably went home tinged with orange. And somehow I managed to get something wrong every time and had to scrape something off a plate and apologise, or ask someone to pick out the seeds please.

Despite this, the team there are very welcoming and have taken me up on my offer of volunteering for three days a week during April, May and June while someone in the office is away getting ordained. I stayed on to shadow her for a day and learn a bit about what she does for publicity and marketing. It's not as comfortable as kitchen work but I'll do my best, and what's the worst that could happen? At least it's not anaphylaxis.

Because my study group has moved to Wednesdays online, I've been able to go back to Monday badminton, and the folks there are lovely despite me generally being the only female. Because of the Adhisthana volunteering I'll be taking a break from the Thursday badminton, so it's nice to have Mondays back.

We had a Lola day when Lola II invited me and Sister D to a secret event, which is still secret because once we'd settled on a date we could all meet there weren't any tickets left for whatever it was. So we met in Clapham and watched a film instead, about the gardens owned by impressionist painters, like Monet's lily pond. It was nice but a bit long, and I think all three of us had a small nap at some point. Lunch was at a Georgian restaurant (Asian not American Georgia) where the cheese-stuffed bread was a huge hit.

With mum and dad all is as well as can be. The work extending and renovating the downstairs bathroom is finished and it all looks good; mum has got me to list various items on Freecycle and I'm happy to oblige as long as it's only one at a time. We've also met the manager of a new care agency, so we're hoping they'll be able to replace the lunchtime carer who has moved away.

After my regular U3A Friday walk I drove on up for a weekend in Nottingham with friends, where we walked the dog and set the world to rights and had a generally laid back and relaxing time. This week is set to be much more exciting, because my next volunteering opportunity is taking place - I'll be at the Yonex international badminton tournament in Birmingham. I have no idea yet what my role in the Event Control Room entails, but I shall find out soon enough, and hope that it isn't too stressful.