21st Century Comms

Surrey West are bang up to date as we launch a DVD on You tube and a facebook page aimed primarily at girls of Senior Section age. Look at facebook.com/GGSurreyWest and you can see both. Next stop - Twitter!

A great role model

On June 22nd one of our Trefoil Guild members in Walton on Thames reaches 100. To celebrate she is doing a sponsored swim. If that isn’t amazing enough, I am told she is an amputee. They make them special in Walton, don’t they!

Sorry for the long gap

Sine the last post appears to be from March - and I have only just released the April one - it does seem a long time since I blogged. However, things have been busy in life, work and Guiding.  Life - boomerang children are keeping us on our toes.  I like having them but I am not too keen on the boxes, extra furniture etc.  And there do seem to be an enormous number of shoes in the hell nowadays.
Work - angry client keeps asking me to do work but we are very very busy and I am working in Zurich quite a lot at the minute so the last thing I want to do is help her when I just get beaten up about things.  So I work out what things will cost then double it - might as well get paid for the aggravation.
Guiding - seems to be booming at the mo.  Commissioners and Advisers Air and Share went well - lots of ideas for growing guiding etc.  Census still dragging on with the final few still to pay.   Our numbers are now just short of 10000.  A great Geocaching badge launched.  Lots of work done at HW - including a clean sheet for the water supply.  Best of all though - we have permission to have the song we wanted on the DVD we are  making.  And lots lots lots more.

The bullying client

I have been quiet recently because since getting back from Wales (See previous post) I have been trying to cope with a very difficult client. I should have been warned at th start when she phoned me and threatened to report me to my Chairman for not returning calls - which I had 3 times and have the phone records to show that. Unfortunately due to a mistake by colleagues I got data for a report very late and so the report was a rushed job and, as it transpired, the data they sent me was wrong. Since then, no matter what I do they find fault - X is NOT happy/X is angry/This could have been written by a 6 year old/I could have produced these charts (well of course you could - it is your data but you asked me to produce them...).

There comes a point where you have been polite, defended yourself, pushed back on the more extreme comments and then you think it just isn't worth it anymore so you stop saying anything. However, their last demand is probably going to be the tipping point - I must join a conference call during my holiday next week where they will, no doubt, tear me off another strip. I have pointed out it is my holiday but they don't think that is a good reason - my husband on the other hand, rightly, says I should refuse. None of the other people on the project are willing to help me out so I am stuck. I really am at my wits end on this one.

Still Surrey west is 2.3% bigger than it was a year ago....must look on the bright side.

Tan - that's Welsh for Fire

I was doing some work in Wales this week and staying at a place called Abercynon north of Cardiff. On Thursday evening, because it was a beautiful day and I had been indoors, I decided to go for a walk over the hills. As I set out I noticed a plume of smoke so walked towards it to see what it was. I walked past the hotel and past a golf course when I saw, in a stand of trees a quarter of a mile further on, a fire that looked a bit big for a bonfire. So I called the Fire Brigade. Not being local I had difficulty explaining where I was but got there eventually. In the meantime the fire was spreading. I sat and watched it for 20 minutes or so when I decided I might be safer at the hotel given a golf course would be quite a good firebreak.
The next day I drove past where the fire had been - right where I had stood to call the Fire Brigade. 40 or 50 acres were now black where the bracken had burned. I was told by my client that they had had to close the railway line as the fire spread down towards it. Even in Wales it is a dry year it seems.

You came 2nd in a knitting competition -and won £1.50

I have been knitting a cable knit jumper for a few weeks. I enjoy knitting as you can easily pick it up and put it down again. Anyway, I heard that they were short of entries for the Allotment Society show so I decided to enter my jumper. At the time it needed sewing together (the bit I hate) so I spent Friday evening at Guides doing that. I entered and came 2nd! The winner was also a cable knit but much finer and almost certainly more carefully sewn. Next year I will allow myself more time - and aim to win.

Bigger than ever

At the County Commissioners conference last weekend, Gill Slocombe asked us to get one more girl into our units - and it looks like we are already doing that: yesterday I discovered that Surrey West have 9800 members and recognised volunteers on Go! Our numbers have been creeping up but never before been above 97xx. Hurray and well done!
It was also a relief at last to meet with County Commissioners of as big and some bigger Counties at the conference. In the session where we joined in size groups I was with Leicestershire, Hertfordshire and Berkshire and one of the CCs said what a relief it was to not feel like a freak. I know what she means. Being so large, Surrey West has to be efficient and as professional as it can. Equally it is able, should it choose, to pay for services. Many smaller Counties can run in a much more informal way. Trying to tell them about how you have a County Office or use an accounting package is not relevent for them so I was finding that networking consisted of me telling them things they weren't interested in and them telling me things that we have moved well beyond. I spoke to Gill Slocombe afterwards to suggest a Large Counties conference so we could share ideas and experiences. I am sure we would find it really useful.