Well, yesterday was a marathon. Erica and I both serve on the executive committee for Baha’i Books UK, formerly known as the Baha’i Publishing Trust. Two other members of the five-member committee live in our neighbouring Baha’i community and we all left together just after 8 a.m. for the two-hour drive to Birmingham, where Helena, one of the Auxiliary Board members, had invited us to use her home as a meeting place.
We started meeting just after 10 a.m. and ploughed on (with a short break) until just before 4 p.m., when we went for a walk in the sun. We did well in the morning, getting through the agenda very well. But as time went on faces began to get pale, people started yawning, some even started micro-sleeping. The quality of the consultation declined, the speed of the consultation declined, our capacity to reach any decisions at all (let alone sensible decisions) declined. Between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. we might as well not have been meeting.
We were scheduled to meet at 4 p.m. with two families of highly successful and long-sustained Baha’i community book agents. Actually, they are really all one family: the Auxiliary Board member’s parents (Paddy and Ann) and her uncle (Steve), all of whom have been selling Baha’i books for around 30 years.
Refreshed from our walk, we engaged energetically in consultation with these dedicated and thoughtful souls, we learned a great deal, and then we had a wonderful dinner together – pasta, bolognese sauce, pizza, fruit, nut cake, eve’s pudding – lovingly prepared by the Auxiliary Board member. Much laughter, great conversation, fun and food. Oh, and did I mention food?
Erica and I have known Paddy and Ann for over 30 years, but haven’t had an opportunity for a good chinwag for quite some time now. It really took me (I don’t know about Erica) back in memory to the days of my Baha’i youth. We learned that the home we were meeting in had a family history. Ann had been born in that house, and Paddy and Ann had had their Baha’i wedding in the house. Helena and husband Mark have extended it and are refurbishing it. They’ve made a really nice kitchen/dining room with lovely fixtures and furniture.
Of course, this prompted us old-timers to recall the days when we had very little money and no furniture, other than what had been handed down to us by our parents. When Erica and I bought our first house, only our bed and the kitchen table were new. My parents gave us what other relatively few sticks of furniture we had. When we pioneered to the Shetland Islands, all we had could fit into half a removal lorry. We’d bought a fully furnished house in Shetland, and when we left we took that furniture with us!
So, dinner finished, we piled back into the car and arrived home around 10 p.m. Fourteen hours, all told, away from home, much of it trying to use our brains. The take-home message is: this kind of thing really doesn’t work during the Fast!
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