2010, a year of learning

This has been an interesting, challenging, exciting, stressful, rewarding and sad year. All rolled into one. The theme for me personally is one of learning. The major event for me was without question the preparation of the day to day accounts and the submission of the accounts to the period ending 31 March 2010 to an accountant. This was an extremely nervous time, not because of the accountant - Tim Pearce was simply wonderful and very reassuring, but I had that sense of the unknown, a dread that I must have made a mistake somewhere. As it happened the only thing I think I missed was a trial balance but Tim told me what was required and I quickly added this and have used it ever since.

As the year draws to an end it is useful to reflect on what has gone well and what has not. You hope the former comfortably outweighs the latter but you have to be honest with yourself if you are ever going to learn, progress and excel.

Our Kidderminster charity shop continued to be a little powerhouse of funding for our charitable activities, and its success led us to Stourbridge. Unfortunately it has not been the success I envisaged, though it remains marginally profitable its income is too low to be able to plan for its income.

Our Neutering scheme in the community was launched in the spring and was quickly successful, and a little too popular. We quickly had to scale it back to the point that at one point it was suspended. It is a useful scheme to remain in place and we appreciate that Charnock Shepherd have helped us administrate this scheme.

There is much more to pour through over the coming days as we make formal plans for 2011.