Top dressing the games lawn with gardener Pete’s help on a fine day and then preparing for this evening’s Leisure and Amenities Committee meeting to present my grass-cutting proposals which I then attended until very late even though the Tories moved a counter-proposal and declined to increase cuts from 10 to 15 per year
A sound night’s sleep and timely start to the day. The fine weather continued and I was determined to get out and continue top dressing the riverside games lawns. Pete was not arriving until mid-morning and so I worked on my financial affairs first – preparing to building society accounts and the three children’s trust saving accounts for in-payments. The sun was out again by the time I joined Pete after lunch and he had mixed a large heap of top dressing, using sand and loan from our past excavations and compacted Irish moss peat. The builders did not come today, but I had a rather worrying ‘disclaimer’ letter from HDC building control office disclaiming responsibility as we had started work prior to the plans being passed for building regulations purposes. I spread around ten barrow-fulls of top dressing on the riverside lawns by the summerhouse this afternoon and this only represented some half of the area! Still it was a good job well done and it took me until 4pm. After the hard, mechanical raking and top dressing, I am looking forward to the lawn being rejuvenated, better conditioned and with a much softer turf.
I must be raising the level a little as well with all this extra material. At about teatime, I had rewritten my brief for this evening’s council committee meeting when I had two visitors in short succession which somewhat put my plans under stress. Still managed to get shaved, changed and out to be early arriving for my invitation to attend the Leisure and Amenities Committee meeting at Pathfinder House. I was to speak in explanation of my grass cutting motion and understood that they also had the right of reply at the end, but it was not allowed. There is so much interpretation at stake in the standing orders and even the officers do not seem able to agree still got my points across but only one Tory joined the Independent Labour councillor in supporting me; against the counter-proposals of the Tory deputy leader. It turned out to be a very late evening, with its pedestrian discussion on a range of budgeting and leisure proposals, and then I could not get home until midnight which is a big strain for members of the committee. On a similar occasion, I will move the adjournment of a committee to test the water. The result was that they again supported the idea of combining grass cutting under a single authority but would not support the increasing grass cutting from 10 to 15 per year, which is a pity. This despite the Director of Technical Services recommending in favour of my proposed improvement.