Proper Winter

This last couple of weeks the skating rink outside City Hall has been fully operational. For the first years I can recall in the five since it was first introduced, there's been really cold weather and even snow, to encourage people to come out and enjoy the facilities. So much better than drizzle and rain.

The temperature has hovered around zero this past week, and I've been feeling grateful we now live in a much smaller, easier to warm house. Our Autumn energy bills (paid last week) are less than half of our former Vicarage bills. But having said that, we had to call in a heating engineer due to a system malfunction, arising from ridding the radiators of air earlier in the week. The problem was easily resolved. We'd forgotten how to remedy it, so we had to pay to be reminded of something we needed not to forget. 

We were lucky to have someone who could get to us promptly, especially when he was unsure how he'd get a vehicle out of an icy driveway. Notification of my portion of the government's winter heating allowance arrived in the post the same day. That covers the cost of forgetting, and a routine annual boiler service to follow when we return from Canada. We need this bonus less than many. I like to think that in reducing worries of this kind, it frees us to be generous in a different way.

My office work in these past few weeks has focussed on getting our accounts recording fully up to date, and issuing an assortment of non-standard invoices for radio repairs and losses, also replacement accessories. This requires painful attention to detail and seems like a vast never ending task. But that's only how it feels to have to slog through the records I've spent the last six months building into something useful.

With around 250 subscribers, mostly functioning without too many problems, the number of accounting anomalies is not large in real terms. It just feels daunting if you've never done it before. And this is what I have chosen to do, having spent most of my years as a clerical professional on embracing the whole, having an inspiring strategic vision to motivate others to unite and move forward. It's such a contrast. But it's good to experience life from the other side, and sense its demands. 

It may not mean much for my future, now that I have run out of career options, but it brings an element of reality as opposed to imagination into my life of prayer.