substitute speaker

I was out again this evening, but home at a rather more civilised hour.  About three days ago I got a phone call from the chairman of a Colchester garden society, who had been given my details by somebody I know at another garden society.  He had heard that I did talks, and if so would I be able to do one at short notice?  Next Tuesday?  The speaker he'd originally booked was in hospital, and the replacement had called in twenty-four hours later with laryngitis.

I offered to do a woodland charity talk.  It's a few months since I've done one, after a rash of activity in the summer, and in the faintly terrifying two page letter detailing the role of the volunteer speaker, sent to me by my new Task Manager, was the requirement to market my talks. Since receiving it I have done precisely no marketing, being busy with other things and working on the basis that some bookings would probably turn up in due course, as they had fairly consistently over the past decade.  So I thought I had better seize the moment and promote the charity.

The organiser agreed.  I think that with three days to go until he would be faced with a hut full of garden club members and no entertainment for them, that if I'd offered to do a presentation on eelworms he'd have still said yes.  A talking person armed with a projector and screen willing to stand at the front of the room for an hour and make any kind of horticulture related noises would probably have done it.  But people like trees and ash disease is topical, while autumn is a fine time to go for a walk in the woods, all those nice piles of leaves to kick up, and the low sunlight glinting on  cobwebs and holly berries.

They turned out to be a very nice audience, though the hut was a tiny bit chilly because the previous group had ignored the instructions NOT to turn the heaters off, but only to turn them down to the lowest temperature setting.  The pilot lights, once extinguished, were very reluctant to ignite again, and the caretaker had to sit on the floor clicking the starter button repeatedly, then do it again when the flame cut out five minutes later, and so on.  Still, I could not actually smell gas so thought we were probably not all about to be blown to kingdom come.

Over the tea after the talk someone came and asked me for my details as she would like to book me for her ladies' group some time next year.  Bingo, I have done some marketing.  And feel a vague warm glow of virtue at having helped the club out of a fix, and slightly enhanced the image of my contact at the other garden club, who is a thoroughly nice bloke.  Clubs and societies sometimes pay less to charity volunteers than they do to speakers who are doing it for the money, maybe justifying it on the grounds that after all the charity is being given a chance to promote itself, and anyway it helps balance the books.  Tonight's donation, however, came in at a commercial rate, so I will be able to send the cheque off in triumph to the new Task Manager.  I'm on the case, you see, even if I haven't visibly done anything since June.