dale lane

I took Grace for a walk this morning, so that my wife could have a lie in. Was fun, but wow it’s cold!

This isn’t really something new that I learned today, but tonight did reinforce it for me so I thought it was worth mentioning.

Tonight was the Solent Youth Action Annual Awards Evening – our chance to reward the efforts of the volunteers that we support. In it, we try to recognise as many individuals as possible, while reflecting on the wide variety of activity that takes place over the year. And it was inspiring to see.

The evening was a mixture of entertainment, awards presentations and guest speeches. The entertainments were all demonstrations of some of the volunteering that young people have been doing, and I hope that we challenged a few preconceptions about ‘what is volunteering’ with these. For example, with the rock band of students from Mountbatten School. On the face of it, some might not see being in a band as volunteering, but musicians who play fundraising gigs to raise money for charity, provide free entertainment at charity and community events, and teach some of their skills to younger kids, are making a positive contribution to their community. This is volunteering.

(more…)

Went for a drink last night and the barman mentioned that Guinness is now brewed only in Dublin. Not sure I could really taste a difference, but I suppose it’s cute from a brand identity point of view?

Grace (my two-year old daughter) started in the “transition room” at nursery today – a room for slightly older toddlers.

One of the more interesting differences from the babies room is that each of the kids has a little credit-card-style card with their name and photo on. It’s used in a variety of ways – like doing the attendance register in the morning by getting the kids to hand in their card. Or at morning break, when the kids use the cards to “buy” their snack.

Grace loved her new card – she looked really proud of her little card with her face on. And she really got into the “shopping!” idea of needing it to get her snack. I can see how it’s a nice easy way to keep track of which kids have had theirs, and make sure that noone gets left out… but I cant help wondering if I should worry about how quickly my daughter is taking to the idea of credit cards? 🙂

Drove past a roadside census on the drive home this evening. They had a taxi-rank-style lane set up to the side of the road, and were pulling over (presumably a random sample of) cars into it, so people in natty flourescent-yellow jackets could ask questions.

Despite my best Jedi-mind-trick efforts to will them to me, I wasn’t chosen, and so didn’t get to find out what they were asking about. (Actually, I was even sadder than that – got to the roundabout at the end of the road and went back past them for another try… And still they ignored me! :-))

(more…)