Mark Frankland
Let's make sure the donkeys at Clark's Little Ark have plenty of hay to eat
Fundraising for First Base Agency
Story
I am absolutely delighted to have a go at raising some cash to feed the animals at Clark's Little Ark.
I have written a short book - in fact if I am inclined to be posh I could even call it a novella - which tells a fictional tale where The First Base Agency and Clark's Little Ark work with each other. I guess the story is my alternative to sky diving or bungee jumping or sharing a bath with 10,000 worms. Hopefully 25,000 words will do instead of deliberate self harm!
To give you a flavour of what Clark's Little Ark is all about here's an extract from the story which also has a link to a recent Border News piece.
'The next morning I got into my van and made my way up the Nith valley to Sanquhar. It was the kind of Scottish spring day to make life absolutely worth living. The river sparkled in the sunlight and the trees showed off every kind of vivid green.
The old coal mining village almost looked content as I drove in. The high street was home to more than the usual number of people and for once the shops seemed to carry a hopeful air about them.
I took a right and worked my way through familiar narrow streets to the edge of town. Over the railway and past the sturdy square houses where once upon a time the mine management must had looked down into valley below. The narrow urban road became a narrow rural road.
I turned left down a small track to Clark's Little Ark.
This is one of my very favourite places. In my book, it is everything a charity should be. The right charity in the right place at the right time run in the right way by the right people.
Local, front line, welcoming, not judging...
It's a bloody long list.
The place was set up by Alison. In 2013 her son Clark tragically died from Cerebral Palsy when he was only nineteen. Clark had always loved animals and so Alison decided to open an animal sanctuary in his memory.
Like you do.
She managed to copper up enough cash to buy the grounds of an old brickworks and started out on the task of turning this derelict piece of ground in a post industrial coal mining village into an animal sanctuary and four years on she can feel very, very proud of herself.
Here is the very epitome of what a small, local front line charity should look like. No fancy head office with an expensive London postcode. No HR department. No all-expenses-paid jollies to conferences. In fact nobody gets paid at all.
She built up a gang of volunteers and the place came together plank by plant. When I first visited, it took me about ten seconds to realise these were people who would never judge anyone, which made them the perfect folk to give out our food parcels to anyone in Sanquhar who was going through tough times.
So they became one of our storage points.
I guess I should mention a couple of other factors which played pretty large at the time. When Alison first called and told me her surname was Shankly, my mind couldn't help but draw a map. Sanquhar lies a mere twenty miles south of the now disappeared village of Glenbuck. Both villages sit on top of the same seam of coal. And once upon a time a certain Bill Shankly mined that very seam of coal before heading south to make Liverpool Football Club what it is today.
Mention the name 'Shankly' to any of us Liverpool fans and we go all misty eyed. I first saw the great man from the Kop way back in 1973. So Alison's surname begged a question. Was she by any chance related? She was.
Bloody hell. I was talking to royalty!
And there was another thing. When I first arrived at Clark's Little Ark I was greeted with a sound which is now very familiar to me. It was the sound of five donkeys braying at me at the top of their voices.
So there we have it.
Donkeys again.
In Helmand Province, in Northern Nigeria, in Sanquhar.
Always donkeys.
Anyway. Things haven't been great in Sanquhar for years. Ever since they closed down the pit. It is like the places in Pennsylvannia and Ohio we have seen so much of on the news over recent months. It's a left-behind village which is home to a lot of left-behind people. Lots of people are getting by on not much and you need to take a bus to find any prospects. There are many young families in Sanquhar who can only dream of having the spare cash for a day out with the kids. What they can afford is a walk up the hill to Clark's Little Ark. They can afford it because anyone can afford it because it is free at the point of use.
And that is a big deal in my book.
Mental health workers take along their clients. Local dafties serve out their community service hours and more often than not they stay on when their time is done. Kids with learning difficulties are brought along.
It is a haven in a world of austerity. And like First Base they have had to learn the art of living on the edge of a financial cliff. Somehow the money they need for the next delivery of hay and straw always turns up at the eleventh hour.
And yes it would be nice if they had enough in the bank to make them feel safe and comfortable.
It would be nice if there was lasting peace in the Middle East.
Lots of things would be nice, but they don't tend to happen.
Actually, I have just realised the brave new world of the new media offers me an opportunity here. We're online here which means I can slot in a link to a Border News piece about Alison's place. So why not take a break for the written word and check out some moving pictures.
So there you go. I hope it is enough to whet your appetite to give the full thing a read. You can find it by following the link below.
The animal sanctuary has lost much of its grazing ground recently and now It is costing Alison £250 a month to feed the animals. If she can't raise the money to buy hay and straw the donkeys might have to go and live somewhere else and that would be a crying shame.
So I have set the bar high. £3000.
Enough to feed the whole lot of them for a whole year. So its fingers and toes crossed and over to you guys.
You would have to travel a long, long way to find a better cause.