Mary Reid

We had some excellent news this week about the Hook Centre. The creche area on the ground floor of the old CAB building is to become a Children's Centre.

This will be the second Children's Centre in the Neighbourhood, to add to the one in Castle Hill Primary. But this is pretty unusual in not being located in a school.

The Centre will offer a whole range of services to familes with children from 0 to 5 years old, plus activities like a Homework Club for older ones.

This news was revealed at the special Neighbourhood meeting this week on schools and the community.

You'll be able to find out more next Tuesday 18th March at the normal Neighbourhood meeting when there is an item about the Hook Centre on the agenda. The meeting will be at 7.30pm in - appropriately enough - the Hook Centre.

It's a pretty long agenda, so if you are especially interested in this item, or any other, make sure you fill in a pink slip when you arrive and we will take the most popular items first.

In the Surrey Comet's Gossip Onlooker section this week, I spotted the story from my blog about the Lib Dem couple who met through their blogs.

But I then noticed an even odder item about loos in the Guildhall - and the penny dropped! (Couldn't resist that....)

On the first floor of the Guildhall there are two toilets with the original 1930s panels proclaiming them for the use of Gentlemen and Lady Members Only. Councillors used to wear long blue robes for Council meetings and ceremonial occasions, and these were stored in wardrobes in the rooms. So the rooms offered storage and changing facilities as well as loos.

Now the Liberal Democrats and Labour councillors (when we had them) gave up wearing robes many, many years ago. The Conservatives did continue to wear them for civic events, giving an unwarranted impression of seniority. However, they seem to have quietly dropped the practice in the last year or so. 

I have long questioned the need for Members Only loos, but rather than waste Council time on such a trivial issue I have been pleased to see that the people who work in the Guildhall simply ignore the signs and make use of them.

Or at least they did until last week, when a Conservative councillor complained that he was having to share the urinals with people who work in the main Guildhall building (where the Chief Executive has his office), and apparently an email was sent to all staff telling them to stop the practice.

This manages to be both ridiculous, and very offensive to the staff who work for the Council.

The first the rest of us knew about this was when we saw the new green notices on the doors ordering staff not to use them. I was popping in on Monday, with another councillor, and we immediately removed the notices from the doors to the female loos. (Yes, it was me....)

So will the Conservative councillor who thinks loo apartheid is appropriate please identify himself?

Woman & Home magazine has a page and a half on the Rose Theatre this month. And I'm rather chuffed because it includes an interview with me, after one with the great Sir Peter Hall. (Unfortunately they haven't posted this piece on the magazine's website)

But it is all rather odd, because the writer seems to be under the impression that the ORIGINAL Rose, the one that Shakespeare worked in, was built out here in (then) rural Kingston! It talks about our campaign to protect the area from redevelopment and to rebuild the theatre on the original site. I can't imagine how she managed to get that idea from interviews with Peter, me or Katie Randerson.

So, to set the record straight, the sixteenth century theatre was located in Southwark, just round the corner from the current re-creation of Shakespeare's Globe.

The design of Kingston's Rose Theatre was inspired by the original Rose. It has the same footprint, it has a stage and galleries that match the first one as closely as possible. But unlike the Globe, it is a modern interpretation of the space, including all the lighting and sound technology that you would expect, comfortable seating and, thank goodness, a roof.

There's a rather odd headshot of me in the article, taken from a picture that I'm rather proud of, so here it is in full:

I've just got back home from Liverpool, and here is my own view of Nick Clegg's speech today.

He gave an excellent performance - at times funny, but with immense conviction.  You can watch it on the BBC site from this page.

When I interviewed him during the leadership contest, and wrote about it under the title Clever Cleggs, I commented: "This is a man of high energy, who speaks fast and thinks on his feet. His commitment to Liberalism is unquestionable, not least because of his palpable enthusiasm for its core principles."  All that was evident today, but now coupled with a confidence and public charisma that show that he has the makings of a great leader.

That posting about him followed me to the Gender Balance Blogging Awards. I was rather embarrassed to learn a couple of weeks ago that it had been shortlisted in the category for Best Blog Post by a Female Liberal Democrat. Embarrassed because I had already been asked to be the speaker at the awards event yesterday evening! Fortunately, and not surprisingly, it didn't win. Jo Christie-Smith achieved that with a posting What should MPs look like?, in which she talks, amongst other things, about the excellent role model offered by a female Finnish MP.

All the rest of the winners are listed here and you can hear everyone who spoke (including me) in a podcast here!

It was a really enjoyable occasion, not least because I got to meet a number of Lib Dem bloggers for the first time, even though I felt I knew them well already through blogs, comments and emails.

In the bar afterwards I discovered that Lib Dem Blogs is gaining a reputation as a dating agency - at least one couple have met through their blogs, and another well-known blogging couple announced their engagement through it.

Whilst we were all gossiping Nick Clegg came over and joined in the conversation. This is definitely a new style of leadership - I can't remember a previous leader chatting so easily and naturally with everyone, and especially not the night before his big speech.