Merchant Taylors Hall, interesting colleagues and the Oriental Supermarket

1. The Merchant Taylor's Hall in Aldwark is an amazingly comfortable venue for meetings. I went to a 'diversity and equalities' theatre training thingy there today. A group of actors from Leeds performed a little play about how Council officer Tony deals with a complaint from a white trash slag called Brenda against handsome Mr Ali Shah the new proprietor of the local kebab house. The idea was for the audience to participate by stopping the action of the play and suggesting ways in which the interaction could be improved or to discuss the motives and underlying prejudices involved. I enjoyed the experience. It was good for me to realise that many of the colleagues there were so actively commited to fairness and honesty and that was demonstrated by comments and a few brave characters who got up to help act out the play. I actually managed to contribute something. Hooray!

2. The people I sat with were interesting and talkative. I was grateful for that because I've been to this sort of event before where people form into their natural working groups and don't interact. To my right was a very nice lady who works in the Guildhall and we chatted briefly about the Steve Galloway story. I asked if he was stepping down "to spend more time with his family"....but apparently not. I asked if he was"tired and emotional?"....apparently not. It seems he's feeling it's time for someone else to take the lead...OK. To my left was a colleague I have met a couple of times before we got chatting about homoeopathy and it turns out she like me trained and worked as a lay practitioner and had like me given it up (for quite different reasons though). We discussed the benefits of psychoimmuniology and discovered that we had a joint admiration for the Indian homoeopath Rajan Sankaran. Its good to talk, its always good to talk.

3. At lunchtime I went with a colleague from work to the little oriental food market in the Chinese shop just over Ouse Bridge. This little establishment is a treasure. The people in the shop are friendly, bemused and helpful. We were buying some stuff from the oriental food market part of the shop to make up a wok basket birthday gift for Little Phil's 21st birthday with a collection of money gathered from the office. They also sell some very groovy costume jewelry and oriental nicknack's.