Page 84 - IT'S A RUM LIFE BOOK FOUR Volume 1 "Northcote 1984 to 1998"

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“CHAPEL FLOOR HEATING”
It was at about the time of our greatest trial, the winter of 1994.

Following the introduction of the National Lottery, the whole country had quickly become
lottery mad. In the first week of the Lottery over £120,000,000 was taken out of the
national economy and spent on lottery tickets, animal sanctuaries of all types began to
suffer from dwindling funds and support as the lottery simply swelled and swelled.

This has continued every week since although from time to time we hear that the Lottery
people are concerned that spending has dropped a little, perhaps to £110,000,000 per
week. The Lottery money does find some good causes from time to time but no thought
has ever been given to what happened to those places all over Britain where the general
public spent their “spare” cash previously!

Our income had dropped like a stone through lack of visitors and was going to total a loss
of over £38,000 in the 18 months following the beginning of the Lottery. We had few assets
and our accountant told us we were insolvent but HE still wanted his pound of flesh!

Ruth began paying the mortgage herself from her wages as the local District Nursing sister
and at the same time paying off the creditors bit by bit the same way. This was all in her
working day after she had helped me “muck out” 15 heavy horses before she started work!

“HEAVEN SENT” HEATING
I have moved away from the thread of this story again, but you now have some additional
background to the situation we were in, let us go back to the Chapel to finish this tale.
Our local Methodist Chapel had dry rot in their floor. It had to go and be replaced by new
timber and the contractor engaged to do the job needed somewhere to dump the rotten old
flooring and joist beams.
Keith Gyler the Senior Chapel ‘worthy’ asked me if I had any ideas or indeed any space to
dump the material!
Our situation was precarious as you now realise, we had no money for fuel of any kind,
this being by now January and the coldest part of the Winter was about to unleash itself on
us.
I think I actually wept to think that this amazing ‘gift’ should arrive at the hour of our
greatest need and Keith Gyler really had no idea what he had done for us.

Within a matter of days the yard next our house was heaped with tipper truck loads of
broken floor boards and joists all as dry as dry could be.
There was sufficient scrap timber to keep our wood burner central heating and cooking
stove roaring for virtually six months.

Looking back on the situation the timber was ‘heaven sent’ and helped to truly cement our
existing religious faith. It was actually only the first in a line of ‘miraculous gifts’ which we
were most grateful to receive during the years to come.