A busy - and ultimately warm! - Thursday

I had to get up early today to be dressed and decent on the off-chance the BG engineers actually turned up at 8am to mend my boiler. They gave me a 8am-12pm slot and of course although you know very well they wont come at 8am, they just might, and you cannot in all conscience answer the door in your dressing gown. So I was downstairs, dressed in a t-shirt, two jumpers and a cardigan, a scarf, trousers, socks, leg warmers, shoes and a blanket and my coat, from 8am, reading my book on the sofa and logging on to the lap-top.

They came at about 11am - isn't it always the way?

And they mended it in about five minutes, it just needed more water into the system, isn't that always the way too?

At 12.30 I met a constituent who has been unwittingly poisoned by CO for many years by his RSL and drove him to Manchester for a medical examination with a professional that has been retained by his solicitor. I am not very familiar with the roads in Manchester so it was a good job I allowed twice as much time as we needed, because we drove up and down and round Deansgate for about half an hour!

Then I got back just a few minutes late for our monthly Phythian surgery (one of 10 we do each month) and chatted with one resident who is living in her own property, that she brought from the council, on the estate, about her potential involvement in the Decent Homes Standards plans for homes in the area who have gone over to Liverpool Mutual Homes as part of stock-transer.

Then Wendy and I had a long discussion with one of our Neighbourhood Officers who had come to join us. We discussed how we are progressing with the myriad projects and schemes we are supporting through our Working Neighbourhood Fund, one of which was a special policing operation to tackle drug dealing by a named individual at a particular address who was operating in a particular area and making his neighbours lives a misery. We had provided a lot of the intelligence.

While we were together the call came through that the door had gone in, the search was underway and some drugs had already been found and the person concerned had been arrested. Great news. Forgive my necessary vagueness. I will let you know more after he has (surely) been convicted.

We reckon to have £5k of our funds still to spend, after supporting a few dozen projects, all different kinds of thing, and I will blog seperately about how we spent our monies once the year is over. Lots of it was about activities for children and young people as well as necessary works in terms of crime, anti-social behaviour and environmental improvements.

We have about 6 weeks to spend this last part, so we are going to get our heads together to agree something really special to conclude the year.

I came home to a really warm house, stripped off about five layers and feel very human again, great!