The Strongest Link

Is Compassion the strongest link?

My current employment is in the voluntary sector working on the Community Innovations Team, a Hampshire County-wide initiative aiming through early intervention and prevention to reduce the number and severity of hospital admissions for elderly people, and to assist them to retain their independence for longer.

My role has been to identify and map the existing services and activities for older people in the area and to communicate with the Social Worker, Occupational Therapist and Community Support Worker to ensure they are able to signpost their clients appropriately.

I share an office with the Dial-a-Ride drivers and their co-ordinator.  Today one of the Dial-a-Ride drivers asked if anyone happened to have a spare shopping trolley - one of his regular passengers, an elderly lady, had recently had a fall and broken her arm and was now struggling to carry her shopping. I suggested we might find one for her through the Freecycle website, and promptly posted a 'Wanted' ad.  Towards the end of the day, I checked my mail and discovered a Freecycler had responded, offering a shopping trolley his parents no longer needed.  I picked it up on my way home from work and dropped it off at a colleague's home - I'm not going into the office tomorrow, and she had agreed to take it in and give it to the Dial-a-Ride driver who would deliver it to the passenger.

This evening I was watching the quiz show, "The Weakest Link", and the contestants banked a nice pot of money with an unbroken chain of 9 correct answers.  (In fact they could have banked even more as the next two answers were also correct).

It occurred to me that the story of the shopping trolley was a little similar - a chain of people each putting their small willingness and ability into the pot in order to bring a little joy into an elderly lady's life when she receives a timely gift  from the friendly Dial-a-Ride drivers who treat their customers like extended family.

Postscript:  After writing this blog post, I read the 'Word for Today' which concluded:

Leon Nacson says, 'Always anticipate the best outcome for yourself and others, because when what you expect is just more of the same, that's what you get!' Remember, '...Faith is being sure of what... we do not see' (Hebrews 11:1 NIV). So even when you can't 'see' it, trust God to work on your behalf, to arrange for you to be in the right place at the right time, and for others to go out of their way to help you - and watch God work.

Salad Days and Home-Made Wine

At work it seems we're a health-conscious bunch - in the morning the fridge is crammed with everybody's salad lunches. Here's a photo of mine. Colourful, n'est pas?



This year has seen a huge crop of blackcurrants from the allotment. I've made plenty of jam and jelly and after chatting with the lady who runs the gardening group at work, I decided to venture into a little home wine-making. My mother was quite successful with home wine-making, as I recall, but this is my first batch ever*. It's releasing an interesting yeasty aroma at the moment in the first stage of fermentation.
*PS Having written this, I remembered I have made wine before - there were grape vines at my previous home and a number of years ago in another life I tried making wine from the grapes. One batch was drinkable if a little too acidic and I don't think the other batch worked for some reason.

The First Day, The Last Song

Started work today - it felt great! The people are muy simpático (ok, that's exhausted my Spanish vocabulary). I think I'm going to enjoy the work. Then this evening I went to see Miley Cyrus in The Last Song and enjoyed that, too. Once again my friend and I took advantage of the bargain Monday at Woking cinema which tends to be surprisingly under-utilised - there were just 9 people in the theatre for the film.