A time for closure

Yesterday, I celebrated the Eucharist at St Catherine's, and afterwards brought home the lovely banner made for me by the Sunday school children last weekend. Evenings this week, when there's nothing to watch on telly, I'm watching a French flic drama series on More Four called 'Detective Cain'. It's unusual in featuring a cop in wheelchair. I was immediately reminded of 'Detective Ironside', a black and white TV series about an American detective in a wheelchair after being paralysed in a shooting. That was back in 1967. There was an American remake in 2013, this time with a black wheelchair user, but I've only just learned about that. Cain works in the Marseilles. He's athletic and quick witted and much of the dialogue is funny. He takes risks, works intuitively and gets results. It's lighter and somewhat more entertaining than other French flic movies I've seen, although the themes are much the same, and just as dark, as in other contemporary crime dramas. Well, it makes a change I guess. 

Today, I celebrated the Eucharist again at St John's, and then after lunch, went into town, to the CBS office, now in the process winding up affairs before closing the business. My task was to sign off the annual financial statement for Cardiff Crime Limited, and formal notification of its winding up for Companies' House. The same procedure will follow for Cardiff Business Safe Limited, almost exactly ten years since it was established by Ashley. I'm sad it came to this conclusion, when the organisation we set up had so much potential, and was innovative in what it achieved. All that has been squandered by our inability to summon enough interest and support for it to run really well, not to mention toxic suspicion and resentment on the part of prominent entrepreneurs and local government officers of the 'not invented here' brigade. You can indeed look a gift horse in the mouth, it seems. 

For me, the past decade was a significant learning experience about the 'back of house' dimension to our shiny new city centre, and about what it does and doesn't take to run an innovative business. It was such a change from my world of work over the past half century, built as it is, around confidence in people's basic honesty, trust and willingness to serve others. Business enterprise also relies on confidence, but laced with competitiveness, ambition, greed, distrust, maintaining appearances, even deceit. Remaining uncompromisingly honest and honourable is a demanding task. I have a much deeper understanding of the world of work after this experience, than when working full time.