Stephen O'Connor's Blog

What a difference a job makes (or a row)

June 5, 2011 · Filed under Uncategorized

Looking at the last blog update I made on this and it was the end of August 2010. Now we are in June 2011 and I’ve simply not written anything on here because I’ve not had the time to. Starting a new job in November last year, along with trying to juggle everyday life of being a father and a husband, I would occasionally squeeze in elements of being Secretary of a community campaign and trustee of a charity. My love for playing music has taken a back seat and general socialising has been almost non-existant.

So how do I suddenly have the free time on a Sunday afternoon in June to write an update? I’m blaming a number of things. Maybe because I have a weekend of being on call and have not had any calls, texts or emails so far. I think it’s more to do with something else. If you want some free time from your family then engage in an arguement where you and your partner have a fall out. In my case it can be something as silly as peas been put on a plate of food when you really didn’t want them. Stand up from the table, announce your dinner has been ruined and storm off in a huff. That’s exactly what I did last night. As the serving spoon was put into the peas, and I uttered the words “no peas for me”, my wife continued to move the spoon towards the plate of food and peppered it with an abundance of little green balls! Reading this you would presume that I must hate peas, but no, I love them. I just didn’t think they were the right thing to have on top of a plate of cooked ham, chips and coleslaw. I’m writing this as upon reflection I am in no doubt my reaction is ridiculous, childish and completely over the top. As a man I can clearly see that today, but additionally my male genes will not allow me to back down from this, so I will continue with the radio silence we have had all day today so far.

My wife must be delighted as it is when we have nothing to say to each other that I must find things to do with myself. Not only do I need to fetch food and drinks for myself, but I over compensate and have put on washings and had them hanging outside (great drying day today). I will no doubt continue to spite myself for at least the rest of today. This may be the real reason I’ve found time to blog.

First time I’ve composed a blog from my phone, so if there are typos and odd words from my auto suggestion, then I’ll apologise for that now. I just won’t apologise for last nights dinner outburst, well not just yet anyway.

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The week that was…and wasn’t!

August 28, 2010 · Filed under Cumbernauld House · Tagged Charity, Community, Cumbernauld House, Grade A buildings, Planning consent

A week of ups and downs for me. As you read this blog, I hope you see that I’ve put it together as a “sh!t sandwich”. Sorry for the crude term, but by that I mean you get the good news, then the bad news, then finished off with more good news! At least, I think it’s good news.

As a campaigner to Save and Preserve Cumbernauld House I was elated with the news that our application to become a charity was finally granted, and we obtained our coveted Charity number from OSCR. From the day we had applied for the status, the group had brainstormed many ideas around the creation of the charity, how to raise funds, how to publicise this, how to make as big an impact as possible. Some of the ideas may have seemed ridiculous, but somehow they all seemed achievable. Suggestions of Festivals in the surrounding park, offers of assistance from Janey Godley with comedy nights, and Scottish musicians offering their support, theatrical performance of Rachel Ogilvy’s one woman show, and our passion to bring a cinema screen into Cumbernauld in whatever way possible to show Gregory’s Girl. An idea to have a weekend festival over 4 entertaining nights. Comedy, Theatre, Music and Film crammed into a weekend, to really make the town see how great a community we all can be when we put our heads together.

{Cue loud thunder, flashes of lightning, rumbles of earthquakes and any other disastrous things you can think of from a Hollywood disaster movie} Thursday 26th of August 2010, a little bit of me died! Dramatic is that may sound, I received a phone call from Adam, one of our Committee members, telling me that he was down visiting Cumbernauld House with his Aunt, and was told he couldn’t get access to the car park, as the house had been sold. During the conversation with the site agent, he was told that “it’s no longer owned by the council” (it hadn’t been for a very long time). “We are converting it into flats, and building more ’round the back…it will take about a year and a half to complete”. As he relayed this story to me, I felt sick, followed shortly by anger, then that feeling of “are you taking the p…?”. But a phone call to the agents confirmed the sale. I followed that up with another quick call to NLC Planning dept, who confirmed that no planning application had been submitted, and I raised the alarm (might have been prematurely) about work being carried out on a Grade A Listed building without consent. Our local planning officer made a visit and was assured that the only work being carried out where minor repairs to glazing, replacing putty around the windows, and grass cutting and cutting back some bushes. He was happy to share the contact details for the new owner, and has since facilitated a meeting for all interested local groups and the new owner’s representative.

I met with members of the group on Thursday evening, and we had a little trip down to the house to see the latest developments. After only one day of working, they had cut all of the grass, removed some of the security shutters from the windows and to our surprise, had erected a 6ft fence around the front car park. We wandered around the outer boundary of the house, looking from a distance and all feeling quite deflated about our efforts in the past 6 months. Time for some reflection. Time to regroup. Time to look at the future.

Friday brought a new day, full of self-induced headaches from grinding my teeth and having a terrible sleep. I put it down to my passion for this project. Sad as that may sound. It’s hard to not feel emotional about it, when you learn so much more about the history of the house, the stories regarding castles, royalty, Admirals, love stories, songs written about the house, the surrounding trees, how large the estate was, and how the estate is the foundation of the town I was born and bred in. My love for the house and park started at a young age, with memories of running around the fields following a trip to the “Cottage Theatre” to see Charlotte’s Web. (I’m drifting in to my wee dream world here)

Pulling the blog back to the second good part of my sh!te sandwich, leads me to the work we have achieved since we found out about the sale of the house. We continued to update all interested members of the facebook group. Posted photos of developments. Passed on information as soon as we found anything out. Spoke to the press and Scottish news networks. Met with our MP. Oh, and we’ve also realised that our campaign isn’t over. That’s the biggest thing we have learned from previous community groups. When they felt a deal was complete, through no fault of their own, they presumed the house was safe, in the hands of responsible owners, and allowed the new landlords to enjoy their new purchase. It seems that they felt all was lost when the house was originally sold. We feel that although the house is under new ownership, it still requires our vigilance to ensure the future of the house. To keep pressure on the new owners to maintain this stunning historical building. Ensure that no changes are made to the building without full consent, and that any applications are scrutinised not only by the planning department, but by members of the Cumbernauld Community.

We are now a registered charity, and the only real difference is that the house has changed hands. We still have work to do. We still have the ability to commit to the objects stated in our charity registration. We can still hope to achieve our community events, our civic pride, and the many community projects we would like to assist with. Realistically, we could still look at owning Cumbernauld House. You might think that’s now impossible, but CHB Developments aren’t the first company to buy the house and find that they had to sell it on.

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So that was my summer break?

August 5, 2010 · Filed under Gardens and Chickens

It would be easy enough for me to write a whole blog about the weather. I live in Scotland after all, it’s a country obsessed with weather, mainly because it’s usually always bad. So I shouldn’t really have been surprised that I can’t remember getting a full day of sunshine in the past 3 weeks while I’ve been off work. We did get lots of rain, which I’m personally blaming on all the silly news reports in June suggesting that there may be a hose pipe ban being enforced. Ha! As if.

What the wet (and mostly warm) July weather did provide was some fantastic conditions for growing carrots, courgettes and juicy red strawberries. It also provided the much needed water for the best crop of spuds I’ve had since I started growing my own veg 3 years ago. So summer crops have been fairly good, and as always, tasting amazing.

I did have a bit of a traumatic time at the beginning of July. I offered to “chicken sit” a friends two hens for them while they were away on holiday. Having hens already, I presumed it would be an easy task, just put their two hens in with ours and look forward to the 5 eggs a day. I had carried out some research and read all the advice about putting new hens in with your existing flock. It stated that they would have to establish a pecking order, and that at first there would be a little tussle, and to look out for bullying. The hens arrived on the Friday, and when introduced to each other, there was a little wrestling went on, but we stepped in, made sure they just got acquainted. After a while, they seemed to calm down, and were getting along fine. All eating and drinking as expected, and even getting 5 eggs laid on the first day. The problem came the next day when my family and I all attended a family wedding. I opened the coop in the morning, topped up their feed and water, and all was well with the hens. We left our house around midday, making sure they were safe and secure. The wedding was fantastic, and we all got back to our house in the early hours of the Sunday morning. The coop door had not been closed as no one was home, and when we went to close it over for the night, one of my friends hens appeared to be bleeding from her head. She was refusing to go into the nesting area of the coop, so I had to put her in a make shift box to keep her safe, and upon checking the inside of the next box I found the other hen was already dead. My 3 hens had bullied both of the new hens, injuring one of them and killing the other. I was devastated. Calling my friends to tell them what had happened was a difficult thing to do, but they were very understanding and forgiving.

The good news though, is that the poorly hen, after weeks of pampering, has recovered and happily laying eggs and acting normally. She does however have a bad bald area on the top of her head, which caused me to nickname her “Fryer Cluck”. Her little “monk” hairdo looked very sore, but does appear to be healing. Lesson learned though, you can’t just put hens in together and leave them. They need a lot of monitoring in that early stage, and some new advice I was given included the idea of letting the hens see each other but keeping them apart by chicken wire or a cage of some sort, until they get used to the other hens being in their territory. I’ll know for next time! (if there ever is one).

Other news in July included a wee trip out to Dunoon with my band, DIY and decorating in the house, a little trip to Jamie Oliver’s new Glasgow restaurant and booking next years holiday for the family to go to Florida for 3 weeks. All very excited about it, even although it’s costing us the equivalent of a brand new small car!

My friends and I also said goodbye to our good friend Duggie. He has moved out to Melbourne, and we had a nice night out to give him a send off. It was very emotional for us all at times throughout the night, but with the wonders of the internet and skype, he’s never going to be all that far away from us. I know he’s going to do really well out there, and maybe I’ll be blogging in the next few years about my trip to Melbourne to visit him.

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Every day is a learning day

June 30, 2010 · Filed under Cumbernauld House, Music, Uncategorized

First blog update in a while. Apologies for that, but have had a busy old time of it. Some new things to try and learn in the past week, juggling many things at the same time.

If you’ve read my previous blogs, you will already know that I’m part of a small group of people with an aim to turn Cumbernauld House into a Development Trust project. We are still recruiting support at our Facebook group and trying to get as many signatures on our petition too. But this week saw our attempts at registering as a charity take some further steps. We registered “Cumbernauld House Trust Ltd” and I became a Company Secretary! This is a company limited by guarantee which is needed as a bolt on to the back of the charity. Some scary and important things to learn but enjoying the challenge.

Then there’s other ongoing learning. I have used photoshop, dreamweaver and website templates for years now, but never really mastered them. I get by. So I’ve started making attempts at learning the full capability of these types of applications. Working on making the Cumbernauld House Trust website something engaging and exciting. At the moment, it serves a purpose, but does need to be more interactive and informative without so much of it being text. Nice animations, engaging timelines, more video/music content and space for everyone who has an interest in the house and the history to contribute are all aspects of the website I’d like to be offering to users very soon. But for the time being, it’s a functional site, giving a little bit of information.

As if that wasn’t enough learning, I’ve also found a real passion for local history. I’m blaming that on me feeling quite old. The older I feel the more I want to hold on to my own memories and history within my lifetime. As a result, I’ve found even more interesting things from way before I was born. I even took a trip down to my local Archives and found some interesting bits about Cumbernauld House and the history of the surrounding farms, houses, railways and mining. Really interesting things to be found when you start looking (although I’m maybe not selling it as an exciting thing, it really is). We hope that we will have the skills soon to convert the findings we have made into something of interest through our website, but always on the lookout for any free help with design and coding of these types of things. Get in touch at webmaster@cumbernauldhousetrust.org.uk is this is something you are able to assist with.

Now, I need to go and “learn” some new songs for the weddings gigs I have coming up soon. Thanks for reading, and feel free to add your comments below.

Growing up

June 9, 2010 · Filed under Gardens and Chickens

This has to be my favourite time of year (apart from Christmas day, but that’s only a day, I have came to the conclusion that I hate the rest of winter!) So why do I love this time of year? Even although the rain hasn’t stopped all day I still love that the vegetables that I’ve been growing from seed are now starting to flower and produce one of my favourite things…FOOD!

I started growing my own fruit and vegetables when we moved to our current house 3 years ago. The garden was a good size and almost south facing. We bought a new build, so the design of the garden was a blank canvas and in the planning I knew I wanted to have an area that helped us reduce our food miles. We try our best at reducing our carbon footprint, and know we could do so much more.

My first year of growing consisted of a few spring onions, a couple of carrots and some peas. I was still learning, and wasn’t convinced about how easy it would be to grow anything. The fact the seeds I did sow, grew into edible vegetables gave me the confidence to try more things. Now I have Peas, strawberries, tomatoes, potatoes, red onions, white onions, garlic, courgettes, butternut squash, carrots, sweetcorn, cauliflower, blackcurrants and blueberries. I also have a herb area with Thyme, marjoram, lemon balm, chamomile, sage, rocket, lavender and rosemary.

I know I’m not alone in the renewed interest in growing my own food. You only have to watch TV to see programming changes over the past few years. Starting many years ago with Hugh Fearnley-Whitingstall and more recently Jamie at Home, The Edible Garden and BBC’s Dig In campaign. I found an interesting BBC Magazine article showing the change in trend of what people are now growing in their gardens. I also have a few friends who are now growing their own food, Graham has a superb allotment space, Julie has a new greenhouse and in her first year of growing, and Denise is not only growing her own vegetables, but like me, she’s now keeping chickens too.

So if you are thinking about growing some veg, even if it’s just sprinkling a couple of dried peas in a border and seeing what you get from it, then good luck. It doesn’t take a lot of hard work, and I think the rewards outweigh any work you put in to it.

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Falling in love with music all over again

June 3, 2010 · Filed under Music

WARNING: Pretentious music chat ahead.

Am I alone in the fact that I appear to fall in and out of love with music? I tend to get to a stage where I can’t find anything pleasing to listen to, and I end up not listening to anything. This can cause annoyance for my family when I start to skip through radio stations in the car, much like my excessive channel hopping when sitting in front of the TV, trying to find something interesting to catch my interest.

For weeks now, I’ve been unable to find any music that excited me, or made me feel passionate about listening to music. This is strange, as music is such a massive part of my life. I’ve been in bands since I was 15, and grew up in a house full of all different types of music. My parents listened to two genres of music, Country AND Western! I jest, they actually listened to a sort of Irish Country/Folk style too, which meant I was subjected to artists like Foster and Allen and Daniel O’Donnell for many years. My eldest brother was a Blondie and Rod Stewart fan, eldest sister was a fan of The Police and George Benson, other brother was a Punk and his Clash records were probably my earliest influence when I started buying Madness and Adam and the Ants records as a child. Then there’s the smoother influence of the youngest of my sisters, who subjected me to non stop Paul Young records through the 80′s. So you put all that into the pot, add some music of my childhood and teenage years and what do you get? A love of all types of music mostly. I think that’s why I found it a bit strange that I had fallen out of love with music recently. I don’t find many artists offensive enough on my ears to not appreciate what they do. Even the Spice Girls had a couple of good tunes.

I never realised I had fallen out of love with music until today, when I feel my love affair with all things sound appears to have returned and I’m listening to a lovely soundtrack of my life as I type this blog. I’ll try and keep you up to date with the mixture of music that I’m hearing as I type. Tom Waits – I Hope That I Don’t Fall In Love With You I came to hear this song when Brian Kennedy sang it in the 90′s. I wasn’t aware of who the original was by at the time, but I thought the melody and sentiment of the song was beautiful. Tom Waits isn’t everyone’s cup of tea as a singer perhaps, but you can’t deny that this song is truly gorgeous. It tells the simple tale of the attraction and interaction of a man and a woman in a bar, complete strangers, and love at first sight. I’m a real romantic at heart. Music should be able to fill you with emotion and I admit that this song brings a wee tear to my eye.

Louis Armstrong – Makin’ Whoopee Another song that has been covered many times by different artists. I don’t know who would have performed the original version, or who the writer is. The song was introduced to me as part of the soundtrack for Sleepless in Seattle. I love the lyrics and story of this song. Very funny, and lesson to anyone about the cost of Makin’ Whoopee! Wonder what the next song is on my random playlist….

Emiliana Torrini – Jungle Drum An Icelandic artist that I know very little about. I had the pleasure of hearing this song and another song Emiliana Torrini – Big Jumps on the Dermot O’Leary Radio 2 show one afternoon on a drive to IKEA. She was performing the songs live in the studio and I instantly fell in love with her voice and style. I now have the kids hooked to this fun little song and they enjoy singing the “runk a dunk, a-dunk, a-dunk, a-dung-dung” bits. (listen to the tune, you will understand what I mean)

Hothouse Flowers – Movies from the Album “Home”. This was the soundtrack to a teenage holiday to the West coast of Ireland with a friend. It was the only album we had with us, and as a result we listened to it over and over again. Now every song on the album reminds me of that trip and the great weather that summer of 1990 in Donegal. Without the songs on this album, I don’t believe the memories of this place would be so vivid, and although we are now talking about 20 years ago, the songs give me detailed memories of the beaches and towns we visited all over Donegal.

Jeff Buckley – Grace no real background story about this song. I have an old work colleague (Keith) to thank for the introduction to Jeff Buckley. He was also influential in my early intro to Tom McRae and even The Killers before they were big. This Jeff Buckley song is the title track to what is an amazing album. No song on the album disappoints, and the sound of Jeff’s voice and the tragic story of his untimely death make the album legendary. I don’t think I’ll ever grow tired of this album, ever!

Tom McRae – Karaoke Soul – Radio Edit and as if by magic, I spoke of Tom McRae and the music gods decided to make one of his songs the next tune on my shuffle list. Strangely this is one of my favourites of Tom’s songs from his many albums. I do find the live presence of Tom to be much more appealing than his albums however. The albums are amazing, but Tom, a few feet away from you, on stage at King Tut’s, with his band consisting of drummer, keyboard player and Cellist has blown me away many times now. A humble man, who’s never really had the break he deserves, but in a way is probably part of his success in my eyes. He’s a gem that not many have discovered, and I think it makes his music more precious.

Tori Amos – Precious Things strangely, I typed the word “precious” to describe Tom McRae, and the next song to play is Precious Things by Tori Amos. This song is from her debut album (at least I think it is) called Little Earthquakes. I purchased this album in the early 90′s from my local Our Price. Can’t remember how I was introduced to Tori in the first place, but something tells me it might have been an appearance of a single in the “Indie Chart” section of “The Chart Show” that was on ITV on a Saturday morning/lunch time in the early 90′s. I think I was both attracted to her voice, melancholy and the fact she was stunning. I recall my sister who loved Paul Young stealing this album quite often to listen to also and I defy anyone to listen to Tori Amos – China from this album and not have a tear in their eye.

I would love anyone reading this to add their own influential songs to the comments section below and introduce me to some hidden gems I wasn’t aware of. Especially with me being fully submerged in my love affair with music again. Perhaps your suggestion will be looked upon in years to come as the soundtrack to my life in 2010?!?!?

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Am I becoming a Cumbernauld House bore?

May 22, 2010 · Filed under Cumbernauld House

Any regular readers of my blog or twitter updates will know about my involvement with a campaign to Save and Preserve Cumbernauld House on Facebook. Since February, we’ve already recruited the support of over 2000 people, had a publicity flash mob event outside the house with 160 supporters attending, meeting with local community forums, local Councillors, creating a constituted group, business plan and applying for Charitable status. Our main aims once we have charitable status is to raise the money required to carry out full feasability studies, purchase the house, restore areas of the house and turn it into a working business to allow the community to use the building as well as it turning over enough money to keep the building maintained. Quite a big task for just a few guys who got involved in this project because they simply cared!

We’ve came up with some exciting ideas for fund raising, some more profitable than others to be honest. And our first attempt at event management comes in the form of an outdoor cinema we hope will take place in the surrounding park of Cumbernauld House. Our main motivation isn’t purely to raise the funds for the house, but to provide the community with an opportunity to come together, enjoy the space, enjoy each other’s company, enjoy having a cinema back in the town after almost 30 years and give the supporters of the campaign a chance to see how serious this group is about turning the house in to a Community Development Trust.

Now the appeal part. We need help. We aren’t event managers. The things we have arranged so far include the projection company, opened up discussion with NLC regarding licensing required, contacted Security companies, priced herace and hoarding event fencing, portaloo suppliers and portable flood lighting and generators. We also need a curtained trailer or white sided truck that we can use for the film to be projected on. This will keep the pricing of building a scaffold frame for a cinema screen and make the set up a much quicker process. (Remember, we are doing this on a budget). If you are able to assist us with a contact for a company who will be able to provide us any of these items at a lower cost, please contact us at webmaster@cumbernauldhousetrust.org.uk

Further to that appeal, we are also looking for local companies to provide sponsorship in way of advertising that will be displayed on the big screen at the event prior to the film starting. If you are involved in a local business who would be interested in this please get in touch again at webmaster@cumbernauldhousetrust.org.uk

Sorry, this is going on a bit but I’ve not even got to the exciting part of today. Our group finally got inside the house we are campaigning for. Growing up in the area and being amazed by the building from such a young age I suppose it could have been easy for me to find the mysterious internal part of the building to be a disappointed. But oh no! This building doesn’t just look great on the outside, this house turned me in to an excited child this morning as I wandered from room to room, finding more things to amaze me, discovering areas of the house that I didn’t even know existed and just filling my imagination with all of the possibilities for a building that is currently a bit tired and in need of real tender loving care. All cameras and camcorders in hand we tried to document our experience, but I have to admit, I stopped taking photos and video footage and just enjoyed the experience. (Sorry) I hope that through the work we are doing that everyone will get the chance to enjoy the inside of this house either at a wedding reception, or within the proposed museum space. We also want to encourage the local schools to visit and learn more about the history of the house and surrounding area.

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Politics, babies, chickens, vegetables…

May 8, 2010 · Filed under Gardens and Chickens

Busy week, far too busy for composing a blog, that’s for sure. But here I am, gathering my thoughts for the week and not sure where to start.

I’ll start with telling you how my sister in law has had two lovely babies. A boy and a girl, both very well, both very cute. So small you can literally hold one in each hand (I’m just not brave enough to try that though). Born on the 27th of April. Very happy and very proud.

I voted (that’s enough about politics eh?).

Little did I know that when I got my hens at the beginning of last summer that I would this year be experienced enough to give a “lesson” in Chicken husbandry. But amazing what you learn in a year about your wee chooks. So this week I was asked by a friend to give her and her kids an overview of what you need to do with the hens to keep them happy and look after them properly. They all came over to the house on Thursday afternoon and I showed them the best way to lift the hens, checking their eyes are clear, making sure they don’t eat too much and fill up their crop, what to feed them and how often, and I sent them on their way with 6 fresh eggs! A very happy family, with their hen coop now built and their point of lay hens on order. I think it made me realise how I’m guilty of taking my girls (hens, not the kids) for granted, and just got on with seeing the things I do for them as a chore, and I get paid eggs in return. But they are 3 delightful little creatures, who adore me (well, I do feed them and clean out their house for them, so they need to like me). I recommend keeping hens to everyone who can. At least that way it’s keeping them out of battery cages and sheds that are overly full. And the eggs are amazing, I’m not yoking! (I’ll get my coat)

Which leads me to my vegetables. For a relatively young man (stop laughing) I seem to have a bit of an old man’s head on my shoulders. I enjoy the simplicity of my garden, growing vegetables and more so the eating of the crops! And with a bit of sunshine, and the tulips in full flower it really inspires you to want to grow more. I’ve had my garlic and onions in the ground for a while, and had sown some peas and carrots straight into the ground. They are all sprouting with the weather getting a bit warmer. I have courgettes and cucumber plants growing on my window sill along with tomatoes, strawberries, and sweetcorn. I have little propogators that now have seeds in for chilis, butternut squash, more courgettes, lettuce and some herbs. My seed potatoes have been growing in their potato sacks since Easter, and I’m topping them up with soil and making sure they have plenty of water. It’s when all of the plants start to sprout and grow that excites me. The first flowers of the tomato plant or the first pea shoots climbing their way up and out of the ground. All very exciting (or am I just easily pleased?) Time for my slippers and maybe a wee can of sweetheart stout

A Cinema in Cumbernauld

April 26, 2010 · Filed under Uncategorized

I’ve been involved in some interesting discussion and meetings in the past week. Apart from the normal email conversations our Cumbernauld House Trust group are having, we also had a meeting with an outdoor cinema company to survey the Cumbernauld House Park for an ideal area to put on a film event.

I keep asking myself the questions like “What if the weather is bad?” or “Where do we rent portaloos?”. Even wondering how we get a mobile popcorn maker! But I’m maybe jumping the gun a bit as we need to source sponsorship and advertising in order to pay for the costs of staging such an event.

I’ve always been a dreamer, having wild ambitions and ideas. For once I’ve been able to apply them to something worthwhile. I must admit, pitching an idea to hold an outdoor cinema event to my Trust colleagues I was sure would have been laughed at due to the expectations of Scottish summers. However, the group are just as enthusiastic about this event as I am, and we will do everything we can to make it happen. I suppose the lesson I have learned is that our group has great vision and faith in what each of us is capable of. It’s the kind of faith we need to give us the strong foundations required to make our vision a reality!

Losing my blogging virginity

April 17, 2010 · Filed under Cumbernauld House · Tagged Charity, Cumbernauld, Cumbernauld House, Facebook

Faced with a “WordPress” blog page, with nothing on it, and not knowing where to start is quite daunting. However, anyone who knows me might find it hard to believe that I am stuck for words. Perhaps it’s the lack of self confidence when it comes to composing any type of written word. The long pauses, drifting thoughts, fingers perched over the top of the keys, searching for inspiration so that whatever I write is engaging and interesting. Then I look back and realise I’ve typed a full paragraph of nothing!

Paragraph 2 might be more engaging when I explain that I will be blogging about events and work that I am involved in with the Cumbernauld House Trust Group (also known as Save and Preserve Cumbernauld House for those of you on facebook. So my blogging will be about what we are doing as a group, what my involvement is, how it’s affecting my “normal job”, my family life, etc etc. I might even tell you about my kids, my hens and my band(s) too.

Back to the group though. The group was inititiated by my good friend Robert McAllen, who created a Facebook fan page and online petition based purely on his disgust of what had happened to a building that was a huge part of our childhood as we grew up in Cumbernauld. We engaged in a conversation about the house and due to my own disgust, I offered to assist him with the campaign. Simply by speaking to friends and posting the details of the site on to Facebook the support grew really quite quickly. It’s given people from Cumbernauld a way to vent their own disgust at the state of the house, provide opinions and ideas for what they’d like to see happen to the house, but mainly just gets the community speaking to each other again.

So I can’t promise anything, but stick with me and I’ll at least be honest with you about the highlights and lowlights of starting off without any knowledge of how to set up a constituted group, a charity and a development trust, and how we progress could be entertaining along the way.