Four times a year, timed with the seasons, our council (Waverley) publishes and delivers a magazine to all residents. It’s called Making Waves and lets us all know what is going on and who to contact if we have any problems. Sometimes I read it but usually it goes into the recycling straight after delivery. This changed today.
I had a desperate phone call last week from Mary from the Talking Newspaper. She asked if I could come in on a Wednesday. Of course, I’m normally having lunch with Mirinda on a Wednesday but this week, because of a meeting, I was available so I said yes. All I knew was I’d be reading the same thing three times.
So I turned up having no idea what I’d be reading. Mary, Mo and the engineer were already there and I was handed four copies of Making Waves. One for each region of Waverley. Mary had numbered the articles and we were told the order of reading.
The centre section of the four magazines is the same so this we would read only once but the front and back pages are different for each region so these would be read for each magazine. The whole thing is then put together by the engineer and posted on the council website for everyone and anyone to listen to. It will be posted here if anyone really wants to listen. It will be the Summer 2010 edition.
The reason Talking Newspaper do it is because they receive a yearly payment for it which helps to fund the charity work and, as Mary said, is preferable to standing in the street with a rattling donation bucket.
And so we read it. It was quite dull. We were not allowed to make any jokes, just be upbeat and read exactly what it said. What a funny thing this volunteering is sometimes.
We read for three hours and then I was off to meet Nicktor for our movie night.