Wedding invitation

Today I received a wedding invitation from my Nephew's fiancee's family. What an invitation! A card with a fancy paper wrapper that looked a bit like a dinner jacket. This was fastened with a red ribbon and a small diamante buckle. There was also a swan's feather but, unfortunately, the whole thing fell apart when we got it out of the envelope so it might have been inside or outside or separate, who knows. Anyway I won't be walking the London Bridges on July 9th as I will be in my finery at a wedding. I must go shopping......

Crippling rent rises for units meeting in Surrey Schools?

The Scout Association reports that scout units meeting in schools are being asked to raise their rents significantly. One of the units quoted is in Surrey where they are being asked for thousands of pounds a year.
Is this hitting us? - I don't know but why would we be treated differently?
Can we do anything about it? - find other meeting places, perhaps? What about sharing a Scout Hall or looking for a Church/Village Hall - or the hall of a private school who might be able to be generous under their requirement to have a community focus?
It will be hard in some areas where provision is very limited. We have had the benefit of letting subsidies but these have become increasingly constrained and the amounts very limited. It looks like these will disappear altogether from 2012.
How about having a big vision? What about buying one of the Council Youth Centres that they are trying to offload?

A trying three weeks

It is amazing to me but when trouble comes it tends to come in shedloads. My tale of woe started on February 14th when my Stepmother, who has anger issues, took exception to my organising a birthday lunch for my Father and accused me of being mentally unstable and threatened me with legal action (No, I am not joking). Since then I have crashed my car, broken down, missed client meetings, had clients fall ill in meetings, had a very abusive letter from a respected member of the Surrey community, upset some friends with my handling of a complaint, and much more....all very stressfull.
There have been some bright points, of course; we got £2000 towards the building work at Herons Wey, got a lot of support from my family and some Guiding friends and, the highlight, was told by one of my new Guides that Guides was such fun it brought joy to her heart.