Monday, 23 July 2007

I suffered a bad start to the day. Jackie (light of my life) was unwell and off work and this morning’s traffic was appalling.

At the office, Helen and Vanessa had been in over the weekend to sweep away the water and check the flood damage. What stars!

For me, it was a day of bits and pieces, but always with our Basis application somewhere close to hand. At the moment, non-Basis matters are far more interesting: I now have 78 e-mails or tasks bearing little red flags demanding action. But today, only a few managed to barge Basis out of the way long enough to take my attention.

The wonderful people at Watford Palace Theatre have offered our volunteers free tickets to see their production of Tin-Tin. Laura (our Voluntary Transport co-ordinator) is receiving requests. And I followed up discussions about the new Common Assessment Framework for groups working with children and youth. And I arranged a performance review meeting with Louise Jones of Connexions, did some organising for our September AGM, updated our website (Maria is on leave), spoke with a few colleagues about Compact, and ferried a few e-mails onward for other people to deal with.

But mostly of course I worked on our Basis application. Anne (Funding Advisor) and Vanessa (Development and Training Officer) had done a brilliant job proof-reading the cross-checking my work of last week. I double checked their work and then made a few corrections to figures and text, and at 3:00 pm we had a final meeting together to address 4-5 outstanding issues. We resolved these and at about 5:00 pm I started printing a final draft of the plan. Hurray and Hurrah!

Driving out of Watford was no easier than driving in. It took me more than an hour to get to Barnet to meet Bobby. At home, Jackie was still unwell with labyrinthitis; appropriately one of the better-named conditions. This was only a small consolation to Jackie, but as I pointed out, every little helps.