A week in my life

Many newspapers and magazines run features in which they allow individuals to recount 24 hours or a week in their lives. It is something I have been contemplating for this blog for a while now and I thought – why not do it for the period around the St Piran celebrations (5th – 12th March).

This year, I did not get to attend the traditional St Piran’s Day march in Truro because, as is so often the norm, I was at Restormel Borough Council attending a series of meetings on planning-related matters. I did get to work in the afternoon and spent much of the evening on the telephone and catching up with paperwork.

On Thursday, I managed a full day at work and spent the evening at more meetings. At 5 o’clock, I attended a meeting of Governors at Summercourt Primary School before moving onto a meeting at St Dennis where local residents had got together with a small number of councillors to discuss the County Council’s forthcoming application for an incinerator to be built in their area.

Friday was also hectic. It was work in the morning, followed by the first meeting of the ‘Local Development Framework (LDF) – Member Group.’ Due to the forthcoming imposition of a unitary authority on Cornwall, the six district councils are unable to progress new planning policies and this new panel has been set up to ‘advise’ the Implementation Executive and take forward aspects of the work necessary to produce a Core Strategy for a Cornwall-wide LDF. I am Restormel’s representative on this group and found the first meeting to be quite frustrating. I was even on the losing side of a vote when we suggested that the meeting be held in public. A single Lib Dem and I voted for open meetings which was opposed by two Liberal Democrats and three Conservatives. One independent abstained.

In the evening, I attended a gathering at Truro Museum where a group of Truro College students had prepared an exhibition of artefacts from the excavation at Glasney College, Penryn, which I had carried out in 2003. The presentation is still there in the Museum and is worth viewing. Entrance to the Museum is free.

By this point, I was very glad to get home and light the fire and then share a bottle of wine with my wife Ann.