YOU know it's autumn when the kids go back to school, dreary people start banging on about the nights drawing in and the Hospice Movement holds its coffee morning. The annual caffeine fest is not only a very important source of fund raising last year the day brought in a massive £600,000 but it's such fun that it has become a very lively feature of the social calendar.
At the moment they're signing up coffee morning hosts anyone can do it and those planning to brew up include the Attorney General's office, NCB stockbrokers, several banks, Mary Harney, Eithne Fitzgerald and solicitor Gerald Kean, who's been busy at home helping wife Clodagh with their new baby Kirsten Hopkins Kean.
The idea has spread abroad and Bewley's in Tokyo, the Irish Club in Belgium and Tufts University in Boston will all be having coffee mornings on September 12th.
Getting ready to starch their pinnys in preparation for coffee serving duties are Ian Dempsey, Bill Hughes, Harry Crosbie, Frank and Eithne Fitzpatrick and John Reynolds. Chris Goulandris O'Reilly is the patron of the 10 year old organisation but in all its years has yet to be spotted dipping a Marietta into a cup of Bewley's best she is, however, extremely supportive in other ways.
On the day itself Marion Finucane is bound to have a bad case of caffeine fuelled jitters as a newly announced director of the Hospice Movement she will have to attend several coffee mornings.