
Mother’s Day was last Sunday and all week I’ve benefitted from M&S’s leftover flowers which was just as well as it’s been all go with a gala dinner, 2 workshops, 3 funerals and countless trips to the tip. On top of that throw into the mix 2 late night flower collections on Wednesday and Friday from the Imperial War Museum and Somerset House and a feverish couple of hours compressing cardboard in Chipping Barnet and you’ll understand why I’m thinking of buying shares in Costa Coffee. In the grand scheme of things, this is nothing as this week’s heroine and OG, as my daughter Ella refers to her, has been Helen Harte (Community Barnet’s Head of Business Development). Fresh from burning the midnight oil for days ahead of Community Barnet’s AGM - she single handedly lugged, sorted, compressed and disposed of a mountain of cardboard which was former housing to those artificial flowers from Pinewood Studios. The boxes that arrived on a flat bed truck last August had lived happily in the basement of Community Barnet’s Chipping Barnet workshop in High Barnet but as of March 31st the keys to the premises are being handed back and the flowers will be homeless! Helen could see how busy I was and what an impossible job it was going to be for me to remove all the boxes so she bravely stepped into the breach and spent hours and hours painstakingly removing every artificial stem from its cardboard box. They’re now semi manageable in 8 huge boxes all we have to do is get them out of the building and into my car to their new home. Where are those flowers destined? Well, as of 10.30 last night my back garden but step forward yet more local heroes, the Friend’s Meeting House on Leicester Road, 4 doors away from the shop and they miraculously have a watertight musty storage room I can use short term! Next week is equally manic with a spot at Barnet Council’s Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change on Wednesday night where I’m going to urge them to introduce a ban on the use of polyribbon in Barnet cemeteries and on Friday I’m hosting 10 volunteers from Lexington Reception Services who are going to clear and plant the flower beds at New Barnet’s railway station! Lexington Reception Services are very keen to help The Flower Bank and they’re the people behind my donation from Spring restaurant at Somerset House this week. I’m now off to wake my daughter Mathilda as she and I have got our work cut out today shifting cardboard boxes. Have a great week. Ursula