First and foremost, we have to say “goodbye” to our friend and co-worker Sheila Bowman, who finally hung up her needles at the end of July and retired to enjoy a quieter life . Sheila was with us for 10 years. She was the calm and sensible one who could always be relied on for robust advice couched in the gentlest terms. A superb acupuncturist, she nonetheless didn't consider it below her dignity to muck in with whatever needed doing around the Centre.

  We miss her already..

If you aren't already the proud owner of the September edition of Cumbria Life magazine rush out now and lay hands on a copy, because published with it you will find a brand new supplement called “Health and Wellbeing” and within said supplement you will find a feature article on – you guessed it – us!

Keith Richardson, the Editor of Cumbria Life came down from Carlisle to conduct the interview with Gretchen himself and in a moment of foolhardiness decided that it would be a wizard notion to interview her whilst she was treating him.

I understand from Gretchen that he did – just – manage to stay awake but that he had a certain amount of trouble walking in a straight line afterwards. The fact that the article is both lucid and accurate may be thanks to the presence of a tape recorder. It's also grammatical and one of the best articles ever written about us, but that's entirely down to Keith.

Accompanying the article are some glamour shots of the inmates of the Chase. At least we HOPE they're glamour shots, because at the time of going to press with this newsletter we hadn't actually SEEN the photos they'd decided to use – but we're assuming they can't be any worse than the one which appeared in the Whitehaven News recently. Gretchen looked as if she'd been exhumed specially for the occasion and I gave every appearance of being a nicely dressed axe murderer. (In my previous photographic incarnation, I looked like a demented dentist, so I'm not sure if it was an improvement or not.)

Volunteer Co-ordinator: I am delighted to be able to announce that – courtesy of the Cumbria Key Fund – we now have a Volunteer Co-ordinator who has joined us specifically to help people – especially young people – get back into the workplace. Many who come to the Centre for help have been out of the employment market for a long time and have lost the ability to hold down a full-time or even part-time job. Volunteering is the perfect way to re-establish the necessary skills, and Chris Ford is the lady who's taken the task on board for us. She – poor soul – joined us just in time to bear the brunt of the donkey work necessary for the Egremont Car Boot sale. I'm surprised she didn't just turn tail and flee when I handed her the list of “things to be done in the next week” – but she didn't and I honestly don't know how I'd have managed without her. (All right, stand up the person who said – “With very bad grace”?).

She's now girding up her loins to tackle the Silent Auction (which I'll come back to shortly …).

Speaking of Egremont Car Boot Sale, we made an astonishing £405 in under 3 hours which unfortunately means that I have no excuse for not doing it all over again next year.

I also have extra help in the shape of Andrea Takacs who's been helping out around the Centre since the summer. Apart from being much nicer to clients than I can ever manage, making endless cups of tea for them and sporadically working on her Masters Degree in Adventure Tourism, she has made hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of recycled cards. Our stocks, which were getting very low, are now fully replenished (and then some) so you know where to come for your greetings cards, Christmas cards, Get Well Soon cards … you name them, we've probably got them.

If you'd like to buy some (and are prepared to take pot luck on our dodgy taste) just fill in your requirements on the enclosed Order Form and we will endeavour to oblige.

While we're on the subject of Exciting Things to Buy, here are some more:

The long-threatened newsletter compil-ation “The Long and Winding Road ” has finally been foist upon an unsuspecting public after many stumbles and hiccups along the way.

Between the years 1993 and 2003 (the years we were in residence at Knott End) we produced some 34 Newsletters which – taken as a whole – provide an extraordinary chronicle of those formative years. In fact, they should be required reading for anyone who vaguely thinks it would be a wonderful idea to set up a complementary therapy centre in a beautiful converted barn in a National Park.

The Newsletters are linked by a narrative, penned by me, which not unnaturally gives the proceedings a slightly jaundiced slant from the outset … more “Blood-spattered Despatches from the War Zone” than “Spiritual Ruminations from a Higher Plain”.

Copies are £5.00 each (if you collect it yourself), or £6.25 including postage and packing.

2006 Calendars: Our ever-popular local calendar is in production now (well, not NOW , exactly … but near enough for present purposes) and will include 7 more locally taken photographs. This year, the calendar is adorned with “Stuff You Never Realized You Didn't Know” provided by the Trivia Meister himself, Anthony Payne. We've managed to hold the price down to £6.00 including postage and packing and should be despatching them by the end of October.

Trivia Quizzes : Following the great success of the two quizzes last year (one for perfectly normal human beings with lives and mortgages and hamsters, and one for wild-eyed obsessives with no friends, no social life and probably no dress sense) we are repeating the exercise again. (And yes Clive … I DO know I haven't delivered your bottle of wine to you yet … but you'll have it at the beginning of October, honestly …).

Two quizzes; two levels of difficulty. The “ordinary” quiz, that everybody should have a reasonable chance of winning, is 100 questions which you have until February 14 th 2006 to answer. The prizes are laughable, but that's part of the charm of the thing.

The “Abandon Hope” quiz – also due back on St Valentine's Day – is just 50 questions long, but they're questions so Machiavellian in nature that they'll make your eyes water. They are, however, as painful for me as they are for you … especially when it comes to marking them. I can't begin to tell you how my tender little heart sinks when I find myself confronted with a neatly typed two-page essay on the history of divorce and chewing gum (and if you think that's a joke you're VERY much mistaken …). The prizes are equally risible, but as far as my faithful “regulars” are concerned, the prizes are completely irrelevant, because what they REALLY want is to do me down .

On Sunday, September 4 th , Joe Kendall (also known affectionately as both “Our Hero” and “That Looney”) successfully completed his “Cockermouth to Embleton the Long Way” cycle ride (75 miles which actually turned out to be 77 miles – but if you DO insist on going via Whitehaven, what do you expect?). It took him 5 hours 49 minutes and 33 seconds (not including the watering stops) on an insanely hot day, and he consumed some 2 gallons of water en route ; but when I rang him on the following Monday to ask, politely, if he was still alive or anything, he cheerfully informed me that he'd just got back from another 9 mile ride …

To date, we think he's raised something slightly in excess of £1,000.00 for the Centre, but it's not too late to support him if you haven't already done so. We're deeply grateful to him … not only because he volunteered to do it without any prompting from us, but also because he and his friends and family did all the background work as well. All I had to do was murmur encouragement from the sidelines and try to persuade the local media to pay attention (with my usual startling lack of success, I might add …). If you would like to bolster Joe's total, you'll find a space on the enclosed sheet.

Thanks also – although it'll probably make him go bright pink – to Keith Bridges for taking on our massive lawns. He's battered the brutes into meek, sleek submission and any number of people have commented about how good the grounds have been looking this summer – tidy but not too manicured. Much as we always love claiming the credit for everything at every available opportunity, we have to admit that the garden is nothing to do with us … volunteer Keith and our paid (but not paid very much) workers Richard and Sam wrought the miracle. Our thanks to them all.

Speaking of the garden – if you have any plants or cuttings you'd like to donate to us (or – being honest – just want to get rid of), we can take everything you've got. Although it would be nice to have the financial wherewithal to do a Gertrude Jekyll with the grounds, in practice we'll bung virtually anything in anywhere with a cheerful disregard for aesthetics, the finer points of landscape gardening or even plain common sense. Oddly enough, the end result is rather quirkily appealing.

Forthcoming Events: I promised to mention the words “Silent” and “Auction” again … and I always like to keep my word.

The Silent Auction and Open Day on SATURDAY OCTOBER the 1 ST ( Please note the change of date : we rather cleverly originally scheduled it to clash with Eskdale Show, so thought it might be shrewd just to give in gracefully and move it to the following Saturday.) This is the first major event we've ever held at The Chase and is something by way of an experiment, because IF we can host a big event without serious problems, and IF sufficient numbers turn up, we may never have to hunt around for suitable locations for our fundraisers again.

One of the main drawbacks of the Barn was that it was remote and difficult to reach (Gretchen and I have both discovered that, given the choice, we too now prefer NOT to drive down the Birkby Road … so that tells you just about everything you need to know, doesn't it?). People didn't want to risk their paintwork and sanity to get there.

The Chase is conveniently situated with parking space, lots of room to mill around, and a garden for overflow (as long as it isn't absolutely throwing it down, of course).

If you don't know what a Silent Auction is, it's really very simple. We put a lot of items for sale on display. Beside each item there will be a box and a pile of bidding slips. All you have to do if you're interested in bidding for one of the items is write your bid on one of the slips and put it in the box. At 3.00 o'clock on Saturday afternoon, we open the box and the highest bid wins the item.

We've already amassed an amazing selection of items – from a splendid Victorian/Edwardian (unless I'm much mistaken) standard lamp converted from an oil lamp through a brand-new portable television set to a mammoth collection of framed pictures – but we'd still like some more, please. If you have anything you think would be suitable – small pieces furniture (we have a rather elegant commode up for grabs, for instance), nice pieces of porcelain, good quality toys, jewellery, books, paintings – anything at all – we'll take it. If necessary, we can probably arrange collection, too.

I'll be producing a catalogue of auction items, which will be available (I hope) the week before. Drop us a line or give us a call if you'd like us to put one in the post to you

The doors open at 10.00am on the Saturday, but for those who would like to participate, but can't get here on the 1 st , we are arranging prior viewing (and bidding) from 2.00pm to 6.00pm on Friday the 30 th of September.

As well as the auction, we'll have a tombola, raffle, cake stall and white elephant stall plus a huge selection of our newly recycled Christmas and Greetings cards. Refreshments will be available all day and live music will be provided by Fiona Butcher whose piano playing at the Christmas Fair was one of the highlights of the day. She'll be installed on the half-landing – safely out of reach of the baying hordes (well, I mean – you know what groupies are like …).

Parking will be around the back of the Chase, all along the front and – if needed – there'll be an overflow car park within walking distance ( Memo to self: Remember to ask nicely and say “Please”.)

Christmas Bash: I still haven't managed to think of a more elegant term for this (I suppose we could call it our Christmas ‘At Home' but that suggests a degree of elegance and sophistication which is generally lacking from our bunfights).

Anyway, whatever we choose to call it, it's on Saturday November the 26 th (the day we would have had the Cockermouth Christmas Fair on if we'd been having the Cockermouth Christmas Fair – if you see what I mean …).

Doors open at 10.00am for an all-day “At Home” for friends, supporters, clients and lost souls – and will close at 4.00pm or whenever we manage to hurl the last reveller out into the late Autumn drizzle. (Want to put money on it NOT drizzling? No? Thought not.) Hopefully there'll be live music from the Minstrels' Gallery (okay, okay … it's the landing upstairs, but it LOOKS a bit like a Minstrel's Gallery), drinkies and nibblies, crafts, cards, white elephant, toys and anything else that seems like a good idea (and saleable) at the time.

AND FINALLY … can I remind you about our website … www.cccare.org … which I do my level best to update on a regular basis. You can donate on-line using either Nochex or PayPal, buy a copy (or three) of The Long and Winding Road , hop across to our eBay site to see what's for sale, spot the typos, laugh immoderately at my jokes and admire Ben's photographs (he has his own page, you know … I'm even thinking of forming a Fan Club for him and calling it “Ben's Best Buddies” …).

As always, we remain in need of your junk … china, glass, brassware, knick-knacks, old needlework findings, haberdashery, old jewellery, old pens (she said, hopefully … we were recently given 6 old fountain pens which sold for a three-figure total …), books, CDs, DVDs, videos, paper and card, old greetings cards …

My mother doesn't call me Tilly Totter for no good reason, you know.

That's it, until March 2006.

From all of us here at the Centre – be well, stay safe and have a peaceful Christmas and New Year.

MKB/12.9.05

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