Thursday, 9 August 2007

My son Bobby returned from America, stayed the night and was gone again: international man of mystery.

My focus at the moment is on leaving things as stable as possible when I go on leave from 17 August. This means ensuring that staff feel comfortable with their work, understand the nature of various deadlines, understand the range of outcomes that are possible – and how welcome they are, and have the confidence to deal with these things.

Several other staff will also be absent while I am away, so an awful lot will rest on the shoulders of those who remain. Particularly on the tender shoulders of Maria Waszkis, our Office Co-ordinator. I spent a large part of the day with Maria talking through what she needs to do in relation to our 5 September One World forum meeting, our 7 September AGM, our 10 September Networking Lunch and our 14 September trip to the theatre. This is an important cycle of meetings and it is important that we get a good turn out for each event. By the time I return to work on 3 September, it will be too late for me to influence things. So Maria has to chase up attendance etc. I also spent time showing Maria our accounts system. I am very impressed with how quickly she understands things.

In the afternoon, I called Mary Green of Three Rivers CVS who has been absent from work for a while. She is coping ok and I was as supportive as I could be.

On leaving work I took cheques to be signed by Pam Handley. She kindly showed me the chickens she keeps in her back garden. It is a nice coincidence that only last week Jackie and I discussed the possibility of keeping chickens in our back garden.