The day was all they said it would be - simply glorious, and much grass has been cut and Roundup sprayed in the area to be paved which is presently alarmingly green. I hate using the stuff, but it does have its uses and is sometimes they only answer. Also target sprayed are many patches of cocks foot and thistles of various types, and dock.

I have spent the day wrestling with the challenges of the situation at the History Room in between proposing that we host the Visitor Information Centre in the interim, now that Council has come out of the closet and announced they are closing it due to the Mill takeover arrangements. So an email has been sent off the the GM and I have been invited to review a pile of books that Council wanted to off load onto the History Room for want of storage space. I have concluded that the several metres of statutes do not belong with us, but that we would be happy to receive the Tasmanian Annual Report and some smaller items.

Meanwhile I have rung Clive Tilsley at Fullers, whose oldest customer I am (we agreed longest-standing might be a kinder description), to seek his advice as a book seller. While he was reluctant to provide 'advice' per se, he did say he prefers to avoid the sort of situation in which we find ourselves (in other words, don't touch it with a bargepole), so in consultation with today's volunteer I made an executive decision to withdraw it from sale and take down the advertising material. I am on tomorrow which gives me some additional breathing space.

I think I will call an emergency meeting of the Executive to avoid the persons with an 'interest' being part of the  preliminary discussions and then write or email the affected parties - one explaining that it is our view that the book focusses less on historical discourse than on personal attack and this must be removed before we consider selling it, the other letter to the owner of the second building, explaining why we have done this, what alternate options exist for presenting the information and how, following discussion with heritage Tasmania (which I did today also), I can confirm there is no threat to her property in terms of removal from the register (ie it is not on the list of buildings to be assessed for removal).

To the committee I will point out that while the professional historian would more likely launch a legal challenge against the author, the owner of the first building is an unknown quantity and that if she chose to sue us for knowingly disseminating defamatory material whether she could prove her case or not, we would still be liable for costs, which we can not afford.

Gargh! Diplomacy is not my strong point and it is all too much bother. If they choose to vote against my recommendations I am afraid I will have to resign in writing giving my reasons for doing so, which would make me a hostile witness for them and a choice witness for the original parties - not a happy situation since i don't think the original parties have acted with due diligence either.