The Chance(ry)s are

I had some important meetings about Mozambique at the small office space we use in London. It's at Chancery Lane in one of those vast blocks of hot-desking options and sustainable entrepreneurial dynamic professional-based solutions. The glass-filled corridors are populated by social media consultants and digi-marketing gurus talking in millennial code. Conservationists are certainly anomalies.

I think we pay through the nose for the six desks we occupy. However the building is sublime in its facilities. Fresh grapefruit pieces sit tantalisingly in bowls. A resident barista rustles up strong flat whites. I kept bumping into entrepreneurs networking over a game of table tennis. An efficient ice machine drowns out conversations next to the sink, before you plop it in your fruit infused water, available on tap.

It's wonderful to have a jar of jammy dodgers to plunder in a carefully regulated environment and all that, but I do generally feel more at ease working on a roasting veranda outside a house in Juba, having kicked off my flip flops. It's not much fun having no access to the outside air for 8+ hours per day, and being trapped behind several panels of glass. And no matter how slick are the furnishings and effortlessly cool are the receptionists, it's still opposite a strip club.

I had no time to linger in London as we had organised an important volunteer group meeting in the evening. On the return to Cambridge I scoffed a burrito (sadly no freebies I could grab on exiting the London office), picked up some group snacks (which I should never be given responsibility for) and hotfooted down to the venue we often use. We don't have to pay a fee, which is lovely of the building owners, but the woman who monitors the lobby is prickly beyond belief. 'I do wish you lot would get your act together,' she greeted us with, irked that we often need to run past 9.30, which is when they prefer to empty the building. She later chastised my elderly trustee colleague Robin who had used a cafetière as a water jug as he couldn't find a regular one and we had more important business than whether we were using the most suitable receptacle for a refreshing sip. 'Well, ASK!'

Her first was a fair point in fact as the meeting was focused on our structure and management. My friend and colleague Hannah, well versed in facilitating groups, helped us out and did it brilliantly. It was one of our more successful meetings since I was first involved in early 2016. As a small charitable organisation run by volunteers grows, huge weaknesses can appear unless the trustees act proactively. We talked about roles, sub-groups, responsibilities and skills, and although I would soon like an evening of sitting on my sofa and staring at the wall, it was an excellent use of time.