Sandie Shaw sang that in 1965 – few of you will remember that, but the idea of regular prompts of why we do stuff is a recurrent theme. Jennifer’s blog today carries a wistful tone unusual for her but she does hint at the massive exercise which is underway and will continue for months to deliver the Town Hall back to the community. Every day there is something to remind us of what the heart of Portobello means. Yesterday, our consultants found the original plans for the building, now Morag’s dance school, but then the laundry for the Christie Female Industrial Home for girls, demolished to make way for the Town Hall. Just a reminder of the way things were.
Geoff
Getting a little tired of the sound of my own voice and feeling like I’m repeating myself so sorry if the feeling is mutual but the important thing is to write the blog.
Maybe I should explain the blogs? I’ve committed to doing 100 days of blogs for Portobello Central as part of the 100 days project . I’ve done it before – 100 days or journaling but that was not for public consumption and wasn’t daily, 200 days of Gaelic on Duolingo during lock down – was daily as the app rewarded ‘streaks’ i.e. periods of consistent daily activity and in the end I started Blipfoto last April and having completed the year, only missing 5 days, I think I caught the daily habit.
However I find myself at Day 9 feeling a bit like you’ve read enough and I’ve said it all before. Got to fight that. I’ll push on with a short entry to keep the discipline of daily practice and make sure we capture some daily musing EVERY day for those 100 days to record our journey to community management and perhaps ownership of Portobello Town Hall.
Despite our Council Regeneration Fund contact being on holiday this week (which I hadn’t realised) he gave us a really useful reply to our clarification email so Geoff and I will keep working that up. We are also booked to meet with Scottish Land Fund on 15th on Teams.
There has been further chat on governance and structure as the output document from our ‘strategy afternoon’ in Jayne’s garden has been written up by Will. Maybe a final version will be shared at some future point. The topic of SCIO members and bringing in volunteers to work of topics they are interested in without having to know all the ins and outs of the organisation and be legally responsible trustees will need clear communication from us which needs us to understand things clearly! No mean feat!
Jennifer’s Blog
What a great song. There must be something about this being the 3rd Town Hall? If you cannot go forward go back and retrench. Well done that’s my girl.