Last week we made the journey from Lancashire to Bedfordshire, stayed with our friends Rob and Judith in Ampthill and on Thursday morning we hopped over to the Rufus Centre at Flitwick.
When I was a lad Rufus meant only two things to me.
One was that King William Rufus had been killed in suspicious circumstances while hunting in the New Forest. An arrow from one of his own men was what did for him. An accident? Tell it to the marines - especially in the knowledge that his courtiers just left his body lying in the forest and went home to have a cup of tea.
The other Rufus in my knowledge then was the little boy in the newspaper cartoon "Flook". Rufus, in a dream of the stone age, rescued a baby woolly mammoth, Flook, from where he was cowering in a cave from some sort of persecution. When Rufus woke up, Flook was there with him and they proceeded to have adventures for many years.
I am not sure who the Rufus Centre is named after but Wikipedia lists an astonishing number of well-known (more or less) individuals with what I thought was an unusual name.
The Rufus Centre is an excellent conference and function centre and last Thursday it was being used by Flitwick U3A for their monthly speaker meeting, starring yours truly and his tale of an epic 70-day walk. The organisers apologised before the meeting because they thought numbers might be down, what with August being the epicentre of the holiday season. Seating capacity was 200, in superb banked formation. There were not many empty seats.
The talk went well, excellent reaction from the audience, many signed copies of my book changed hands and many individual donations were made to Pancreatic Cancer UK. A total of £292 was raised, taking me to 196% of my target for this phase (raising funds jusr by speaking) of my fundraising.
Rob and Judith, who during the Big Walk popped up in central France to take us out to dinner, came to the performance, as did our other great friends in Ampthill, Mike and Ann.
My next performance will be in The Dukes Theatre in Lancaster.
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