Tuesday, 17 July 2007

This morning I drove to Stevenage for a meeting of the Hertfordshire Infrastructure Consortium. This consortium currently has a real sense of purpose. All very encouraging.

During the meeting I managed a brief chat with Ann Jansz about Stevenage CVS’s AGM on Thursday where I will speak on the Value and Volumes study. I also asked Ann if she would come to our AGM to speak about the Local Area Agreement. No disrespect to Ann, but obviously we will need to think of a snappier title.

I spent some time with Maria organising what needs to happen before she goes on leave this Friday. We made arrangements about newsletters and networking lunches, Thursday’s trustees’ meeting and September’s AGM.

Then I joined Vanessa at a meeting of the Watford Disability Forum at Beechen Grove Baptist Church. Members unanimously want to retain WCVS support but also feel the Forum should have a stronger identify of its own, rather than simply being a Forum run by WCVS. I think this is good and I will arrange for a small working group from the Forum to meet with myself, She-Lee (who is good on marketing and design) and Maria (who can advise on a Forum website) to discuss options for raising the Forum's profile.

I returned to the office about 4:30 pm and called the Disability Law Service. Tomorrow I am meant to be at a trustees meeting but with everything happening at WCVS I just can’t afford to be in London tomorrow evening. Linda was very understanding.

I worked on our Basis business plan until about 7:30 when I headed off for home. Jackie and I managed to spend at least a few hours together. Yesterday I mused on the benefits of working with good people at WCVS. But of course Jackie doesn’t see any of that. She just knows I am not home in the evenings. I will focus on restoring some Work-Life balance. Just as soon as this Basis business plan is completed. And the audit.

Tomorrow we have our Investors in People assessment. With everything else going on, I've probably not given this the attention is deserves. But fundamentally things are very good here - and the worst that can happen is that we have to have a second visit.