Mood:  happy

Thursday

Go to the campus to get some materials for the Brussels course. See two PhD students, one long standing, one for the first time. Have lunch in Eat with my friend Pete. Why do they only serve pasta there now? V-C comes in and sits down on his own.
In the evening I set off for the Harvester on the A45 to meet up with folks from the counselling course I took last term. Harvester is surprisingly busy. Eight of us turn up, five women from their early twenties to mid-thirties, two older men (including me), one younger male. It's a very pleasant evening, our ability to communicate from the course is still there. And the salad bar was excellent and the scampi I had was just right. We agreed to continue with a discussion group, using my office. Most of us hope to do the Certificate in Counselling next year.

Friday

Do some more work on the Brussels course in the morning. Then I turn to writing up some of the work I have done on the history of fire service provision in Britain. This may seem an obscure topic, but it actually illustrates a more general point about democracy - the way in which closed policy communities seize control of an agenda and pursue suboptimal policies unchallenged. Decisions about fire service cover made in the late 1930s prioritised the protection of property over lives and this was only effectively challenged last year by the Bain Report, written by my friend Sir George.
There is some hilarious stuff in the files from the early 1920s when the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Home Secretary had a row about what could properly be charged for a stay in a provincial hotel then!