It's behind you!

The family and I went to the pantomime last night to take in the usual excellent treatment of Cinderella, staged at our local Richmond theatre, complete with some outstandingly camp ugly sisters, an ebullient Buttons given to us by the consummate professional, Gary Wilmot, a menapausal fairy played by Jenny Eclair and dodgy  prince charming who was more your choir master than dashing rake. Panto is curious, no matter how old or cynical you are it 'drags' you along until you are shouting out with the rest in an almost uniquely British way. The combination of racy jokes, slap-stick humour and sexual confusion is so British, the only incongruous element is the happy ending.

As the audience bellowed a warning to the ugly sisters, played to spectacular effect by Graham Hoadly and Paul Burnham, to "Look behind you!!", whilst they walked about in ignorance, I thought about the Government. Social enterprise is not only a quick win, but as another great quasi British innovation it has solved some of societies most dramatic, painful and costly problems and is right there for the taking on an unprecedented scale. Let's hope they don't walk off the stage without it just because they couldn't or wouldn't heed joe publics warnings from the cheap seats. If they do, I fear for our happy ending.

2011 is not a year many will be sorry to see the back of. We are told that 2012 is going to be harder still, with only the Olympics to look forward to for light relief. But for now I'm all for thinking about crossing that bridge when we get to it and  focussing on the holidays.

The Ogden-Newton's are doing something we have never done before which is to run away. We aren't going far, Cornwall, but if friends and family asking often over the last few days when our usual entertaining Christmas marathon is due to kick off, we are about to disappoint more than a couple of folk with our nuclear option.

Nonetheless  Hubbie and I decided that the five of us would go it alone, with only a few friends dropping by to celebrate and share a surf on Christmas Day, I can't wait.  I have always been very keen on the concept of Christmas as an event which brings community and extended family together but the sweaty heap I end up in at the end has made me think again. At least for this year.

Having said that we have invited family over today for a pre-Christmas lunch which should be jolly and the kids and I have decorated the house, made mince pies, iced the Christmas cake and Katie my eleven year old has made the most stunning chocolate log from scratch and entirely on her own, amazing, truly amazing!

So in many ways we are having our cake and eating it too. Family extravaganza today then off on Friday for a log fire, pyjama fest of mulled wine, Quality Street, some nice little cheesy crackery things, endless games of scrabble and chess and no phone reception, bliss!

My view is we need to refuel the batteries so we can hit 2012 hard! If the coming year isn't going to be easy our job is to have some fun this Christmas. Oh yes it is I hear you cry, Oh no it isn't! Oh for heaven's sake.

Sophie's choice or social reformation?

I have a piece in Guardian Public today on asking people what they think about the cuts within the context of using social impact assessment. I know that sounds deathly dull but what I am trying to say is not. If you count more than the financial cost of a service, and instead focus on moneterised social impact, you can prioritise with minimal long-term regret. At the very least you can make the process transparent and one which people can consult on. Without social impact assessment you may cut a service because it looks expensive now, only to find out later that not providing that service has caused a far greater drain on the public purse. Cause and effect, 20/80, the six ‘p’s’.........


Tell me what you think http://www.guardianpublic.co.uk/social-impact-public-services

Another mad weekend, in so many ways.... On Saturday, whilst womaning the book stall at our local primary school I bumped into Zac Goldsmith, see picture below with fellow school mum. Zac was doing his star turn at the Sheen Mount Primary School Fair, much to the delight of the Mum’s. He and I had a quick catch up on an event we are putting on together, next month, to launch a social enterprise hub in Richmond. Strangely enough Richmond has become quite a hotbed of innovative social enterprise activity, to the extent critical mass has been reached. Watch this space.

After the fair, and with my 2 carrier bags of summer reading, I headed home to get back into the garden. My big job this weekend was to dig out the Phyllostachys Nigra (black bamboo) out of my herbaceous border. It was less gardening and more your navying. The shrub had really taken hold, to the extent that by the time I had finished I had enough plants, some of them standing at 20 feet, to fill 2, one metre planters. In the spaces left in the border I had the joy of planting out my homage to the Eden Project, ‘Places for Change garden at Chelsea Flower Show’ 2010 designed by Paul Stone. This garden was put together by 6 groups of homeless people from centres around the UK. It emphasised veg growing, recycling and the more traditional approaches to English gardening using heart warming planting which brought in the usual chic purples, mauves and blues with fiery oranges and yellows, perfect. To achieve this I planted in my newly peat free composted beds, perennial geraniums, Oxalis and Icelandic poppies. I asked one of the exhibitors of the garden about a particularly ice catching Geranuium which turned out to be Sanguineum which I now have 15 dotted around my garden. I finished at 10pm so had to wait for the sun to come up to admire my handy work.

Unfortunately a combination of old, baggy gardening jeans and late night gardening meant I fell foul of mosquitoes. Which in turn leads me to an explanation of this morning’s tweet concerning my bottom (thank you to those who have made enquires). We were at my Mother’s yesterday afternoon where, whilst showing her my fine array of bites, as you do, a wasp flew in through her kitchen window, and unhindered by her, stung me on the arse. On the way home something flew up my trouser leg and bit me on the calf. I am, frankly, feeling got at.

Tomorrow we have our breakfast meeting (08:30 – 10:00) on governance and risk with Price Waterhouse Coopers at 1 Embankment Place, London, WC2N 6RH, which is fully booked but I’m sure we can find room for a few last minute social entrepreneurs if you call the SEL offices (020 7022 1920). My day will conclude at the Acevo New MP’s reception in Westminster, where I have been asked to follow our new Minister, Nick Hurd’s address, with some thoughts about the future opportunities and challenges for the sector as I see them. Any top tips or thoughts on that, as always, will be very gratefully received.