A big thank you to everyone who attended the 3rd annual Ladies Lunch in aid of Barnsley Youth Choir and the LimbBo Foundation recently at the Holiday Inn in Dodworth. There were 175 ladies in attendance (if you can still say that) and they raised a whopping £5000 which is lovely lump of generosity isn’t it. Stainborough Rotary Club would like to tell everyone who came just how chuffed they are with that.
I saw a lovely little story on Facebook this week. A lady took her kids swimming to the Metrodome and faffing about with putting her kids in the car, she dropped her engagement ring in the car park. She got nearly all the way home to Wakefield when she realised it wasn’t on her finger and can you imagine the cold dread of panic she felt because I can.
She drove back, searched everywhere, couldn’t find it and approached the reception desk with a heavy heart hoping against hope that someone might have handed it in. So imagine her surprise when they had and she was able to be reunited with it. She was trying to trace the person who found it and was so honest. It’s always so refreshing when your faith in human nature is renewed because there is so much bad news around about bad people that we often think there are no good people left any more who would put themselves out for a stranger. And, luckily for us all, there are.
My partner lost his ninety-year old dad Harvey last week and it’s always a cataclysmic event to lose a parent, you are bound to feel adrift when the trunk of the family tree falls. Harvey Clemit, my partner’s dad, lost his lovely wife Molly nine years ago and only a few weeks later two men broke into his house and stole his life savings after spraying liquid into his eyes. He was terrified, as you can imagine and those thugs were never found. They ruined his sanctuary for him and I don’t think he’s ever been the same man since.
Someone read about his story in the Daily Mail and sent him a cheque to cover what he'd lost – again an amazing dose of generosity from a complete stranger. He once said to me ‘You never see heroes in books called Harvey’ so I wrote one for him, and gave him a Molly to love. I read a quote recently that sums it up perfectly ‘Losing a parent is like something like driving through a plate-glass window. You didn’t know it was there until it shattered and then for years to come you’re picking up the pieces, down to the last glassy splinter’. And how those splinters still have the power to pierce, even the tiniest of them. Rest in peace, dear Harvey.
I think by now the whole of Barnsley is agog wanting to know who the undisclosed recipients of the £1.2 million town centre improvement ‘sweeteners’ are. And more than that, WHY aren’t the council naming them. Can I put an end to the rumour that one of them is me. Sorry, can’t even write that without laughing.
I’m all in favour of a public tribute to Parky whichever form it might take. A letter last week said that Graham Ibbeson should do a statue. Poor Graham is trying to retire, he has been for years but his popularity works against him. Isn’t it a bugger when you’re so good at what you do, when there is no one finer or more talented to call on?
