Wednesday, 6 December 2006

I must try it more often

I slept late this morning and arrived at the office only at 9:30. I felt very much refreshed after a decent night’s sleep: I must try it more often.

There were of course still computer issues to resolve. Angelo and I agreed a list of priorities. My number one priority was to get Sue’s PC back up and running, but it frustrated me at every turn. Eventually, I abandoned the wireless connection and cabled Sue’s computer directly to the server – and finally it began to install the networked software.

At lunchtime I had a call from my son Bobby, who told me he was spending Christmas with his relatives in America. I was rather gutted, but he’s old enough now to make his own decisions.

Hertfordshire Compact

In the afternoon, WCVS hosted a meeting of the Hertfordshire Compact group. Attendance was sparse and the group’s two key members had sent apologies so we had no report from Ann (my counterpart in Stevenage CVS and the voluntary sector representative on the Hertfordshire Forward planning group) or from Andrew (Hertfordshire County Council’s chief link officer with the voluntary sector and all-round good chap). There were only two statutory sector representatives from LSC and HCC. I must talk with Watford Borough Council to make sure they are aware of these meetings.

Reaching communities, reaching deadlines

After this, I met with Vanessa and Anne to discuss our application to the Big Lottery’s Reaching Communities fund. The final deadline for our application is this Friday – two day’s left!

Vanessa and Anne have done a really splendid job getting the application into focus, but there is still some work to do. We settled on a plan of sorts, working around the outstanding network problems, and then got to work. Anne stayed late making final adjustments to the project budget while I worked on the supporting documentation.

I finally left the office around 9:00 pm, satisfied that the remaining bits of the application could be completed on Thursday.