Staring out of the window

I was delegated to attend Service Managers Meeting this morning by my new boss. Well she isn't new, just has the misfortune to have to take on 3 teams instead of one. Ten agenda items and after an hour, we are still on item 2, "minutes of last meeting". By the time we were at item 10, Any Other Business,the Assistant Director pulled out a sheet of A4 with 25 items on it which we had mostly covered already. But we still had to go through them. Had an opportunity to speak to several of the other guys, and the idiocy of these meetings seemed to be a common opinion, even though several seem to be prepared to use these meetings as a 1:1 with the AD, Head of Micromanagement, talking about stuff which I have no wish to learn anything about: Risk Register, RADAR, drilling down for evidence, PSA, LDF, DPD, blah blah). At least I didnt get any work done, just acquired more to add to the stack. but sometimes local government seems to be about making work for local government officers. Dont get me wrong, a lot of this comes from central government, and local authorities do a damn good job, mostly in making life better for people,
3 hours to attempt to keep up with e-mither and phone messages.
Then off to a fairly remote housing estate (they have no evening buses since one was shot at)to talk to the Community Partnership. I hate public speaking, but I gained confidence when I realised they werent going to be nasty, and that I could provide them with answers/excuses that they were happy with. The general public arent as up their own arses as Council officers often are, but have genuine day-to-day concerns, which I could deal with. A jargon-free evening. Joy. Home by 9pm and no prospect of doing work stuff at home. Unlike last night when I stayed on until 8pm