Sunday, 26 November 2006

Reading in the digital age

Part of the day I spent completing my mammoth trawl through a database of Watford’s “989 community organisations”. This figure comes from data compiled earlier this year for Herts CVSs, and is a good start to assessing the contribution of the voluntary sector to local life. But many of the organisations are duplicated, defunct, merged, outside Watford, or nothing to do with the voluntary sector at all. And some local voluntary organisations aren’t included. There is still a lot of work to do before we can state with confidence what the contribution of the voluntary sector actually is. However, I completed our initial trawl through the baseline data, and am now ready to meet with Sha-Lee tomorrow to brief her on the next stage.

I also found time to prepare a letter to the Third Sector magazine about their recent article on the Herts Compact.

I finished reading My father and other working-class football heroes, a personal and revealing look at the football industry in the 1950s and ‘60s. Having read a fair amount of lightweight books recently (including Tony Hawks’s One hit wonderland and even an offering from Jeremy Clarkson) I wanted something a bit meatier, so I began Gutenberg elegies by Sven Birkets - an exploration of the fate of writing and reading in the digital age. But within a very few pages my reliable b*llsh*t radar was bleeping loudly ("it was Virginia Woolf who got me thinking about thinking again"). One day I may give myself a second chance with Mr Birkets, but for now we have parted company. Instead I took up The idea of North by Peter Davidson, a historical study of the concept of north in society, art and literature. Maybe this will prove more satisfying.

The evening was spent in quiet repose with Jackie watching a recording of Foyle’s War. Bliss.