Thursday, January 29, 2009

Back into full swing

Yesterday was so full, it was a kind of fitness test after the 'flu. First a school assembly on St Paul at Tredegarville, followed by the Year 4 'Class Mass' at St German's, as Roy being on holiday at the moment. Then a quick trip home to park the car, check emails and drink tea before going into St John's for the midday Eucharist. Then, after lunch, a meeting with colleagues at Deanery Chapter in Roath Parish House for a couple of hours of catching up on local church affairs.

Then, a late afternoon meeting down the Bay with Mike & Paula of the Council's HANR team, to report on the last Street Carers' meeting and discuss the draft of a Term of Reference for a future Forum which will assemble volunteer and professional Street Carers in an effort to move in the direction of a real partnership in meeting the needs of people who are either 'insecurely housed' or sleeping rough in the city. The former group is many times larger than the latter, and comprises all those who either because of their poverty or personal insecurity have no safe title to accommodation of their own. I have high hopes that patient dialogue will result in a boost in the capability of all involved to address matters which, in the present economic climate, are only likely to get worse. Finally, a mercifully short early evening meeting of the City Planning's Local Conservation Consultative Group, to take a look at recent proposals submitted for the city centre area, and consider their impact upon the environment - generally a stimulating meeting, seeing the townscape through the eyes of the professionals.

After supper, a few hours to catch up. First further revision of the Terms of Reference, then the creation of a new blog to record the development of voluntary Street Carers collaboration with the professionals. This meant extracting material from my 'edgeofthecentre' blog and editing it to make it fit for purpose, then posting it tot he web in a suitably new format. I'm quite pleased with the result, although it was a rather fiddly task, once the Google spam sniffing software decided that my efforts were suspect and required vetting. This was probably due to my back-dating all the posts except the most recent one - and the first post in the series originated with a piece I wrote over two years ago. It meant that every edit, and every entry posted had to be verified by typing a 'captcha', some of which were hardly legible. I must have done it a score of times for just seven posts, which slowed me up no end, so it was midnight when I logged off and turned in. I don't think I could do too many days in a week as intensive as this one any longer. Age is catching up on me, or catching me out.

You can view the blog and follow the story here in 'Cardiff Street Care Chronicle'

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