Monday, 11 December 2006

Taking stock

Reviewing my efforts of the previous week, I find I spent 74 hours working and a further 10 hours travelling to and from work. During this time I worked as a furniture shifter, IT technician, meetings chair, fundraiser, press officer, driver, manager, contract negotiator, trainer, strategic planner, business consultant, and a few other things beside. Of course it was a very exceptional week, with all manner to things piling up and coming to a head.

As of last Friday, we have now completed our major application for Reaching Communities funding, we have hosted our Sunflower Centres meeting, and our network is now 99% recovered with only a few remaining problems.

This week, I plan to work reasonable hours. My wonderful partner Jackie insists!

Unless a new emergency arises, I don’t face any major deadlines until the New Year. But of course there are still some things to do before Christmas. There is a bit of follow-up work from the Sunflower Centres meeting, our fundraising advisor Anne has lost some files on the new network, I have a meeting of Herts CVS to prepare for, our Volunteers xmas lunch is on Thursday, out accounts need some attention, there are some PCs to move, I have some meetings with Watford Borough Council, and I need to complete a report on local voluntary sector accommodation. And there’s a few other things. But compared to the difficulties of the past week, this is pedestrian stuff.

OPn my journey to work, I passed a nasty looking accident in Coopers Green Lane involving a car and a van. I was delayed only slightly. Three police cars and an ambulance were in attendance.

I arrived in the office at 9:00 am and worked steadily through the day. I met with several of the staff on different matters, agreed the text of a press release on the Sunflower Centres, and spoke with someone about what might be involved if I agreed to take on the chair of the Herts Infrastructure Consortium.

Alien Ant Farm

My son Bobby arrived from Brighton at about 5:00 and shortly after we left for home. On the drive home, Bobby took control of the music and I was pleased to see (or hear) that he is now listening to some sensible Rock music (Alien Ant Farm and someone whose name I forget). It was a little loud for my taste, but so much better than that appalling rap that always sounds like angry pre-pubescents shouting nursery rhymes above the sound of a pneumatic drill.

On arriving home, I discovered that the car involved in this morning's nasty looking accident was in fact driven by Jackie's brother Steve. He had spent most of the day in hospital but had suffered only bad bruising and a sore neck and no-one else was seriously injured.

Recent reading

Somehow over the past week or so, I have completed Lucky Man (the autobiography of actor and Parkinson’s sufferer Michael J Fox), Rich Cohen’s The Avengers (the extraordinary story of the extraordinary people who ran the Jewish resistance in Poland and Lithuania during the last war), and a book on Alzheimer’s lent me by my mother. I am now tackling Mark Kurlansky’s book The History of Cod which is well-written and surprisingly interesting.