I've just done an afternoon woodland charity talk in Colchester. Some talks feel like a breeze from beginning to end, and some feel like hard work. Today fell into the latter category. It wasn't the organiser's fault that it was a very humid day, and by the time I reached the hall, admittedly having run some other errands first, I was extremely hot. I can hold the person who booked me responsible for her instructions on how to find the hall, as she told me there was car parking next to the church down a narrow lane but omitted to mention that from the street you can't really see the church at all, at least while concentrating on negotiating the many traffic lights and kamikaze pedestrians in that part of town. After I'd overshot the turning once without ever seeing it I decided I'd better park and find the place on foot, then move the car, so had to go round the one way system and fork out 90p for half an hour's parking, and then go round the one way system again once I'd found where I was supposed to be going. You could see the car park I had been in from the window of the room where the meeting was held, but there was no access from the church hall to the public car park.
When the speaker who is giving up their free time to entertain and educate your group appears at the venue dripping with sweat it would be considerate to find them a glass of water while they set up their equipment, instead of leaving them to ask for it when they've finished. And the person who booked me hadn't asked whether I would be using slides, not a problem as I take all my own equipment, except that it was one of those meetings where the members sit around little tables, not in rows facing the front. The tables had been set up without leaving any room for me or the screen and projector stand, and some of the old ladies were rather grumbly about having to get up so that the organiser could move the ones nearest the front. And they had glasses of water.
The building was also being used for musical grade exams, so through the doors which were left open to let the air circulate you could hear on the one hand a series of piano scales and tremulous woodwind, and on the other the noise of Colchester's traffic. I realised I was going to have to crank up the volume, while occasionally anxious looking parents and miserable small children peered in through the door.
The organiser suggested that they have the speaker and then the notices, and two people said they had quick notices. One of them was brief, while the other took a long time to tell the assembled members a great many details about a series of concerts that she was not arranging trips to, with full explanations of why she couldn't attend each event. Then I was introduced to begin the talk, and the occupants of one of the little tables continued chatting happily while I stood at the front waiting for them to stop. I said I'd be coming on to the slides after we'd looked at some pieces of tree, and it would be helpful if people could close the curtains at that point, whereupon someone leaped up and closed the curtains immediately.
Once I began the talk most of them did look happy, apart from one old lady who immediately went to sleep and stayed that way until I'd finished and it was time for tea and biscuits. I'd been told to take half an hour, when the talk normally lasts forty five minutes (or an hour for specialist wildlife groups) so it felt rather like a mad canter editing it down as I went along. Somebody made a nice speech afterwards thanking me, and the organiser told me with some incredulity that most of them had really enjoyed that, much more than she was expecting. Nobody dared ask questions in front of the group, though a few came up to chat over tea. I got quite a posh biscuit.
It was a friendship group for the bereaved, so my presence there was part of my contribution to the Big Society. Sometimes it feels like rather hard work. Next week I have a wives group in Romford. Lily who booked me told me over the phone that she was over eighty, and not so sharp as she used to be, but it'll almost certainly be fine. They are always a sparky crowd in Romford.
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