Missed opportunity 1:
I think there was a reunion in Essex for my old school. Since its more than 25 years since I left school it would have been fun catching up with everything. Mind you, J always gets paranoid that I will cop off with an old schoolfriend, and with the stories in the news this week about Friends Reunited fuelling a surge in divorces she would have been even more panicky so probably just as well I stayed home.

Missed opportunity 2:
I got a text message this afternoon from Chris, who I used to work with at London Underground. He said he was in Walthamstow (where he lives) watching a free show by Natacha Atlas and Transglobal Underground. Would have been nice if he had told me early enough for me to go up there – I really like Natacha Atlas.

I shall have to make sure I actually remember to go up to London next weekend for the free showing of Battleship Potemkin in Trafalgar Square with the Pet Shop Boys performing the soundtrack live. Should be interesting if nothing else.

What I actually did do today was spend more than three hours in the community centre, going over the accounts! With the centre’s manager being off a lot and all sorts of other things (like thinking we had found another treasurer) I haven’t had a good look at them for months so there was a lot of catching up to do. I need to get everything in order for Tuesday as we have a meeting with the trustees. While I was there I opened up the hall for an Indian family who had hired it for a kid’s birthday party. When I returned in the evening to lock up it was so different to last week’s booking where the hall was trashed. These people today even brought their own vacuum cleaner so they could clean the place properly after them. When I got there at 8pm they were just finishing and the hall was cleaner than when they got there.

After doing all the mundane book-keeping stuff in the center – reconciling to bank accounts, checking petty cash vouchers and the like, I brought home the summaries to bung into my mega-spreadsheet. I set up all sorts of new formats, changed the ranges for the charts, and made a start on putting together a budget for next year and the year after. Our grant application has to be finished by the end of the month and it needs two years’ budgets in it as it is for a two-year grant. I must have spent 5 hours working on community centre stuff today.

At least I don’t have to be up as early as usual tomorrow. I am working from home so I can go off to the dentist in the morning. That should not be such a painful or lengthy visit as last time, but fingers crossed anyway.