Lifes what happens when your making other plans, as John Lennon once wrote, and thats how the last week has been.

Our plan was to see through the development of the new community room, offices and cafe, which has meant managing a budget of £750,000 that would put the trust onto a sustainable footing for the future. This is all part of saving this 9 acre park, in Ulverston, which the trust has been trying to do for over 12 years. Jackie, has been driving this project for over ten of those years and by this summer we would be able to jump ship as it were and leave. Part of the plan in the smooth hand over of the reigns was having a project manager in place to take over the role of managing the whole operation once we were gone. We are about four weeks from the grand opening of the new premises, and have been deferring lots of responsibilities to the project manager who would step into Jackie's shoes. The last Friday he sent an email whilst on holiday to say he was resigning, as he had had an offer of a job he couldn't refuse. BOMBSHELL.
This has thrown a very large spanner into the works, and means that instead of letting go we have to climb aboard, bigtime and rescue the manoverboard situation. Although the trustees have some fine and capable people on the board they rely entirely on Jackie and myself to make the project work, so losing Jackie's successor so close to this crucial point is to say the least catastrophic.
And it plays havoc with our plans to sail away, at least for a few more months.

Next "life" event takes place on Monday, at about 5pm with a phone call from Jackies daughter.
Now Jackie's daughter has had, lets say a difficult passage from teenagehood to becoming a grown up, a difficult phase that had lasted more than ten years. Lets not go into the details but surfice to say that just last year she managed to get herself a place at university, at the age of 26, studying social anthropology. She left the comfort of our home town and travelled to the other end of the country and has been enjoying life and the uni experience, and doing very good work. Just a few months before she left she started a relationship with a young guy, and they seem to grow very close, very fast. We thought it so strong that she might not go to Uni but she went ahead with the academia, to our delight, and got stuck into the course and her new found life as a student. After the anguish of the last ten years we suddenly had our selves a sensible young woman going places.
And then the phone call........................ I'm pregnant.
It's with her new found soul mate and probably happened over Christmas. So suddenly everything changes. Now we don't know how this will affect our plans, but they have few resources to think about having a baby, and it throws her uni life into complete disarray. What's more with us we can't even contemplate leaving whilst all this is going on. It will now be another year until we can even begin to think about starting our big adventure, they're going to need lots of parent support.
Oh well, sometimes you start to feel like the James Stewart guy in Wonderful life who never manages to get away on his big adventure. Yes John was right Life is what happens whilst your making other plans