And the band played on...

Last night Hubby and I ate at our friend, Emily Browm's wonderful restaurant, The Harbour. Its simple, local food cooked to perfection. As we tucked into our main course of Sea Bass, the breathtaking St Minver Silver Brass Band struck up on the quay doing their weekly fundraiser for the Lifeboat. Port Issac is one of those places where most able bodied young men, and sometimes women are part of the crews. The best example of Big Society I can think of is the Royal lifeboat. Often we have been in the pub or breaking bread with friends and the siren sounds and they disappear in a squeel of tyres to muster. Working as pure volunteers they risk their lives every day, and the stories are hair raising, we are all very, very lucky they make that sacrifice. So without being asked I trotted out of Emily's and made our donation. I took a shot of the band.

Today I had 2 messages from SEL staff who are off. Christophe is going to a social enterprise in the Phillipines and Sabina is off to make another lovely baby. They both sent me the most touching messages about how much they love working at SEL, we are a rare troupe of brilliant, dedicated and ironic social activists. My favourite bit is the irony, Lord, we do have a laugh. See you the other side of ouch Sabina, and Chris, thank you for sorting out our techo world, you've worked wonders.

Another interesting piece I picked up today was on one of my favourite bloggers, Beanbags and Bullshit, who has a crystal clear insight into the plight of regional social enterprise support agencies, it was also very lovely about my favourite group of social entrepreneurs who, and it seems someone has noticed, work tirelessly to make the lives of social entrepreneurs more successful.