That Friday feeling

It's Tuesday and already it feels like it must surely be the weekend! However, hard as I've been working, it's been the kind of work I love doing so I will refrain from complaining. Yesterday, Monday I visited Barlanark Community Health Shop and we had a chat about their funding challenges. It would be such a huge problem for the area if they were to lose their funding but my prediction is that over the next few years there will be more and more vital services disappearing. It would be short sighted however because organisations like this do so much to prevent further (and more expensive) problems down the line. We agreed some things I'm going to look into and I'm really looking forward to doing all I can to support them.

Next I went to see The Pavilion in Easterhouse, a community hall that provides learning support and youth groups. Wait till you hear this. They just happened to mention in passing that the football pitches next to them are not theirs but somehow they've been paying the electricity for ten years! It's all to do with the switch being in their building. So what? They're not their pitches, why on earth should they have to use their very small grants to pay for something that's nothing to do with them? That's what I'll be asking Glasgow Life when I speak to them later in the week!

Quick meeting with David who works for me one day a week after that. I only had 20 minutes and couldn't find a parking space so we ended up having the meeting in the car and moving every time we spotted a traffic warden!

I then handed in my tax returns, patted myself on the back for getting them in "early" ie before 5pm on the deadline) and nipped down to my mum's in Gourock for 2 hours to go over some of the basics of a laptop. I had promised to do it on Sunday but had to work so this was me making up for it.

The day finished off with a campaign worknight delivering supporter letters. I got home about 9.30pm with just enough time to do the dishes, eat my tea and set the alarm for 6am.

Tuesday 6am ...

No of course I didn't get up. I woke up. Forgot why I wanted to get up early and lay there pondering it on and off for the next 90 minutes!

Today I had a brilliant meeting with a group of women in the East End of Glasgow. I won't go into detail just now because I wouldn't be able to do it justice. But it let me see that sometimes people and communities really are just completely forgotten about. Myself and Michael who works with me were horrified by what we learned this morning.

So we spent the next few hours on the phone and firing off letters demanding action. I NEVER demand, I always (politely and sometimes firmly) ask but I never DEMAND. Today however I was so angry with the way these families were being treated that I just had to stand up for them.

The rest of the day was spent going over mail in the office, writing more letters, speaking to the other guys in the office about what they're working on.

At 5.30pm I went to the demo in George Square to support the people of Egypt. It was a really good demo, great speakers and felt good to be a tiny little part of something exciting happening in the world. I hope the people of Egypt get what they want and that is democracy, something we all take for granted.

Anyway I got home frozen to the marrow about 7pm only to discover that I'd left my house keys in the office. Problem was, the house keys are on the same bunch as the office keys so I couldn't get in. I had to drive over to one of my colleagues, borrow his keys, anyway you get the picture. I got home at 8.30pm, wrote a speech for the Forced Marriages debate tomorrow, watched Eastenders, did more dishes and now I'm blogging before going to bed.

You can see why i'm thinking it's weekend time shortly!