Never believe all you read!

Life in gemmak's-ville has been a little disenchanting of late as you know and yesterday my colleagues and my own feelings of skepticism with life were given a rather sad and somewhat annoying helping hand!

The local rag last week reported on it's front page the terrible story of an elderly lady, and octogenarian of the locality who whilst browsing in a charity shop had her purse stolen. It contained just a few pounds but that small sum was all the money she had in the world to support herself and her beloved cat until she next collected her pension. It was not a great deal of money but when it's all you have it might as well be thousands.

Enraged and horrified by this story of some thugs heinous disregard for an elderly and harmless lady the situation became a much discussed point over the weekend and one of our number quickly decided to collect donations for this unfortunate woman and to make up for her a small hamper of food and to give her a little cash....and over the weekend that's exactly what we did. It was to be an anonymous gift that we hoped would at least help the victim of such a crime over the initial difficulties.

And so, collection raised and food hamper (including cat food I might add) made up the colleague who had made the arrangements went to the charity shop involved ( the lady concerned is involved in this charity and it was our only point of contact) to pass on our small offering....but what happened next came as a rather unpleasant surprise to all of us.

It would seem that whilst it doesn't detract for one moment from the hideousness of the initial crime or of those like it, our 'elderly and destitute' beneficiary is far from all it seems. Elderly she may be but destitute she most certainly isn't! The charity concerned were full of apology, they had no idea this lady would go to the press but know her well and know that not only did she lose much less money in the theft but also, rather than herself and her 'beloved cat' being likely to struggle over the next few days just for food to eat, she could in fact likely feed the whole town for she is and extremely wealthy (and I mean millionaire kind of wealthy) local eccentric who is well known to some!

Slightly floored by this information and not a little upset my colleague left the cash as a donation to the charity itself and returned to work with the food still in her possession. Ditto and Tilly have subsequently benefited there but the whole issue is kind of sad in so much as not only did we feel duped but more so because in future I think it has had the effect of making some of us more skeptical should we ever consider such a story again.

Realistically we know that such reports of crimes of this nature, are all too true and are devastating to the victim but it can't help but leave something of a lingering 'bad taste' and make us all just a little tiny bit less likely to consider such actions again....that in itself is the saddest aspect of the whole sorry tale.

And the moral of the story, never believe all you read in the press!!!