Thursday, 15 March 2007

During my two-day absence from the office, everything has started piling up again. I went through eight-nine e-mails and left little red flags on thirty of them that require considered responses. I now have forty-five little red flags in my mail box.

I also had messages that 4-5 people needed to talk to me. Three of these turned into long discussions and two will require follow-up meetings.

In the middle of the day, I went to Hemel Hemstead to introduce Saud (our new member of staff) to Mohamed Fawzi at Connexions. When I returned to Watford, I met with Sarah Pinnock to discuss some issues of mutual frustration and then we both went to attend the WBC meeting to take decisions on the one year funding programme. I attended to offer some "specialist knowledge" and to act as an observer. In this latter role, I felt able to make several observations.

I returned to the office at 5:00, and finally left about 5:45, fully intending to travel to County Hall in Hertford to join the annual gathering for the Hertfordshire Community Foundation. But the traffic was bad and I would not have arrived until nearly seven and as the event had started at 5:00 ... I decided I would instead go straight home. After all, tomorrow will need an early start.

In the evening, I re-read Orwell’s “The Decline of the English Murder and Other Essays”. Splended stuff. Although he was rather unkind to Kipling – did Orwell not know that Kipling lost a son in the Great War?