• Spent Monday inducting Ellie Russell new VP FE into the building and organisation.

• Met Marco Henry who is conducting the Anti-Semitism review.

• Finally got around to clearing out my office, no mean feat if you think of a decades worth of presidents papers being stowed away in their.

• Emergency NEC mtg. on the anti Semitism review, don’t feel it would be appropriate to comment upon it here.

• Thursday and Friday were spent interviewing for Regional Officer Posts. Having set the first task, Gemma and I popped downstairs for a cup of coffee, and came across news 24 and the reality of what was happening in London. I can’t express here in this article how frightening and unbelievable the events that were unfolding on the screen. I began straight away to try and check in the NUS staff and NEC, to make sure that we were all safe and well. It took several hours but thankfully as an organisation we were lucky all safe an accounted for, we then took the decisions to close early, provided options as to get home for all employees, and didn’t re-open until the following Monday. Once all of that was done myself and Gemma had to get back to the recruitment, and it’s striking how easily we reammersed ourselves in that task, with the reality of what was happening back home, only re-entering our minds when we stopped for a break, or popped out for a cup of coffee. We spent all the free time we had thinking about the implications of the whole new time we were going to be entering into.

• That Saturday I finally got to move into my new house with Sian. I don’t think I’ve explained before but a month previous, due to various complicated reasons and too long a story to go into here ended up temporarily homeless. So I spent the last month living out of a suitcase, and the back of my car, with all my worldly possessions locked up in the NUS print room. I found the whole month quite unsettling and didn’t sleep well at all, however it may be of interest that for that month of having nowhere to stay I only had 6 nights where I needed to find somewhere to stay, the rest of the time being away at events, conferences or training, and I’m not really sure what that says about my life. Anyway thanks to a couple of NEC members and their decorating and furniture building skills I am now firmly settled and at home.

The Blogs on this site represent the individual views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or practices of the National Union of Students.

All links in blogs will open in a new browser window.

The permanent URL for this specific blog entry is: http://www.officeronline.co.uk/blogs/katfletcher/271090.aspx