Monday, 12 March 2007

A long long day that began with a very pleasant Networking Lunch at St Thomas’s Hall. The meeting was well attended by groups such as the Orbit Short Mat Bowls Club, Watford Senior Citizens Forum, Watford Library, Age Concern. Mencap, and so on. We enjoyed a good presentation on the Lottery Heritage Fund, a nice spread courtesy of Margaret Sutton (one of my trustees) and Sue (how will we cope when she’s gone?).

The meeting also included a few words from me, a brief presentation on Connexions from Des Reid (newly returned from the Caribbean) and a quick speech from the Orbit Short Mat Bowls Club about the possible closure of local Community Centres.

I returned to the office about 2:00 and spent an hour with Saud Hafiz who started work with us today as our third Connexions Personal Advisor: it is a relief to finally have him on board after waiting so long for the CRB to produce his clearance. I also had a talk with Sha-Lee about changes at WCVS.

About 4:00 pm I finally started work on the interim Value and Volumes report. With one or two further interruptions, I finally finished the report about 10:00 pm. This has been one of the thorns in my side over the past few weeks. It is good to finally get the report completed. I’ve sent it to Herts CVS colleagues and hope to have it presented at next week’s meeting of the Hertfordshire Infastructure Consortium.

I spent a further hour at the office sending out invites to the 29 March Minority Ethnic Forum before I collected my papers and left the office at about 11:45 pm.

Thank heavens I am working at home tomorrow. Tomorrow I hope to finalise our draft 2007-08 budget (another major deadline that’s looming) and read through papers for Wednesday’s Herts CVS meeting.