I'm late

Or, as my old granny used to say, all behind like a donkey's gallop.

It's been a bit of mixed bag today - in more ways than one. I suppose it all started yesterday afternoon when I went to switch off the computer. There was that annoying little shield displayed which means that Bill Gates's cohorts want to bugger around with the innards of my machine. The problem always comes when the computer is switched on again afterwards - like this morning. The lights on the front of the computer flash like Piccadilly Circus or the Blackpool illuminations and the monitor eventually condescends to come to life. But somewhere along the line everything freezes so I give up, pull the plug and start all over again. This time things work - eventually - but by then it's too late for me to do anything but glance very quickly at my email before dashing off to the Lions Housing Society Christmas lunch.

The rain had stopped by the time I got home from lunch. I changed into dog-walking clothes only to find that the rain had started again, but it eased off pretty quickly. So now here I am at last, itching to get on with writing the minutes of last night's Lions meeting (That's sarcasm, in case you didn't recognise it) which was of average enjoyability. We had a prospective new member attending her first meeting, and when a volunteer was needed to fill a place on the team for our New Year's Day book fair, her hand was the first to go up. The Lions in our multiple district (covering the British Isles and Ireland) have promised to raise £50,000 to pay for a day room in the new treatment centre being built by St Dunstans. The very first donation made by our club was to St Dunstans - £100 was presented to them at our first charter night back in 1951. I proposed that we mark our diamond jubilee by promising to raise £100 for each year of our existence and donate £6,000 at our charter night in June. (We've already got the money in the bank, but don't tell anyone!) As I had already primed several members there was no difficulty in getting that agreed without discussion. The whole meeting was finished by 9.15 - the president having cracked on as we expected yesterday's rain to freeze later in the evening but it didn't.

Enough of this nonsense: there's work to be done.