I know, I know….. people say that, but I REALLY love my job. Tuesday morning I took a phone call:
‘Hello, is that Renee?’ ‘Yes, how can I help’ ‘You are coming to talk to us on Thursday and I was just…..’ ‘Errr, am I ????’ Oh dear… crossed wires, misfiled arrangements and the distinct possibility of letting a group of about 30 ladies down……
Google, good old google…. Mobile phone providers in Shrewsbury….. ‘No, sorry we cant help’ ‘This is an automated service, please enter your mobile phone number….’ Aaaaargh!
They say ‘third time lucky’ but actually, I struck gold!
Off we trotted just 2 days later on Thursday afternoon for the fortnightly meeting of the WRVS Copthorne Companions. Twentyfive lovely ladies gathered, all clutching their 
mobile phones. And four fantastic young lads (and they caused quite a stir) from mobile phone provider O2 stepped through the door of the scouts hut. The O2 guru’s; Graham from the local store in Shrewsbury, Adam from Telford, Paul from Wrexham and Steve from Bangor!!! Taylor from the O2 shop in Shrewsbury had pulled out ALL the stops and at incredibly short notice.
It was a fantastic afternoon. The buzz in the room was amazing! Its all well and good ‘pushing’ the internet but sometimes its more basic than that. These ladies had ALL been struggling with their phones, from not understanding what the pictures (icons) mean, to working the answer phone, to texting to even just switching it on. Most of them embarresed to say and several reporting people had tried to show them before….
During the intro I asked how many of the ladies were not (yet) on the internet. About 20 hands went up…. Over tea and cake I carefully broached the subject of the internet again and several of the ladies took a leaflet about our sessions, but lets go one step at a time. I am sure that that evening phones will have come out of bags and several practise text messages will have been sent…. My leaflets? They will come out of those bags when the time is right.
This session made a real difference to many of these ladies. Listen to a brief clip below as BBC Radio Shropshire sent Nick Southall along to find out what it was all about:
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