CANDI floss

The first thing that slightly flummoxed us about site visit number two was that we were expecting it to be up near 'Camden', or perhaps 'Islington' - as we have always known it as the 'Camden and Islington project'. But when we looked up the postcode, it was slap bang in the middle of Bloomsbury - just off Russell Square, in the midst of London University. We didn't quite believe this, so rang everybody we could think of who had or might have been there - but they were all switched through to voicemail. Who said the era of long lunches is over? So we went off to the address which corresponded to the postcode we had, which in fact it turned out to be right - because we later learned that the borough of Camden and Islington (and the PCT boundaries) went as far south as the northern edge of the council area of the City of Westminster, and Westminster PCT .

As the sun had come out  (or had we come out of the SUN?), we thought a race across London would be quite a good idea to keep us sharp. It was going to be Top Gear-style: Sue on the bus, Lisa on the tube and me on the Brompton bike. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work like that, as Sue and Lisa decided that they'd rather go on the tube together, and by the time I got to the end of Wandsworth Common and looked at the map I decided that it was FAR too far to cycle, on a cold day when I was expected to turn up looking reasonably composed and suitably smart, so it was the Northern Line for me too.

Unfortunately, we made a bit of a boob with this one - we hadn't made it clear enough that we wanted to talk with service users as well as senior staff. So we are going to need to schedule in a second visit, to see the service user gang. But it's probably just as well, because it is quite a complex project - particularly how it has developed and changed since it started - so we had a very useful and detailed discussion to understand just how it all works. We probably would have been half in the dark, if we had tried to fit in everything else we wanted to. So watch out here for the second visitation, which will probably be in March.

But we didn't want to fail in our mission to take the obligatory photo, so we took two. The first is of the lobby, which we thought was rather elegant and uncluttered; the second is of a filing cabinet. How boring could a photo be? Well, if you look above the filing cabinet - you will see what we colloquially know as 'Frankie's Wedding Cake' precisely amended to show the PD services that exist in Camden & Islington (and Bloomsbury).

A civilized entrance lobby

An interesting chart in the office

So that's it for day one. Tomorrow, off to deepest Essex.