VIEW  FROM  THE  TREASURER’S  DESK,,,,,,The  Treas- urer’s  Desk  hasn’t  seen  much  of  me  over  the  last  few months as I had eight weeks in hospital, including Christmas and New Year, and didn’t get home until early February. Af- ter all that time away (although Martin, Carolyn and Tracey came to the hospital to keep me in touch with GIN) I went to Wraysbury and got on with the book-keeping, bringing a large  amount  of  paperwork  home.  Something  intelligent  to do at last, instead of watching TV in my hospital room-you soon find that the multitude of channels are all equally poor- or trying to estimate what my blood-pressure would be when it  was  taken  next,  every  hour  on  the  hour,  from  6am  to 11pm. Carolyn and Tracey had kept all the files in apple-pie order and after a week or so of beavering away at my PC and a couple of visits to Wraysbury I have got some draft results ready for 2007.   Income looks very good-supporters have contributed splen- didly, the Bournemouth shop has beaten all records and merchandise is recovering well from a transitional year in 2006, when Barbara Davis retired from the job early in the year and we couldn’t get it going properly until the move to Wraysbury in August 2006. Carolyn and Tracey have now got this important outlet generating both cash and in- terest in GIN and our work. Early in 2006, we made a specific appeal to key supporters for extra help, which raised just over £13000, and helped our total income (excluding legacies) for 2006 reach £204000. We did not make a specific appeal in 2007, but even so our total income (again excluding legacies) reached £206000. Legacies, where supporters make provision for GIN in their wills added £62000 in 2006, including a generous £51000 from Mrs J Evans, and further amounts of £12000 were gratefully received in 2007. A legacy is a fine way of helping a charity and is inheritance tax free as I have mentioned in previous articles. If any supporter is inter- ested in remembering GIN in a will, please contact us as we have a simple guide to legacies available. So including legacies, GIN had £218000 to spend in 2007, compared with the record £266000 in 2006. Supporters will be pleased to learn that spending on galgos and greyhounds is up by over £20000 in 2007, deliberately reducing our reserves built up by the unexpectedly large legacies late in 2006. We spent a little less at our main Spanish ken- nels in Vic due to a holiday shut down but spent £4000 more on the Cadiz kennels. Even better the amount of direct aid to Spanish refuges went up from £10000 in 2006 to over £20000 in 2007. This aid was mainly vet fees paid to help the refuges directly but also included a record number of parcels of coats and dog equipment sent from Wraysbury. The number of dogs GIN has helped to supply to homing groups outside Spain is also up on 2006, and Carolyn has managed to get more galgos into Germany in 2007 and for the first time get a number into Slovenia. In the UK we have found some enthusiastic supporters in Cheshire who have homed 30 greyhounds in the last year, and have raised some worthwhile sums by working hard at fairs and shows. Homing these Cheshire dogs has neces- sarily increased GIN’s spend on kennels and vets in the UK. Quarantine costs have increased sharply, even though we brought in the same number of galgos in 2007 as in 2006. In summary we have spent around £13000 more on galgos in Spain and £9000 more on greyhounds and galgos in UK in 2007. Admin costs have risen somewhat, as we had a full year of Wraysbury office rent and electricity etc costs to pay while in 2006, we only occupied Wraysbury from August. Carolyn needed help to enable her to concentrate much more of her time to the Spanish refuges and kennels, sorting out all the complicated movements of galgos between refuges, kennels and homing groups. So we enlisted Tracey early in 2007 and she has got a good grip on the office work, especially the important merchandise. Martin and new Trustee Terry are working hard to fill the gap left by the sad death of Arthur, and I am looking forward to getting back to full health to sit at the Treasurer’s desk and keep Lurchy awake, alert and amused, especially when my doctors allow me to add bacon sandwiches to my diet.                                                                                                                                                               Geoffrey     3 Drawing by Monica Monti