On the Committee part 1

I was asked to be on the allotment committee and take the minutes by our Chairman, Marie. Marie comes from Ohio or somewhere like that, and is a very petite American lady with a patient, but energetic personality. When I was having a bonfire two days after the end of bonfire season she did come past my plot and tell me not to. I was rather surprised as I thought we had discussed, and passed, a motion to extend the bonfire season by a month, at the Annual General Meeting the previous week, but she said, no. I pondered the fact that it is very important to write things down that happen at meetings or nothing is remembered accurately.

Having agreed to be Minutes secretary, I was approached by the Treasurer of our organisation. He comes into the allotment shop on both Saturday and Sunday to pick up the takings. He is a very reliable man of advancing years. He told me that it is very important to hold meeting regularly and to stop our Chairman, Marie, from overspending, as we need to hold a reserve for fighting legal battles (from property developers). He noted that over the last year Marie had organised 3 expensive rubbish collections instead of the usual 2, and he felt that this had not been agreed by the committee. I agreed to try to get meetings organised and in diaries as soon as possible.

Marie suddenly called a meeting the following week. We had this meeting standing up in the allotment shop. All to the good in a way as nobody was tempted to linger. At the meeting one of our number, whom I will call Vera, volunteered to be the Plot Steward. Apparently she has long told Marie that Marie cannot be both Chairman and Plot Steward, and that she, Vera, is always at the allotments and would be able to take care of everything on a regular basis. Marie said that she had asked Busy Dee (who stocks the shop) to be Plot Steward, and that Busy Dee had agreed to do it. But Vera said that Dee was far too busy to be Plot Steward and put herself forward most vehemently.

After the meeting Marie told the rest of the committee that Vera cannot be Plot Steward because she has an uncontrollable temper and screams and shouts at people, and that she, Marie, cannot work with her. No. Under no circumstances. So Marie said she would get in touch with Busy Dee and tell her to say that she is Plot Steward and Volatile Vera can understudy her when she is not there.

This was very difficult to minute because I had minuted that Dee and Vera were to share the job but Marie did not want me to suggest that that had been agreed.

Then Marie got back to me, about the minutes, about the allegation that there had not been meetings last year, and said that all the meetings had indeed been held, and that she thinks Michael has forgotten that we did have meetings. She thinks he didn't attend/ has memory problems? I asked her to forward me the minutes of previous meetings. This she has not done and she seems to have gone away on a break.

At the weekend I was working in the shop with Busy Dee when Volatile Vera came in and told Busy Dee she wanted to be Plot Steward. The odd thing was that Busy Dee, who should have been primed to say clearly and emphatically, yes, I am the Plot Steward, did no such thing. She said neither yes nor no. It was all very difficult.