It was a very strange and mildly disquieting experience to walk out of the office at 8am on a cold morning and with a limited team (Suzanne, Malcolm and Doo-Dah) and without any musical accompaniment sing carols at the start of a nine hour charity effort.
There was a distinct crossing the road to avoid our motley crew singing tunelessly and hesitantly. At that moment the idea I had conceived one night suddenly seemed extremely ill-conceived and the prospect of non-stop carolling an unnecessary torment for all parties.
But then, like so many things, suddenly we got bold and noisier and infinitely unavoidable and the moneys started to roll in. We were joined at various times of the day by a steady stream of people from SPA doing their singing shifts, plus other neighbours including the lovely people from the architects across the road, Norman Ackroyd the hugely famous artists who dragged himself from his sick bed, Ian from the garage who said he wasn’t very good at singing and was clearly lying because he was quite dreadful (but good to have along nevertheless!) and my stoic mother and her friend Evelyn who made a special journey from Sussex to lend a little backbone to the affair.
The spontaneous generosity of people passing by who all wanted to contribute to the memory of Gloria including taxi drivers, local businesses, friends and customers of hers over the years. A special thank you also for the people who invited us into their offices to endure a special carol recital including design company, Redjacket and the lovely Christoph at Delfinos who plied us with much needed coffee. Gloria’s brother Rodriguez came down in the morning to join us and was there when the press came to cover the story. Later in the day 3 lovely ladies tagged along and sang and rattled the collecting buckets for the last two hours. Only when we had finished and they came to the office for a cup of tea and to help count the proceeds did we realise that one was Gloria’s daughter, Elizabeth plus her aunt and a god daughter. The final tally for the day was the fantastic sum of £1,340.45. THANK YOU EVERYONE.
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