Leaving Di to the normal school panic with the girls on a bitterly cold day, I developed and copied my Heronshaw plans for Steve Bloom and Nigel to discuss with contractors and met them both accordingly.
Then to prepare for two District Council meetings on Local Government Reorganisation. Good news from New Zealand where the England cricket team have won the first Test.
The normal helter-skelter of a school day and I tried to stay out of the last-minute panics as Diana got the girls ready. She is taking both Debbie and Della to school in the cold and icy weather, particularly as Debbie has had a cold and she has to take Della anyway. I sat and read the national newspapers for once and then resumed work in my office at 9.00am which I am trying to establish as a routine. Then a hurry to prepare and copy my Heronshaw plans for Steven Bloom who was collecting them to take to show his friend Derek who owns a wood-machining firm in Norwich.
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I extracted the drawings for the new boat-house alone and modified them to show the proper elevations of the dormer windows and then slightly extended the length of the boat-house at the expense of the walkway as it was marginally too short to accommodate the boat. I was able to sketch in some storage for the upper level as well which I intend to add for the future. Once Steven was gone, I had some building society administration to do and then rushed into town after lunch to execute the necessary transactions. I met Nigel there who was full of his success in employing a chef to cook breakfast and dinner. He is finding that there had been a sea-change in availability of people out of work at the job centre; probably as a result of the homelessness and unemployment. Nigel also had a copy of the plans to get some boat-house designs and costs from Potton Timber.
More administration in the afternoon and then my last-minute preparation for two District Council meetings. The first was a special meeting of the Policy Committee where the subjects of tendering and local government reorganisation were two contentious issues. On the latter, we resolved the recommendation that the new unitary authority for the area should be based on the old county boundary of Huntingdonshire but I added reservations along the lines of us needing to co-operate with other authorities to establish larger bodies as Police and Educational Authorities and the like.
Equally, I wanted more scope for Town and Parish Councils to undertake local decision-making for as many issues as possible. It was agreed that there be a series of four meetings to liaise with Town and Parish Councils and that the District Council would be represented by the senior Tories, the Labour leader and myself to field comments. Home quite satisfied to have managed in the absence of Michael at the meeting and its preceding working parties. Another bitterly cold day but good news from New Zealand where the England cricket team have won the first Test.