Thursday, 30 November 2006

Shouldn't servers serve?

Following the ups and downs of yesterday, this morning demanded another early start; I arrived at 7:00 am to find that our server was still failing to reboot properly. I roused Angelo from his bed and we soon decided that the best option was for me to deliver the server to him tonight, and for him to rebuild it over the weekend with two new hard drives. So my journey home tonight will be via South Mimms service station. Meanwhile, we managed at least to get internet access, but there is still no e-mail or access to shared services.

My day proper began with communicating this news to staff, already under some pressures. Everyone takes the news well; although it is difficult to tell whether this is from professional understanding, philosophical stoicism or mere resignation.

After this I went for a coffee with Helen to talk through future plans for the Volunteer Centre. We had a very helpful and interesting talk.

On returning to the office, I spoke with colleagues at Three Rivers CVS and then with Alan, new chair of the Sunflower project, about the 8 December meeting on the future of the project. It looks like the meeting will be extremely busy.

Fundraising

I next spent some time with Anne, our fundraising advisor, who is deluged with requests for support. She has developed an excellent client list including the Watford Hindu Group, the Dolphina Gymnasium, Woodside Community Motorcycle Club, Playskill, the Jets Table Tennis Club and the Orbit Bowls Club. These are exactly the sort of groups we should be targeting for support. But Anne’s very proper concern is that some of these groups have no prior experience of fundraising and often need support getting basic documentation together such as constitutions, diversity policies, childcare policies, and so on. I agreed with Anne that this developmental support should properly be delivered by myself or Vanessa. The three of us will need to meet soon to establish a proper structure for providing fundraising support so that organisations receive the best possible service, and we make the most use of everyone’s time.

Westfield School

After this, I hurried off with Farzana to meet staff at Westfield School. This is the first time I have seen Farzana in a “live” meeting, and she handled herself very capably. My confidence in her grew accordingly, and back at the office I told her so. Meanwhile, Helen was delivering a workshop for future volunteers: there were about fifteen people present engaged in some animated discussions and activities.

Coffee and home

At 4:30, I was visited by Mary from neighbouring Three Rivers CVS, and we went for a coffee. We talked through several matters of mutual interest, including our joint training programme, the Sunflower Centre, WBC funding for the West Watford Community Centre (where Mary is the new Chair of trustees), bids to the Big Lottery, and elderly domestic cats. When we finished talking at 5:30 and I was startled to discover that four coffees had cost us £12.

Back in the office, I completed some paperwork, loaded the server in the car and left about 7:00 to deliver the server to Angelo in Walthamstow. From Watford to Walthamstow I listened to Johnny Walker’s C&W show, and from Walthamstow to WGC I listed to R4 programmes about philanthropy, higher education and space.

I arrived home around 10:00 to discover that our delightful neighbour Kathy had put up her spectacular Christmas decorations: environmentally unfriendly, too American, too gaudy and too early. But they did make me smile. At home, I first called my dear old Mum who underwent a minor operation earlier in the day: she was uncomfortable but recovering well. Jackie was meanwhile rather distressed about the various problems of our various kids. Not reports-in-the-newspaper or drug-and-alcohol sort of problems, more the oh-no-they-didn’t-did-they sort of problem. One result is that our precious Friday night will this week be taken up baby-sitting our wonderful-at-any-other-time-of-the-week grand-daughter Bethany. Jackie and I talk through everything and finally got to bed around midnight. Kids, eh?