Wednesday, 1 August 2007

Lammas Day

I believe Hertfordshire was the last county to enjoy “lammas land” – land that belonged to the manor until lammas day and then became common land for the winter. Don’t quote me: I may have got this horribly wrong.

But I am sure that today is the official centenary of the Scouts. 40,000 Scouts are celebrating at Hylands Park in Essex, and I have learnt that eleven of the twelve people to have visited the moon were scouts. Happy birthday.

Today, I enjoyed a hectic day of meetings. At 10:00 I attended the first meeting of WCVS’s working group on the accommodation needs of the local voluntary sector. This was very productive. I have a few follow-up actions, but these will just have to wait until the audit is completed.

Immediately after, I had a short walk with Marv Renshaw of Inspiral Arts. We looked around the Palace Theatre’s old scenery store, which Inspiral Arts now have ambitious plans to turn into a community arts centre. Frankly, it is difficult to see anything else for which the building could be used. This brings to mind a comment made by Richard Ahrens (of Watford Recycling Arts Project) that the voluntary sector is the goo that seeps into all the areas that other sectors can’t reach. I am pretty sure that Richard put it rather more elegantly.

At 1:00 I met with Jay Gaglani, chair of the Watford One World Forum and then at 2:00 I met with Huywaydah Malik of the Muslim Awareness Forum to discuss the December networking lunch. Then at 4:00 I had a long telephone conversation with Tim Allard (of Space East) who is concerned to ensure that the broader supported housing sector receives adequate infrastructure support.

Between all these things, I managed to make only slow progress on the accounts. Maybe tomorrow.

In the evening, Jackie and I enjoyed another lovely walk.