A time for closure

Yesterday, I celebrated the Eucharist at St Catherine's, and afterwards brought home the lovely banner made for me by the Sunday school children last weekend. Evenings this week, when there's nothing to watch on telly, I'm watching a French flic drama series on More Four called 'Detective Cain'. It's unusual in featuring a cop in wheelchair. I was immediately reminded of 'Detective Ironside', a black and white TV series about an American detective in a wheelchair after being paralysed in a shooting. That was back in 1967. There was an American remake in 2013, this time with a black wheelchair user, but I've only just learned about that. Cain works in the Marseilles. He's athletic and quick witted and much of the dialogue is funny. He takes risks, works intuitively and gets results. It's lighter and somewhat more entertaining than other French flic movies I've seen, although the themes are much the same, and just as dark, as in other contemporary crime dramas. Well, it makes a change I guess. 

Today, I celebrated the Eucharist again at St John's, and then after lunch, went into town, to the CBS office, now in the process winding up affairs before closing the business. My task was to sign off the annual financial statement for Cardiff Crime Limited, and formal notification of its winding up for Companies' House. The same procedure will follow for Cardiff Business Safe Limited, almost exactly ten years since it was established by Ashley. I'm sad it came to this conclusion, when the organisation we set up had so much potential, and was innovative in what it achieved. All that has been squandered by our inability to summon enough interest and support for it to run really well, not to mention toxic suspicion and resentment on the part of prominent entrepreneurs and local government officers of the 'not invented here' brigade. You can indeed look a gift horse in the mouth, it seems. 

For me, the past decade was a significant learning experience about the 'back of house' dimension to our shiny new city centre, and about what it does and doesn't take to run an innovative business. It was such a change from my world of work over the past half century, built as it is, around confidence in people's basic honesty, trust and willingness to serve others. Business enterprise also relies on confidence, but laced with competitiveness, ambition, greed, distrust, maintaining appearances, even deceit. Remaining uncompromisingly honest and honourable is a demanding task. I have a much deeper understanding of the world of work after this experience, than when working full time.

 

Supper in Easton

This morning I went to St German's to celebrate Mass. Clare drove me there and then went on by car to the School of Optometry to collect a new pair of specs. It was good to have an opportunity to observe the feast of the Transfiguration a day late, as there wasn't a service I could get to yesterday. Peter gave me a lift into town afterwards and I caught a bus home from there.

There was a letter from HSBC waiting for me in the post when I returned, containing the remaining
balance of the closed Cardiff Crime Limited account in the form of an up to date cheque. This will be used to balance the books, and dissolve CCL, finally owing nothing, and with nothing left over. It was advice from someone who didn't understand the Cardiff RadioNet setup, which led us to believe we needed to establish a 'not for profit' company alongside the business to fund the BCRP business crime manager role. It was a sledgehammer to crack a nut, a waste of time and energy, but at last we have closure, ahead of winding up Cardiff Business Safe.

Late afternoon, Rachel, Clare and I went to Bristol by train, benefiting from a group ticket offer which gave us three tickets for the price of two. Our train stopped in Lawrence Hill station, where Owain met us, as he'd just finished work. The DVSA office is five minutes walk from the station and he lives ten minutes away. He was pleased to have an opportunity to show Rachel his new abode, and for Mum to adjust his curtains, now equipped with blackout material, thanks to her extra efforts.

We'd agreed to go out for a meal together, so we walked a mile from his neighbourhood across to St Mark's Road in Easton, to a recommended Indian diner called Thali, serving an excellent selection of spicy food - not too hot - set out on a tray in small portion dishes, offering a variety of different tastes around one's key dish of choice, whether meat, fish or vegetarian. This way of serving is what is apparently known as a Thali in India. We were delighted with the food we tried, and walking there certainly gave us an appetite.

The restaurant is only a few hundred yards from Stapleton Road station, so it was possible for us to check for a return train time to coincide with finishing the meal and getting back to Cardiff not too late. There wasn't an outbound train stopping there at this time of night, so we had to take an train going into Bristol Temple Meads to pick up a Cardiff train. We were very lucky, as a long distance train bound for Cardiff had just arrived twenty minutes late. Instead of having to wait until nine for the next scheduled train, we were on our way half an hour early, and reached home by ten.

New projects in sight

Yesterday afternoon, after going through the mail and filing or dumping content, I visited the CBS office and met with Ashley, having researched and put together a complete history of events in the life of CBS and the BCRP, for briefing a consultant about the present situation of the company, a story reaching back over twelve years. We have a huge amount of documentation, perhaps because Ashley and I are rather acquisitive, but our file system is somewhat complex and of late, a little disorderly. 

When asked to produce digital versions to support the briefing, I was able to, but it took longer than anticipated. It's all there, but must be hunted for. Search routines can't easily guess file names poorly recalled, so now there's another task to be done, creating, sooner rather than later, an easy access document database tailored for our purposes. I set up an account and used Evernote satisfactorily before, but first have to find the relevant access details. I suspect it's hiding in plain sight in my record of passcodes, not properly labelled.

This morning, Father Mark asked me to celebrate the Eucharist at St John's. It was good to be reunited with nine of the regulars, and tell them a little about Semana Santa in Malaga. Afterwards, a trip to the bank, then to Stavros' next door for a haircut. That was enough really, a certain tiredness engulfed me once I began to relax on arriving home, and just from the demands of early rising and travel. It's not just a matter of adjusting to the hour's time difference either, I seem to live with a different pace and rhythm when I'm away from here. It can take a week or ten days to re-balance. Or else, I'm starting to feel my age.

I also had time to catch up on the first two episodes of 'The Bridge' series four today, plus the first in a new Inspector Montalbano series. It wasn't possible to view any of these on catch-up while in Spain because of digital rights restrictions. Luckily, these time expired episodes were still available before tomorrow evening's third episode of The Bridge.

  

Landmark occasion at CBS

Today, the new Business Crime Reduction manager, Ian Tumelty started with with Cardiff Business Safe. I met him in the office at ten as arranged. Hopes were dashed of arriving earlier to make sure things were in order, as I narrowly missed two buses at different stops. I briefed him on the CBS story so far, and gave him the required password access to the office systems to get him started.

Then Ashley arrived and shortly after chairman Gerry. The conversation was a good way to round off his first morning. In the afternoon I prepared and sent out the invitations and documents for the next BCRP meeting, at which Ian will be introduced to the Board and to Police and Council invited representatives. It's taken six years to get this far and get it right. A hard slog, but worth it in the end.

I left for home at four thirty and called in John Lewis' store, where I caught sight of Clare browsing the cushion department, when we'd both completed our errands, we had tea and a scone together. I'd forgotten about lunch. We visited a few shops together in the Grand Arcade. Clare bought a small blue plastic bucket to occupy the space under the kitchen sink, which I carried home. It reminded me of the one kids have on the beach, although it was twice their size. The bus driver also thought so, as he commented on it as we were getting our tickets "All you need now is the spade to go off to the beach." he said.

Nothing worth watching on telly to I spent an hour trying to clear space in Ashley's BT Office 365 email account, which keeps announcing that it's full. Between us we've spent hours deleting old messages to no good effect. The titles vanish, but the space is not reclaimed. Ten email addresses are assigned for a 250mb account. Only two are active, one of which is empty. No emails have been received since 31st December last, and we know some copies to his account were sent. A test email sent from another account was not received. It's possible to log in but few webmail administrative functions work. It's a complete disaster, and not for the first time has complaining to BT about this yielded any results. And to think we're paying for this non-service!

Confident accountability

I went into the CBS office earlier than usual this morning to meet up with Ashley, as we had a meeting scheduled with the City Council's Scrutiny Committee across lunchtime down in County Hall. The committee is reviewing the Council's engagement in support of the night time economy, or NTE as it's referred to in bureaucratic circles. CBS supplies half of its radios to those working evenings and nights. Restaurants, pubs and clubs comprise about forty percent, and ten per cent are public service or pro bono users like the Street Pastors, Ambulance and Alcohol Treatment Centre users. 

It was pleasing that we were, for the first time, invited to give an account of the contribution made by CBS, to inform the committee of the level of resources the NTE demands of the City. The question is: does the City cover the cost of this commitment. If not, how can it? None of our business. We just run a voluntary social enterprise that benefits the NTE as much as the daytime economy, and supports, at the point of need, others making an effort and giving their services. All is funded from the revenue radio subscribers provide. All radio users are stakeholders in making Cardiff a better place to be in, and trade in. Without the support of so many volunteers, it wouldn't be nearly so good.

I joined CBS when I retired as an expression of appreciation for the supply of a pro bono radio to St John's tea room, after a spate of thefts from handbags in church over the previous year. The radio is still there, still in use. The thief was caught by other means, but the fact that the radio was there  to provide a link to help from the outside world in one small quiet corner, was a confidence booster for volunteers. This was the first of more than a dozen radios now in the hands of city centre volunteers. I can't hide my satisfaction at applying admin and management skills I learned as a parish priest to the task of building a company back office, and enabling it to deliver a service, driven not by personal profit motive, but by the creative energy of voluntary goodwill, for the benefit of the city. 

This impulse has, down the ages, been part of city life, recognised or not, and it has everything to do with ensuring citizens' welfare, safety and security - not for personal gain, but building a community worth living in. It's similar to the impulse that drives people into the local political area, volunteering themselves for election as councillors in pursuit of the common good, regardless of the criticism they have to endure. It's not about personal gain or status, but about ensuring the common good through personal service. Thank heavens so many are prepared to commit themselves to make this effort!