What a way to spend a morning

I'll come to this morning in due course.  First, though, I'll just say that Tuesday evening was spent driving for the blind club.  Just one passenger this month which makes it a little extravagant driving 58 miles.  Still, she enjoyed it - and I found it interesting as well as there was a guest speaker, a police dog handler, who managed to get the serious bit across with some good humour.  Then yesterday evening I was on bingo duty for the old folks (some of whom are not as old as me!).  They seemed to enjoy it but I have to say that I would find it excruciatingly boring even though the session lasts only an hour and a half or so.  But this morning was worse than an hour and a half calling bingo numbers.

I have never enjoyed doing staff appraisals and that is how I have spent my morning, being one of a triumvirate appraising the staff of Brighton Lions Housing Society.  We have four employees: the general manager and her assistant, a handyman and a caretaker.  OK, so the handyman and the caretaker have fancy titles, but that is what their jobs really are.  But fancy titles or not, it was just as well that I wasn't expected to do the appraisals on my own.  I never know what questions to ask in order to get members of staff to open up.  Although come to think of it, none of the four seemed to have much of a problem in that respect.  All the same, allowing half an hour for each did prove a tad excessive, even allowing for private discussions before and after each appraisal.

Just to round off the morning, the chairman and I had a visit from our bank manager.  No, that's not true - his title is relationship manager.  Our bank manager is based at a branch in Brighton but because we have a large loan (it started at £2.2 million, now down to below £800,000) our account is controlled by a relationship manager working out of an office 50 miles away.  Every time there is a different person doing the job he seems to want a day at the seaside and comes down to see us.  Not that we particularly want to see him (and so far it always has been a him but no doubt it will be a her very soon) but we do try to keep on the good side as we hope to be able to start a new development in the not-too-distant future and will certainly need to borrow some more money.

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When I tried to upload yesterday's picture I got a whoops message.  I have used all my free picture storage on Blogger.  Still, there's more than one way to skin a cat so I am using another free storage facility.  But it is a little cumbersome in that I have to upload pictures to Photobox and then get the URL to paste into Blogger.  Unless I cheat and repeat a picture I have used elsewhere, like this one.

In the mid-19th century Brighton was expanding fast and needed housing for artisans and other upper working class people.  Albion Hill was part of the rash of terraced housing that was built.  Much of the area nearby was rebuilt in the mid-20th century slum clearance but Albion Hill was and is on the edge of the Hanover district.  Back then it was run down but it has since become gentrified and houses there are now much sought after.