Wednesday, 31 October 2007

Another long day. I arrived at the office just as the 9:00 pips were sounding which gave me a rather childish pleasure. And there was a little flurry of e-mails following up discussions begun at yesterday’s HIC meeting.

Community networking

At lunchtime, Maria and I travelled to the North Watford Mosque to discuss arrangements for the 3 December community networking lunch. This was my first visit to the Mosque and I found it extremely interesting.

This is the largest purpose-built mosque in Hertfordshire and bears some resemblance to a defensive fort or at least to a stockade. The mosque is surrounded by a tall security fence and a significant proportion of the windows have been shattered - I gave up counting when I reached thirty.

According to the National Audit Office, Watford has a good level of social cohesion, with a high percentage of people believing that people of different backgrounds get on well: the broken windows at the North Watford Mosque tell a different story. What does it say about us as a community, that one of our major faith groups has to meet and worship behind a security fence under a state of siege?

Maria and I were there to promote networking as a way of breaking down barriers and improving communications. Having been the victims of so much violence and vandalism, the Muslim community well understand the need for improved networking and communication. Far from being cowed, or apologetic, or aggressive, the Muslim community leaders we met with were eager to share and communicate with the wider community. I was reminded of Martin Luther’s supposed summary to the Diet of Worms: “Here I stand, I can do no other”.

Maria and I returned to the office by mid-afternoon, having made good progress on arrangements for 3 December. Now we must start promoting the event!

Some jobs jobbed

But meanwhile, I had some major jobs to get out of the way. Maria had prepared a final draft of our October newsletter, and I had to proof this, and then distribute it to our 550-strong mailing list.

I took a short time out to try and implement the e-bulletin format prepared for us by the inestimable Steph at HIC. The format is fine, but it is designed for shorter more regular newsletters, and at present we do not have the systems in place to support this. So meanwhile we will circulate our newsletter as a pdf document.

Three months ago when we last used this mailing list, we found that more than 80 of the 550 e-mail addresses were no longer in use. So I needed to refresh our list. And as we are still waiting for the go-ahead for new software, this had to be done manually. And I also had to add to the list around 40 changed or new e-mail addresses. It was quite late before I finally dispatched the newsletter.

Then I had to prepare and send out papers for next week’s trustees meeting. Although a lot was already prepared (agenda, financial figures, complaints policy), several other papers still had to be written. By the time I had done these, it was really quite late. My timing wasn’t helped by several software failures and crashes - oh for some new hardware! The papers were e-mailed out around midnight.

Then I had to get out papers for the Accommodation working group meeting. This took perhaps another hour.

After a fourteen hour day, I finally left the office at 1:00 in the morning. Aren’t there laws about this sort of thing? Anyway, I actually felt pretty good having ticked off so many tasks, and it was a wonderful cold and foggy Halloween night for the drive home.