I enjoyed it because it was an opportunity to chat to people as they went about their shopping and I hope it was also an easy place for people to get in touch with me and my team – let me know if you have any other ideas for useful places to have our regular surgeries.

On Saturday, I was able to enjoy being a mum all day – an all-too-rare occurance sometimes in this job! Since the weather was clear I took the children up to the Coal Clough windfarm up on the Long Causeway above Mereclough to touch a windmill.

We can just see it on a clear day from our house off Manchester Road and I love going up there to get a bit of a sense of space, and to admire the views of Pendle Hill looming over the town.

On Sunday morning I made some house calls to old friends and then formally opened the "Love Music Hate Racism" festival organised at the Mechanics.

I was really pleased a team of people had taken it upon themselves to organise this event in Burnley. Not only was it good fun with great music from a whole load of up-and-coming bands from around the country but it also sent a strong message that people in Burnley can hold their heads up high and be proud of taking a stand against discrimination in all its forms.

Although I was only there at the beginning I am told around 500 people came during the course of the day. This is a strong statement from our young people, so congratulations to all the organisers.

After that it was back to London for a few days work out of my Treasury office. My priority at the moment is getting the legislation ready to reform the banking system to give the regulators the tools to deal with any future banking crises.

It will be my job to take this legislation through Parliament, once the House of Commons comes back when the party conference season is over.

Given what is going on in the markets at the moment, it is clearly important to get this legislation right, and I have been holding discussions with various parts of the financial services sector to ensure our Bill is as good as it possibly can be.

The purpose of the legislation is to ensure the Government, the Bank of England and regulators have the powers to intervene to try to make sure a bank that gets into difficulties can be stabilised if that is necessary.

The most important thing is to protect consumers who have got money in the bank; whatever happens there is already an insurance scheme in place to protect depositors.

On Tuesday I held a meeting in London with senior officials of the Revenue and Customs Office who are looking at how their office network in the North-West needs to be reorganised. Working with local union representatives we have been spearheading a campaign to keep the Burnley office open. I met with the staff a couple of weeks ago in a meeting organised at Burnley Miners' Club to listen to their concerns and put these to the senior management in London.

They are certainly listening but since Revenue and Customs does need to be radically reorganised, it will come down to whether we can persuade them it is in their business interests to keep the Burnley office open.

I explained they had an excellent and loyal staff in Burnley that it would not be in their interests to lose, and they said they would consider the points I had made.