Wilting, and Quilting

I've changed my shirt twice today, just to try and appear clean and professional, rather than like an unfit slug that's just run a marathon.
It seems ridiculous to say this, but most of my afternoon was spent talking to people about Christmas. Gavin, now he's putting a lot of his own attention into the new hotels, has agreed to let me go ahead with my plan to create more use of the sites over Winter. We have a lot of permanent residents, but we also have a lot of 'dead weeks' with hardly any visitors, so I want to open our buildings up to be used by local groups during the quiet months. We have to keep some staff on anyway to keep things ticking over and to look after the live-ins, so why not give them things to do that might bring in a little extra income? So far, I've had interested responses from the Women's Institute, from craft clubs and from a few bands who might want to put on 'try out' nights in a proper club setting. I'm also in negotiations to turn one of our smaller buildings into a bit of a Santa's grotto, with activities and entertainment, so that families don't just turn up and wait for an hour for their children to have a 5-minute chat with Father Christmas, they get to have a fun experience that's full of Christmas joy and gets them really fired up for The Big Day. I'm not sure I'll get that one off the ground this year, though, and I'm not sure I really want to keep thinking about it in the middle of July, so I think we'll park that one there and move on....

RC 13-7-22