I stood as a Primary School Governor nearly four years ago.

Being a Governor is not quite what anyone expects once the novelty has worn off. We get to make decisions, certainly, but they are ridiculously constrained within the boundaries of Government Policy, conflicting initiatives and rampant political correctness. (Schools don’t have Chairmen or Headmasters/Headmistresses any more, they have Chairs and Heads. Sooner or later they will also have a “senior personagement team” as well, consisting of various bits of the body and furniture).

I have put up with it with increased levels of bitter reality & disillusionment tablets but when I’m told we need embrace diversity through inclusivity, respect and vision for the umpteenth time I just want to play buzzword bingo or crawl off and throw up somewhere. I was expecting my term of office to finish gracefully in November but a couple of things derailed that.

Firstly, we adopted a new statement of Governance last year and as part of that, most people had to get re-appointed through the usual channels. Surprisingly enough, it didn’t apply to me because I pre-dated the legislation so I automatically carried on my term of office on the new body, or so I thought.

As I work full time, I have never been able to devote too much time to Governorship, the important committees generally meeting during the school day. Also, rather a lot of Governor meetings have tended to clash with my Town Council meetings, particularly due to me being on the planning committeee that meets much more frequently than the others.

Anyway, I wasn’t in a position to take part in our Deputy Head appointment last year and didn’t expect to take part in the interviews for our new Head. (Our Mr. Summers is moving on to Churwell Primary, a school 50% bigger than David’s school with three forms per year.)

However, at the last Governor’s meeting in July, it became apparent that one of the Community Governors was at the end of her term of office and as she was a political appointee it was by no means certain that she would be re-appointed, especially as the balance of power in Morley South changed last City Council election day. On this basis, the Chair turned to me and asked me to be on the selection panel as I was the only other Governor that could possibly participate. I agreed, slightly reluctantly as it would require me to use two days of holiday, but nethertheless went along to the first panel meeting just before school broke up.

I then found that the business of continuing my governorship the previous year had a caveat- it was to the end of the term of office, or September 1st 2006, whichever came first. No-one from the Governor unit had actually told anyone this at the time and they had indeed confirmed my office as ending in November at the last meeting.

On this basis, I wouldn’t be a Governor on September 1st and would be ineligible to go on the panel, unless I restood unopposed. (If there was another candidate, there would need to be a Parent election which couldn’t be completed in time.).

This put me in a bit of a quandry, as I had intended to not restand and persuade Karen to stand instead. Anyway, I agreed to restand and the deadline for nominations was today.

The school rang me up earlier to confirm that I was the only candidate and that I would be taking part in the appointment panel after all, so on Monday and Tuesday, I will be taking part in selecting a new Head Teacher from the five short-listed hopefuls.

As an aside, I was stunned to be told by David earlier in the week that he was not allowed to use any form of shampoo, soap or bodywash in the shower after swimming via school due to “Health & Safety”.

Is it healthy or safe to have 30 rinsed but unwashed children in Morley Leisure Centre, I wonder?

I don’t remember where I was when Kennedy was shot but I’ll never forget the day the Twin Towers came down.

Time dulls the senses but these are wounds that will not easily heal.

Take some quiet time, (re-)watch the videos and be introspective for a while.

Who needs this kind of twisted religion?

Never forget…

Heritage weekend has just been and gone. As usual, the Town Hall was open for guided tours, this time with performances in the Borough Court by students from Joseph Priestley College.

One change this year- one of the police station cells has traditionally been visited as part of the tour. However, it seems that some IT racks have taken prime position in the untouched cell, so we had to look into the others which have generally been shelved out but retain their toilets.

We also had a trip to the “people’s Museum” in manchester, a sort of Socialist Museum housed in a former pumphouse for the Manchester Hydraulic Company. I knew there had been a London one but Manchester having its own 1000psi network with 35 miles of piping in the City Centre was news to me. It continued to run until 1972 and provided power in its time to wind the Town Hall Clock and lift the Opera House Safety Curtain.

How was I aware of the London one? They had a ready-made set of ducts in the Capital for Telecommunications services and Mercury purchased their assets at some stage. Something similar happened in manchester and Cable & Wireless now use the ducting.

1000 pounds per square inch sounds a scary amount of pressure- you could wash away walls with a leak and apparently a burst main squirted higher than the Manchester Exchange. There isn’t too much to see of the legacy in the pumphouse now but worth a visit if you are into banners and communist propaganda. One of the six original pumps was saved by the Science Museum and you can see a picture of it here.

The Museum of Transportwas running heritage buses to & from the two venues which is how we latched onto the Pumphouse tour. If you are interested in buses, the transport museum is a must- if you are a normal sort with a slight passing interest it is worth 45 minutes…

I’ve decided that bus spotters are a bit like train spotters, us men can get obsessive about anything mechanical! (I’m an entertainment technology spotter & proud of it…

More than a year ago, I commented on being caught out by “Top of the Poppers” albums at ASDA.

This weekend, I noticed some £6 5 volume sets, two for a Tenner. One, celebrating the last 40 years appeared to be genuine original tracks. However, on playing, I discovered they aren’t, or at least some of them aren’t. I realised by song three, it took the Boss another couple of songs to agree with me.

At first, I thought I’d been suckered by some weasel words that I had missed, but there aren’t any on the box or sleeves.

What to do? The happy to help people are keen to satisfy but this is really a problem with their buyers back in Leeds. They might not even realise that the mighty Wal*Mart empire has been suckered.

Getting my money back wouldn’t really hit the spot, it is a passable collection but it is also passing off and a lot of these artists wouldn’t like the impersonations that frequently sound like them on an off day, with not quite as good instruments and playing.

They say don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but it wasn’t a gift so I have a right to be slightly disgruntled.

I wonder if trading standards would be interested, or perhaps ASCAP, whose logo appears on the box as confirming duly licensed?

Come to think of it, why has a European Distributor licensed the music via ASCAP? Is there not a ESCAP?

Gizmo, our Abyssinian Guinea Pig, now lives inside the house after concerns as to his quality of life in an outside hutch over winter escalated after rather a lot of rain & no chance to put him in his run.

In order to accommodate a decent sized indoor cage (1m x 0.5m x0.47m) we had to make some room and we decided to move a small bookcase and replace with shelves. A look in the Ikea catalogue came up with something that would suit the bill (particularly wide and reasonably deep shelves) but when we went on our Pilgrimage to the nearbyTemple of Swedish Furniture, we were disappointed to find that the particular product was not on show and had disappeared from the catalogue. After looking at most of the displays in the showroom/maze, we eventually found a shelving system in the bedroom area that was passable, if somewhat over the top.

Armed with Ikea pencil, tape measure and store guide/picking list, we duly noted where the components were in the enormous warehouse (it is on the price tickets) and continued around the maze towards the checkouts. The four components we required were located in three seperate aisles and on loading up out trolley, Karen happened to notice that some component parts for the actual system we wanted were on some of the shelves. I had noticed a “where is it” screen near the warehouse entrance so we went back to it and typed in “Journalist”. Rather than give us locations, it advised us it was all in the Full serve Warehouse next door. We noted down the parts we wanted and went to the information point. As the one person helping appeared to be dealing with the query from hell, I went and found someone else near the tills at a helpdesk who explained that the info point couldn’t actually initiate full serve orders and neither could he. However, he could check stock levels and all of the Journalist range was available apart from one shelf size which wasn’t the one we were after. We then had to trudge back into the main showroom area in order to find someone in the correct area to initiate an order. (Fortunately, there is a short-cut from the warehouse to the entrance otherwise it is a mile of contraflow). We then discovered that the one item out of stock was actually the uprights, the helpdesk man had read the screen wrong!

By this time, David was getting a bit fed up and we decided to knock it on the head, pausing only to get one of their legendary last chance Cafe hot dogs that David always asks nicely for when we go to Ikea (The Exit Bistro, they call it). They are very cheap- £1 gets you a large one and a soft drink, free refills and you get to put on your own Ketchup or Mustard.

Interestingly, the main Cafe is now absolutely enormous, easily the size of Morley Town Hall Alexandra Hall. The trouble is, you wouldn’t really want to go there just to eat; the Junction 27 area is gridlock city at weekends and just getting parked and though the massive store is stressful at any time of day or evening.

Anyway, we got some traditional wall adjustable shelving from B & Q and after a bit of DIY Gizmo now has a new home, as does the clutter that preceded him.