Tuesday 7 June 2016

"It's about the letter you wrote..."

J.... from the state newspaper has just rung. I haven't come across her before. I know a few of the others. We have what might be called an "interesting" relationship. 
I wonder which letter. I have written two in the past fortnight. The first one has already been used - although not as a letter to the editor. The second...I tried to remember what it was about while trying to say "yes" intelligently. 
She lets me in. It's the one I wrote about toys, cakes and people who volunteer to make such things being increasingly hemmed in. Yes, I wittered on about that here a short time ago. 
She wants to know more. I tell her. We agree that the situation is ridiculous. They would like to make a small feature about it. I suggest that the person she should be talking to is the Senior Cat. After all he is the person who made the puzzles the Toy Library would like to have had but wasn't allowed to accept. He is the one who knows the ins and outs of the safety regulations to which he so rigidly adhered. 
Of course he was out with Grandson - over from another state for yet another funeral on the other side of his family. Never mind J... tells me - and they need to get hold of one of the puzzles too. I suggest the Toy Library might still have one - if not there is the book the Senior Cat quite legitimately took them from. Right. She will get back to me tomorrow.
I wonder if she will. I know what newspapers are like. Someone can spend an entire day following up a story only to have it cut at the last moment because a public figure dies or something more spectacular happens. I wrote that letter ten days ago and it is only now that they have decided to do something about it. The election campaign could turn anything else at all upside down and out the door. 
But it would be good if they could give a little publicity to an issue which is costing an underfunded area far more than it should. You see I was telling one of the men who works in the local "men's shed" - an area where men now in smaller homes and units can do woodwork - and he sighed and said, "It would be good to feel useful by doing something like that."
Occupational health and safety and public liability are important. Mental health is too. 

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