Charity runs amok

I had lunch today at a city Italian restaurant with four longstanding friends. In years gone past we were work colleagues and also a tennis and squash playing group. The lunch had been arranged prior to my mother's unexpected death and whilst I initially changed my mind about attending following her death I changed my mind. I'm glad that I did. It is better to get on with life than withdraw from society.

All of us have now reached the Senior Citizen's card age and only one is still in fulltime employment, the other four of us having retired from fulltime work. We spent a few pleasant, chatty hours gossiping about all and sundry issues but as has now become common for our age group we had plenty of personal health related issues to compare and discuss.

We are all meeting again this Saturday at the marriage of the third and youngest daughter of the remaining worker.

My relaxed mood was rudely shattered shortly after returning home. One of a number of charities that I donate to over the phone followed up an exchange I had with them several weeks ago. Over time I have become increasingly concerned by this particular charity's aggressive and intrusive techniques. It routinely attempted to get me to increase my previous donations by threefold and more and had taken to asking intrusive questions for 'security purposes'. I was also taken aback when I wrote to them on an earlier occasion to complain about their tactics to find the charity in question operated from a high level floor in an expensive waterfront tower. I wondered what proportion of donations went to cover their rental costs.

A 'supervisor' sought to explain the previous tactics and even said that the charity had changed its approach following complaints similar to mine but I'm still peeved and told him I would not be providing a donation again.

His call was bad timing. I was left upset for the intended beneficiaries of donations who I know are deserving of assistance. Now I'm trying to calm down in preparation for tomorrow's melanoma excision.