Many strings and several bows

Many strings and many bows seems to sum up our hectic life at present. Some things have been thrown into sharp focus with the approach of Christmas as my move towards becoming a church warden at St Oswald's, Lower Peover seems to be taking an inevitable course although it often lays heavily on my mind and last night after a delightful evening at Ged and Yvonne's on Plumley Moor Rd I found it impossible to get to sleep and was up until 3am by which time Mandy had lost her rag with me. This was compounded from her perspective by noise coming from the Smart motorway work opposite our bedroom on the M6 motorway. The evening was to fund raise for Medicene sans Frontieres, Roger and Elspeth's son Phill is head of country for MSF in Yemen and gave an interesting, not too graphic but telling testament to their work and we are filling in a sponsorship form for regular giving. I suppose many facets of their work escape public notice, their independence from governments extends to refusing all donations from countries where strings are attached even the small sims previously received from the EU have now been declined, the majority of their funding comes from individuals. It was a late evening for us and compounded by my sleeplessness and we were both jaded come morning.

It was a busy service at St Oswald's, a giving day for presents to go via the Salvation Army to less fortunate children. There was a heap of presents which I'm taking to the SA with Tom or Jane possibly Tuesday making use of the PMP van. We've emptied it now in readiness as it has an annual clean out  and with nothing until March we can get it looking good for spring, inside and out. I've the computer man coming tomorrow to sort out the sound card then Tuesday Mandy is at hospital in Liverpool and I'm going along, it's the top end of the NHS facilities but I can only feel justified in keeping private health care with the dismal performance so far failing to achieve the minor op to sort Mandy's blocked tear ducts. We've a few orders to get sorted for the morning but my main thrust at present is getting the sticky end of the 16mm film sorted, the reels which are back to front, upside down etc. I can then crack on with getting the films digitised and resold on EBay, enough there to sponsor a couple of film trips I hope. We've not sorted our 2017 dates for rallies and trips because of te other elements that I must now consider but will give it our attention soon. I've got quite a few more photos filed and listed on our Smugmug sales site. This includes Dover Docks, Kent Buses and much more. I was a bit stuck as what to give youy by way of illustration this evening, in the end my Canterbury visit in April came to mind as many of the buses have now been replaced by MMC vehicles