Saturday 12th April 08

Not a good start to the day as was woken by boys fighting (or, one irritating the other, the irritated one over-reacting and causing such a din as to be irresistable to the irritating one) and then later there was a huge paddy as the irritating and angry one tried to put on a belt and fed it through his trousers the wrong way. As parents, we offered to assist or tell him how to solve the problem, and he kicked off. There was so much yelling and slamming of doors, we feel really sorry for our neighbours. Gill says we need to move to a detached house where our activities (both my logging/composting AND the extremely noisy child) won't affect anybody else.

I got ready to go to my AVP management meeting with a 'heavy heart' feeling depressed that I am unable to solve conflict in my own household when I'm going out to help run a group which aims to help other people solve their conflicts.

I cycled up to New Earswick to the Hartrigg Oaks 'older persons' housing and care development, where three of the AVP volunteers live. The development also has a central building which has meeting rooms, which is where we met for today's meeting. The group of nine of us are 'AVP NEEM'... Alternatives to Violence Project North East and East Midlands, a member of AVP Britain (http://www.avpbritain.org.uk/) We put on workshops and courses on conflict resolution, some people come for anger management help. We work in prisons and in the community. One project works in conjunction with MIND and a local NHS Mental Health service, putting on a workshop every other month. The workshops are quite long and 'deep', the ones we put on start on Friday night, take most of Saturday and Sunday until teatime. We can provide somewhere for participants to stay if they don't live locally. All the facilitators AND participants are volunteers, and the process really works. It helped me and I've heard very few negative comments, more than 9/10 coments are 'All Very Positive'!

So this meeting was one of our twice-yearly management meetings and it went well. Afterwards I popped in to see our old Treasurer Harry, who in his old-age has gone blind but is receiving good care from the Hartrigg Oaks team.

I cycled back and whilst collecting some logs and positioning them in my trailer, my buddy Philip cycled past, coming home from his gardening job, so we cycled together back to Tang Hall chatting, and when I got back to Hull Road, Gill told me that all had gone smoothly and peacefully since I left. Thank goodness!

Gill had created a lovely tea and we all ate together.