Page 142 - She's One Crazy Lady!

ars of such a special friendship, Margaret died just before her 100th birthday. She would have been thrilled to think her £5.00 became
142
£3.4millio”
n!
Out of respect, my first task was to make contact with the Acting Head at Highfields to ask permission to do something like this. Yes. The date we pencilled in was March 15th – the nearest school day to the date when I was appointed Headteacher in 2001.
What happened then, came as a complete shock as I had messages from several Headteachers and colleagues I knew from other schools, saying they would like to be involved. Word had obviously got round. I wondered whether this was some kind of a sympathy vote of support, but whatever it was, I was so moved and thought if a few other schools were interested, why not ask them all – all the schools in Northampton- shire? Do it Glennis! I drafted a letter, with a reply slip, and invited the children to design and submit a crazy and colourful poster that could be used to depict a Crazy Hats Day and cheekily asked the Post Room at the LEA offices (to avoid having to pay postage costs), if I could use their internal pigeon-hole system, where every school’s post was accumulated
“Should you be doing it?”
“What if you are really bad?”
They meant well.
No. I wanted some fun back in my life and to do
something useful.
I met up with my ‘bed buddies’ from Ashton Ward –
‘Margaret ‘86’, Dawn, Violet and Jean – for a coffee and catch up at The George in Kettering where we exchanged news and spoke of our recuperation. I put my idea to them of planning a Crazy Hats Day in schools and they were very encouraging and supportive, even saying we could extend it to shops, places of work and yes, the hospital itself!
After many ye“
“Why not?” they said, “they’d love it, and it would really help them to be involved to enhance patient/nurse/doctor relationships; after all, it was their department we’d be giving the money to – we could even invite ex-patients back and have something like a cake sale, a raffle and of course, they would all have to wear crazy hats! Let’s go for it!” Oh, how good it was to hear their enthusiasm.
Margaret ’86 asked if she could say something and, taking her purse out of her handbag, opened it and handed me a £5.00 note.
“There we are,” she said, “this is to start you off for I know you will do it and it will be a great success. I believe in what you are wanting to do, I believe in you. You are going to make a difference to Breast Cancer Care.”
After many years of such a special friendship, Margaret died just before her 100th birthday. She would have been thrilled to think her £5.00 became £3.4million!
My bed buddies were all so excited, demanding I kept them posted and offering to help in any way they could. I hadn’t expected this at all and felt overwhelmed when Dawn, Violet and Jean followed suit and also put forward donations. No going back – it had to happen now!