The random busyness and car hires

Well May turned in to a bit of a blur, and looking back I'm not sure where it all went.

I'm currently looking through my photos for the month and after my trip to the West Ham match there's not much there. Just a random spattering of different events that took up a lot of energy on my part but didn't result in the kind of enjoyment that I might have been hoping for.

I did make a really stupid, and costly, mistake a couple weeks ago which seemed to colour some of the events. I've mostly moved on from it now. Mostly, not fully.

Let me explain...

For the past few years one of the constants and highlights of our year has been attending our Deanery conference (A deanery is a small group of churches in a larger set). It's usually held at a beautiful conference centre in the countryside and during this time of year the weather is starting to become really nice. This leads to lots of time just enjoying sitting outdoors chatting with friends from all over the UK, most of whom we only see once or twice a year.

As part of this conference we have talks by different people as well as a book store. Our parish holds the only book store in the deanery and I manage that book store. So it usually falls to me to bring our book store from the parish to the conference. For the past few years this has involved me renting a car that we load up with books as well as my family and this driving up to where ever the conference is.

This year was no different. I booked the car and got a good deal for it. There was a problem though.

I booked the car for the weekend before the conference.

And I fully prepaid.

And it was a bank holiday weekend so they had no cars left.

I'm pretty sure I went through just about every emotion possible right there at the car rental counter. All within the space of a few seconds.

I ended up getting a car from another provider at more than double the cost (at first they told me it was going to be over 4x the cost).

As someone with an overall low level of self esteem, that level was at rock bottom after that.

Anyway, we made it to the conference. I had a lot of work to do during the conference so I mostly forgot about it. But I also didn't really enjoy the conference as much as previous years.

I know I'm not the first, nor the last, to ever do that, but it is a real blow to the wallet and the confidence. I'll get over it, or at least forget that it happened at some point.

Until there I'll probably leave most of the scheduling of critical functions to my wife.