After tending to Sam, liaising with Di and the gardener before seeing the girls off to school, the making drive to Horning for a meeting with Andrew Hind of Ekins to discuss changing my NNDC planning conditions.
The evening walking Sam, planning to fit spare units in my Harnser ‘larder’ and making calls home to Di and then to arrange working visits for Daniel and Steve later in the week.
I arranged to get up even earlier than usual, having also packed up most of my things the night before. Time to load much of the gear on to the Range Rover before breakfast so that I could go out and start to disinfect the kennel before the girls set off for the school bus. I walked Sam with the girls and was pleased to see that they were both quite happy and relaxed this morning for once. Even though the other children were shivering without coats and looking thoroughly miserable, our girls were warm in theirs and happy and I was glad. Half an hour to finish getting ready and then I set off before 9.00am and the arrival of the gardener.
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I had arranged for Diana to get some more ballast and cement for the path and also left Bill a long list of other jobs so that for once he will have a busy time! The drive to Horning without stopping and was soon at Harnser, having a while for lunch and a walk before Andrew Hinds of Ekins arrived. I was relieved to see everything was all right as there had been some big storms and flooding around East Anglia with sea defences breached for the first time in a few years. Andrew stayed for two hours and a long chat about the background to my problem of the planning conditions and left me with a proposal which I undertook to discuss with the other trustees and decide upon.
Then telephone calls with Gerard Chadwick and Chris Evans followed and, subject to the agreement of Roger Brittain, we will go with Ekins. For 5 hours at £60 per hour and a total of £300 plus VAT, Ekins will make the application to appeal and then set up a meeting with the Broads Authority planners to discuss another application to vary the conditions whilst the appeal against those conditions is held in abeyance. We feel that this will have the desired effect but, in any event, this would only help us in any subsequent appeal if we had to go through with it. The alternative of Taylor-Vinters handling the appeal would cost £125 per hour for two hours just to lodge the appeal and they have so far shown a poor touch in planning matters.
A little time shopping in Wroxham at Roys for groceries and I brought back some fried plaice for my tea to be able to get out with Sam quickly again. The evening measuring the larder and finally working out a method of fitting it out with surplus kitchen units so to increase our storage space. The day had been cold with snow showers and Sam had coped quite well with all the travel and disturbance. Telephone calls home as well to talk to Diana and the girls and then one to Daniel to make arrangements for him to come over for more work on his speedboat on Wednesday. Also another to Steven Bloom who will be coming to look at the Paxton Princess hydraulic job on Thursday.