Bad Days, Good Days.

Yesterday started well enough. A nice run along the river to Malpas, in the Cornish sunshine, what better way to start the day?. Then pay a few bills, not fun but necessary and off to a meeting to discuss negotiations for the new Unitary Council. That's when things started to go downhill. A really grim meeting. The gulf between District Councillors and County Councillors is huge and a great deal of bitterness exists. It doesn't help that County hoards information and can't bear to tell anyone anything. A nice guy had come down from Portsmouth to give us the benefit of his experience, he's been involved in setting up and running Unitary's, but all he got was moaning and scepticism. It was annoying, when he told us the elections would be in May 2008. Last week we were told by a source in County May 2009. Who knows what's going on. All I know is that it's going to be a struggle to get right and we need to start working now.

And then the Planning Committee. Carrick send an agenda several days in advance, at a cost of about £4 for postage. Its a couple of hundred pages, but its got to be read. Its important to the people involved. But several of the Condependant ( conservatives calling themselves independents) like to keep it all as a surprise for the night. So they constantly ask questions and the Officers patiently answer 'that's covered on page 126' or whatever. It means a 2 hour meeting stretches to 3 hours while they catch up. Perhaps it's me that's the fool for being diligent.

But today's a better day. 3 minutes faster on my run and 3lbs less on the scales. Even better, two mentions in the local papers and a snippet on Radio Cornwall. One was for raising £5000 for Macmillan, in a rally Nick and I did earlier in the year, and the other described how we've found, almost intact, the old stables and parcels office buried within the Railway Club. They've just extended over the years, covering up the old 19th century building with bits of cladding and breeze blocks. But it's still there. The funny bit was that when the Conservation Area was marked out they deliberately left out the Railway Club. But now the County Conservation people are very interested. Which might help in our fight against Wainhomes.

And now my evening meeting has been cancelled, so an evening off when the sun is shining. Oh, and my son did well with his GCSE's, so it'll be Chinese takeaways all round! Best not go near the scales tomorrow.