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That “wonderful” moment

By Alan W Collins on Thursday 22nd January 2009 04:34 / 2 comments

I had one of those moments earlier – I’m sure you’ve all had them – you know, the one where you think you’ve written something down, no you know you’ve written something down, but you can’t for the life of you remember where you put it.

Well, whilst writing my previous post, I searched through this site’s archives (686 posts) for anything involving the Strood Academy: Chapter, Temple, SOCK (Save Our Chapter Kids), I even tried looking through all the old notes from my once-frequent appearances in the public gallery at full council meetings (and even some of them are still hidden!). I’m ashamed to admit it, but this site’s search engine has failed me!

The thing is, I’m almost certain I wrote something about it somewhere – even if it was in passing about sharing the public gallery with hoardes of Chapter School parents and pupils (I say hoardes – there was, for safety reasons, a maximum number of people of around 40-odd). I could swear one of them even noticed my notepad and pen and assumed I was either “on side” or a reporter, because I had a very nice chat with one of them.

Back then, of course, I had no personal interest in Chapter, or Temple, or the Academy. I just sat wistfully in the corner waiting for the glorious moment after Cllr Esterson had presented the petition in a sock (no joking here – in a sock!) to cheers and applause from the gathered parties when they would file out and leave just myself and an odd few others to watch the rest of the proceedings.

Back then I didn’t care what happened, no matter how crass it may sound. Now, however, I do have a personal interest, and still support the Strood Academy. But the reasons why can wait until I have completed the majority of my essay. Currently on 498 words out of 2498. Lucky me…

Update 23/01/09 @ 02:48

My musings from the public gallery are most likely long gone. I recall now that I had in fact written down a few notes on the SOCK campaign, with a view to airing them here, yet never got round to it.

Now, it seems, I shall never find them, as looking for a few pieces of scrap paper in my bedroom (which is, to be fair, what they were) is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, I am now on 1485 of 2500 words. I should have the rest completed in about two hours tomorrow morning.

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2 Comments

John Ward says:

Thursday 22nd January 2009 at 15:14

I have had the same thing happen to me; but that might be because I have something like 90,000 “data” files here. Fortunately, I have filed everything in a (sometimes very deep!) hierarchical filing structure that usually allows to find just about anything very easily.

Occasionally I need to search for something, but despite a little frustration with this (thankfully quite rare) need, it does always work out in the end. I suppose it was the need to find anything that might come up during a Council meeting that made me more disciplined in how I filed everything; but it certainly paid off on numerous occasions!
Tristan Osborne says:

Saturday 24th January 2009 at 17:06

Academies are an excellent idea and its great that money is being used to rebuild schools and pay teachers a fair wage, and that both political parties appear committed to increases in state investment in education.

Interestingly the latest Whitehouse video from Obama has just announced the introduction of a massive tax credit and school building programme as necessary for the US to remain competitive in a globalised world.

On SOCK and the Strood Academy; many people who campaigned for the SOCK petitioners were doing so because the many meetings organised by the Council were attended by so few members of the Cabinet, who had direct responsibility for the policy locally.

Ignoring the fact that this was a multimillion pound investment. The lack of turnout annoyed people more then anything – the attendace of local councillors I have to say was also sporadic. A few noticeable exceptions from the good ones; but an issue like this was clearly uncomfortable.

You can still support the principle of Academies whilst raising the justifiable issues of those at the Chapter School, who were **very** concerned about loosing school and community which had been carefully crafted by an excellent headteacher.

School mergers or closures are messy and complicated affairs for Councils irrespective of political hue. They do affect pupils, teachers and parents – especially if changes occur right in the middle of GCSE’s or A-levels.

Perhaps if a few more cabinet members and councillors had attended more often, people may have been more sympathetic to to the idea of a staged approach to the merger which was a senible idea proposed by SOCK (which was an independent group). Perhaps not.