The Official NW Office Phone Chair

The NW Office Phone Chair (complete with the NW Manager)

A picture--perhaps slightly out of focus—taken yesterday evening by my son has inspired the title of today’s entry. It is a picture of me talking on my work phone in my sitting room (or perhaps I should say the NW Office ‘Reception Area’.) This is, in fact, where I spend most of the time that I am on the phone despite the fact the NW Office, if you will, is located, as you know, in my dining room.  “Why?” you ask; and this is indeed a fair question. We have already established that I am just a tiny bit eccentric (although I prefer ‘individual’ or ‘unique’ to ‘eccentric’ to be honest), but this actually has nothing to do with endearing personality traits. Instead it has everything to do with signal and connectivity. Hold on a minute while I take off my Office Manager hat and put on my NW Office Head of IT hat.

Let me explain. My house was built in 1840; it is a tall thin town house and the external walls are nearly 2 feet thick (I’m not sure why this was quite necessary, but I can say that in the 14 years that we have lived here it has never fallen down—not even once!—so the original plan is working). My teenagers complain constantly about the internet connection and particularly about the mobile phone signal which appears to vary not just from floor to floor, but also from room to room. Maybe the whole rest of the world has to deal with this sort of thing as well. If so, they certainly do keep quiet about it; someone on the ACN resident ‘team’ is complaining about it pretty much all the time, I must say.

Anyway, what this means is that I have to make and receive calls on my work phone in the Reception Area where, naturally, I prefer to sit in my favourite seat—which I feel is more ‘managerial’ than the rest of the seating. It has the added bonus of being ever so slightly uncomfortable so that, at times of peak usage of the reception area, it is the seat least likely to be occupied by a sprawling teenager playing a video game or a sprawling cat or dog doing absolutely nothing at all. It is from this chair that I conduct two of my favourite ACN tasks: phoning up new potential parish representatives and receiving donations from benefactors. Both of these activities allow me to make personal connections with new people. Generally these are ACN supporters who live in the North West or North Wales, so I may get the chance to speak to them again or even to meet them at a future event. This week I have spoken to six ACN benefactors and contacted seven new parish reps (all of the reps courtesy of Chris Robson, Area Secretary for the Diocese of Lancaster and truly excellent recruiter of ACN Parish Representatives). I have also spoken at some length to a current parish rep who is looking for new ways to help us within her parish. Each conversation was interesting, informative and even inspiring in its own way. I love this part of my job.

So, the next time you ring the NW Office on the mobile number, if you open this blog entry and stare at the picture, you can experience a virtual visit to the NW Office Reception Area…just don’t expect things to be too tidy—remember, I am still looking for a volunteer cleaner!

Thanks for reading!  Caroline