Page 366 - She's One Crazy Lady!

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I believed tha“
Saying thank you!
t if people had been kind enough, generous enough and thoughtful enough to support us, the least we could do was to thank them personally to acknowledge their efforts – the reasons behind people donating money, all so
Like my Mum, two words that were so important to us were, ‘Thank You’. In sending out thank you letters and receipts, many people said I should just write a ‘standard’ letter that could be photocopied and signed. I couldn’t do that. I believed that if people had been kind enough, generous enough and thoughtful enough to support us, the least we could do was to thank them personally to acknowledge their efforts – the reasons behind people donating money, all so different. It made work for myself but that’s how we did it. A personal ‘thank you’
all the time!
Personal highlights
Naturally, as you can imagine there were many, many highlights – almost everything we achieved was a highlight- but the most important one for me had to be welcoming a new person through our doors who was feeling nervous, scared, lacking confidence and needing a shoulder – and seeing that person leave feeling ‘better’. The feeling of knowing you have helped someone was always so rewarding. As we often said, running a charity was not just about money – it was about ‘people’ – people mattered more than money in every way.
However, on a personal level the one big highlight for me, and probably for Marilyn, was when we were invited to a Garden Party at Buckingham Palace. What an honour! What an experience! We were so excited and spent ages thinking about what to wear whilst checking we had the right documentation and instructions. We checked into a hotel the day before so that we were cool, calm and collected on the day and needed a long time to get ready as we had taken more clothes and accessories than we actually needed. Taking a taxi to Buckingham Palace the surrounding area was packed with thousands of people dressed in a multitude of military uniforms, church dress, top hat and tails and of course, the tea party dresses, posh suits – and hats – gorgeous hats! Marilyn and I felt good and soaked up the atmosphere. We met one of my friends there whose husband had been invited for services to the Government and we surprisingly bumped into one of Crazy Hats Members – ‘Val’ and her husband, who had been invited for his voluntary services to his village! Seven and a half thousand people! Wow!
When it was time for the Her Majesty the Queen and the Royal Party to step out, Marilyn and I found ourselves at the back of a big crowd so, hanging on to Marilyn I gradually moved forward telling others in front of me/us that we had people waiting – this was a complete one off so we had to be near the front! We were and so lucky that Her Majesty walked down our aisle and risking it – even though we could see Security Personnel on the roof – I took a few photos when the Queen stopped very near to us. Yes, that was a very big highlight – the food was good too!
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