Right
now everything seems pretty much all well with the world. I'm sat out
in the garden and the sky above is of the wall to wall blue variety.
The dogs are panting, the cats are basking and the birds are
auditioning for a Disney film. It has to be said sunshine and rural
Scotland make a great fit. If only they got the chance to spend more
quality time together.
Will
it last? Of course it won't. Maybe we'll get another day or two.
Maybe even a week. But there is no getting away from the fact it is
all but dark by half past nine. In a few short weeks all of this late
summer idyll stuff will be a distant memory. In a few short weeks the
Atlantic storms will bring forth their bone chilling damp greyness
and another winter will anounce itself.
Over
the years I have become accustomed to the day when winter smashes in
the front door like an anti-terror SWAT team. The temperature dives a
few degrees and everyone digs into the back of the wardrobe for
winter coats. Hey guys, I'm here. Glad to see me? Sure you are.
It
is the day when hundreds of thousands of people have to face up to
feeding their power meter for the first time in months. It is the day
when the cold hard fact of a summer's worth of standing charges
smacks them in the face like the cold wind off the
Atlantic. A long summer's worth of sneaky standing charges mean a
rude awakening. It means putting a tenner in and only being granted a
couple of quid's worth of heating. It means at least another tenner
is required to feed the beast.
It
means a familiar moment of choice has arrived. It's the heating or
eating moment. And the house is bloody cold and damp and idea of not
being able to warm the place up is hard to get the head around. And
the kids are already layered up and still they look pinched and
miserable as sin. It is the day when meters all over the land swallow
up every penny of disposable income. It is the day when heating is
invariably chosen over eating as the chosen home for the last tenner in the
purse.
And
then? Then it is Citizens Advice or the social or a support worker. A
piece of paper issued. A referral made. A walk to number six
Buccleuch St and the bell over our front door goes dingaling. Then it
is few days worth of emergency food because the meter has eaten up
the last tenner in the purse.
For
all of us at First Base it is the day when we see thirty people for
the first time in months. It is the day when e mails land in the box
from our satellite collection points reporting an urgent need for
stock replenishment. It is the day when winter bites. It is the start
of a long few months. A desperate kind of showtime. The shape of the time to come. Tales of woe counted out in their thousands. Beaten
eyes and kids with pinched faces. Tragic feelings of guilt and shame
you can't persuade away. The dismal, weary reality of Great Britain
in the post Lehman Brothers, post Brexit world.
All
of this can seem a long way away on a sunny morning in August. But it
isn't a long way away. It is a couple of months away. Maybe three
months with an Indian summer and a following wind. It is time to
plan. It is time for the dreaded speadsheet. So yesterday I opened up
the dreaded spreadsheet and of course it told the story it always
tells in August – a story which might be given the working title of
'Oh Christ, here we go again....'
Ah
the spreadsheet. Numbers shuffled and added and combined care of
Microsoft Excel. A numeric projection of what a cash starved little
front line charity needs to make it through its year end at the end
of March. It offers a chance to try spot every saving that might be
found. A hundred pounds here and fifty pounds there. Oh it all adds
up of course, but it never adds up enough to change the big picture.
And
the big picture stinks to high heaven, just like it always stinks to
high heaven on a sunny day in August. The spreadsheet tells me what I
already know. First Base needs just over £40,000 to make it through
to the year end. First Base has just over £20,000 to achieve this.
Which means that First Base just about has the cash to make it
through to Christmas. And then? Then a blank sheet of paper. A bloody
nightmare. Twenty five people a day needing emergency food from
people who haven't found a way to pay the rent or keep the lights on.
We've
been here before of course. Lots of times. But it doesn't make it any
easier. Every year it seems the pot of cash charities like First Base
aim at gets smaller and smaller for a hundred and one different
reasons. You will be all too familiar with many of these reasons. In
the post Lehman Brothers world, austerity has ruled the roost.
Cutting lifeblood cash to frontline charities is a pretty easy cut
for Governments and Councils to make. It's a damned sight easier than
making their own people redundant. We have been the low hanging fruit
for nearly a decade. This means charities who have been council
funded for years are all of a sudden council funded no more. They
have yawning gaps to fill. And so they frantically apply to the same
shrinking pots of cash as the rest of us. The grant donating Trusts
are being swamped like never before as more charities chase less
available cash. Believe me, it isn't pretty. The giant super
charities with chief execs on £150,000 a year try mightily to use
their muscle and size to squeeze smaller outfits like ours into
oblivion. Other charities change what they do as they seek a new
gravy train to jump on. Application forms become documents of little
more than far fetched fantasy.
It's
a seriously ugly business, believe me. And in the end it is little
more than a lottery. Every filled in application form is little more
than a wing and a prayer. A one in five chance of a few quid. Maybe
one in ten. And all the while it is impossible not to think of the
front door being closed and locked on a cold January day when twenty
five people turn up looking for something to eat.
So.
It's time to think out of the box. It's time for a big new idea. It's
time to ask for every bit of help we can lay our hands on. We have
gone all the way back to basics. To brass tacks. And here is what we
have come up with.
We
need cash. £20,000 of cash. Which means we need to ask people to
help us to raise cash for us. How? Well, more often than not people
say 'please sponsor me for doing this thing'. It might be parachuting
or climbing Kilimanjaro. We prefer something much more straight
forward. So back to basics. What do we do? We hand out emergency
food. How long can a person feed themselves with one of our emergency
food parcels? Half a week.
So
the solution seems pretty obvious. It's a back to basics solution.
'Please
sponsor me for living off a First Base emergency food parcel for half
a week.'
It's
a whole lot less complicated than jumping out of a plane.
So
how does this idea work? Pretty easily. If you are willing to help us
out, just give me a call on either 07770 443483 or 01387 279680. Or
you can e mail me at markglenmill@aol.com.
I will then arrange a time to call round with a box full of emergency
food. I will also bring a signed set of my books by way of a thank
you. Then there are a couple of options. If you want to go old
school, I will bring some sponsorship forms. If you want to go
digital, you can set up a page on JustGiving. To be honest we prefer
the Just Giving option as it means that almost all of the donations
will attract an extra 20% worth of Gift Aid. Let's face it, most of
us find the idea of clawing 20% of our tax money back from the
clutches of the right honourable Philip Hammond MP pretty appealing.
I
am doing it myself. If you want to check out what a JustGiving page
looks like then click on the link below.
As
you can see from the food in the picture, living off one of our
emergency food parcels for half a week really isn't any great
hardship. We try hard to make our fod parcels as good as they can be
and thanks to the monumental generosity of our local community we are
able to offer much more than beans and value porridge.
Are
we a worthy cause? Worth the effort? Well, I hope we are. Not only do
we find a way to provide food to 4000 people who cannot afford to buy
food, we also find ways to help to tell their stories. By and large
those who come to us for help are the forgotten people. Nobody much
wants to hear their dismal stories. Their suffering is swept under
the carpet. We do our best to give them a voice. We nag the hell out
of local politicians to come along to serve food parcels themselves.
To get an up close and personal look at what austerity looks like in
the flesh. And we name and shame the ones who never reply to our
invitation. We nag the hell out of newspapers and radio and the TV to
help tell the stories we hear at the front desk. And then of course
there is this blog of mine which over the last few years has
attracted the thick end of 400,000 visitors.
For
a very small charity in a very small Scottish town, we reckon we have
managed to find a surprisingly loud voice on behalf of those who have
none. We don't claim to solve the problems of the world. Instead we
do what we can. Over the last year or two we have managed to halve our
costs. Now there are no cuts left to make, not so long as we plan to
open up our doors for five days a week.
So
I guess that is about that for my sob story. If you can help, please
help. We need it. Maybe you might be willing to bung a donation onto
my JustGiving page here.
Even
better, maybe you will order in a box of emergency food and open up a
page of your own. If you do, then we will be meeting up soon. I hope
the kettle is on.
