Good times with Scottish Lorraine

Scottish Lorraine and I have had our first ever ‘North and even more North’ meeting. Just us…no one from the South…go, North! This morning I left cold, rainy, gritty Lancaster and took the train to colder, rainier, grittier Motherwell wherein lies the office of ACN Scotland. Unlike your basic NW Manager (aka yours truly), Scottish Lorraine has a proper office, in a proper office building with a reception desk and wall to wall carpets and that office-y smell. Today she also had no internet access. I am not jealous though, because Scottish Lorraine, just exactly like your basic NW Manager , has no one to talk to or have a cup of tea with, no one off whom to bounce ideas and no one to do those things that she doesn’t particularly feel like doing (like fixing her internet problems!). So, obviously and perhaps like Scotland and England, we have more in common than not. We are buddies in our ACN solitude. This is good. This will result in meaningful collaboration. ACN North will speak loudly and with one voice (though in two different accents…).

Today we talked primary schools. This is a thorny topic (see my earlier post), but one that we feel needs to be addressed. “Light fires in young hearts and they will burn for years to come.” (My own words of wisdom here, but they sounded rather wise and fairly profound, so I have added inverted commas for effect.) We talked about what we could do and how we could do it. We talked about timeframes and whether we should head in this autumn with something simple and direct. We think yes: we have a plan; we have a timeframe; we are up for it. Regional strategy meeting on Friday, so we shall see what HQ has to say about our plans.

Scottish Lorraine and I will both be heading to Malta at the end of the week for the ACN conference there. This gives us lots of evenings to bounce around ideas for moving forward in our regions—we can do this separately, obviously, but I think that there are lots of things that we can do together as well. Now I have that warm, fuzzy feeling that you used to get when you made your first friend at a new school…

Yesterday I held my second individual Area Secretary meeting; this time with Chris Robson. Chris looks after all of the Diocese of Lancaster and part of the Archdiocese of Liverpool. He typically does more than 25(!) parish appeals per year (yes, that is literally EVERY OTHER WEEKEND). Chris is quite simply an ACN legend. I went off and watched him give an excellent appeal at Our Lady Star of the Sea in St-Annes-on-Sea in Lancashire this past weekend (thank you, Fr Hart and the wonderful parishioners of Our Lady Star of the Sea!). I have known Chris for many years—since we first arrived in Lancaster, in fact—so it is a pleasure to be working with him. We touched on lots of issues in our meeting together and I learned a lot about good ways to approach parishes and how to pitch appeals so that they strike just the right balance between hard-hitting facts and uplifting ways that ACN can help those who can’t help themselves. Aside from his obvious parish-appeal prowess, Chris is also the King of Parish Reps. Virtually all of the NW Parish Reps (and you know how much I love Parish Reps!) come from his patch; just this weekend alone he has presented me with no fewer than FOUR new names. Before long most of the Diocese of Lancaster will be volunteering for ACN NW. Now, on to my other four dioceses…

Thanks for reading!  Caroline