Somehow my responsibility

(Above): …in showers of golden beams (like an Egyptian carved relief in homage to the sun-disc Aten).

First week back at work, and it was difficult to adjust to the routine - until suddenly the recent holiday faded into memory and the reality of the corporate world took over. There was one little diversion - the Managing Director, Marc Bottoni, has been encouraging me to spend more time over at the company’s eastern counties branch (more to assure the staff there that they are not completely cut off, rather than for any practical reason). So at the end of the week I arranged a trip over there.

At the eastern counties office there was the same flat atmosphere as at Head Office - half the staff still on holiday, no real activity by customers, empty look to the offices once the cards and decorations had been taken down.

I established myself at a vacant desk and began organising on a Word document my Things To Do list - a schedule of mammoth proportions since Marketing gets lumbered with hundreds of jobs no-one else can be bothered with. Among these thankless tasks is to respond to the many requests for charitable sponsorship the company gets (at least three or four per week). The company has a small sponsorship budget which is usually already allocated before it is handed over to me to administer (mostly sponsoring junior football teams which include players who are the sons of company staff). My job is to arrange some PR for the sponsorship we are committed to, and to sift through all the other requests and bring to the board’s notice anything I think the company should be doing. In practice this is an impossible undertaking since how do you decide to help one good cause over another? Also, the amounts of money available are so small that the impact of our sponsorship would be negligible (and thus impossible to justify since the Finance Director is bound to ask for hard reasons why we have given money away and what we have got back in terms of PR exposure).

But occasionally I come across a local charity small enough that our money will have an effect, and yet worthy enough to survive the cross-questioning in a board meeting (unlike the usual supplications to support hospital radio, assist playing field associations, fund student children of directors while they “volunteer” during their gap year).

So towards midday I left the eastern counties office and drove through the countryside about ten miles. The sky was mostly composed of a grey blanket of cloud through which the sun occasionally penetrated, in showers of golden beams (like an Egyptian carved relief in homage to the sun-disc Aten). The roads became increasingly rural, the views to either side displaying the drab dull detritus of winter.

Eventually arrived at a tiny village. In the grounds of a Carmelite convent I stopped at a red brick residence which had been made over to a children’s hospice. I was there about two hours talking to the fund-raising officer about ways in which the company could help (a long-term relationship rather than just a one-off grant of money). We went on a tour of the building and garden and came across one of the staff with a small toddler called Anthony in a push chair.

“He’s got water on the brain…” the carer said, “…he wasn’t expected to live this long.”

The fund-raising officer explained that a lot of what the hospice did was to take in children so that their parents could rest. It was a very thought-provoking visit. I felt that the children were somehow my responsibility.

On the way back it began to rain - quite heavily for a while. I stopped at a shop to buy a newspaper. Two soldiers in camouflage were in the shop doorway debating the rain, and eventually they decided to run (they ran in step, heavy boots thudding on the road).