Monthly Archives: March 2006

Conference in the snow


Conference in the snow

Originally uploaded by nilexuk.

Well, this is a weather condition I haven’t encountered at conference before.

Driving into Harrogate, the snow was just beginning. When I left my hotel to register it was falling heavily but barely settling. By the time I left the conference centre to return to the hotel, the pavements were covered and cars were starting to slip around. The crocuses I’d noticed before were completely covered. Some 2 or 3 inches of snow. I’m glad we arrived when we did.

I’m staying in a rather nice hotel — I thought I’d treat myself this time. So, I have a room the size of my house in The Kimberley. The tea tray has a bottle of wine on it. The bed is bigger than my car. I have my own fax machine and there’s an ethernet cable on the desk. The ceiling is 12 feet high, and it’s very warm indeed. Not to be sniffed at in this weather!

Copy

We are desparately trying to headline copy in the office.

“We’re all Mingers Now!”

“You’ve got to be Ming it to win it!”

“It don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that Ming”

All across the country

Little groups of Lib Dems are gathered in huddles around their radios and TVs.  We’ve just tuned into the dying gasps of the Afternoon Play on Radio 4, and any minute now we’ll hear who’s going to lead us for the next.  Who will it be?

Iain Dale jokes

Iain Dale is asking for jokes — I suggested the following.

Here’s a good one. It wasn’t quite told like this to me when I heard it last, but I’m sure you get the general drift. Just for you, I’ll waive the usual fee.

Whenever I go drink-driving, I carry three cards with me.

If the police pull me over and ask me to blow into a bag, I hand them the first card. It says

ASTHMATIC — PLEASE DO NOT ASK FOR BREATH SAMPLE.

If the blighters persist, and ask for a blood sample, I hand them the second card. It says

HAEMOPHILIAC — PLEASE DO NOT ASK FOR BLOOD SAMPLE.

Sometimes that gets me off. But sometimes they still carry on, so for those cases, I carry a card that says

I’M IAIN DALE. I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO WIN NORFOLK NORTH FOR THE TORIES AT THE LAST ELECTION BUT LIB DEM NORMAN LAMB INCREASED HIS MAJORITY BY 10,000 VOTES.

PLEASE DON’T TAKE THE PISS.

I wonder if he lets that through his filter. (He has, good for him 🙂
Last time I heard the joke, it was actually told by Graham Watson MEP, and the punchline was “I’m a Lib Dem MEP, please don’t…”

Bridge Strike


Bridge Strike

Originally uploaded by nilexuk.

So, I’m on the train. There is also a bus to Chesterfield but I elected not to take it because the train is quicker.

Ho, ho. (hollow laugh).

The train is quicker if, and only if:

*you catch the 9.42 and don’t narrowly miss it and have to wait til the 10.42 (the interval gave me plenty of time to pop into M&S for smalls and to hand-deliver a letter authorising a conference rep substitution)

* if the 10.42 doesn’t sit at Nottingham station for 15 mins before departing

* if, having sat at the station for 15 mins it doesn’t chug a scant half mile before sitting in sidings under Nottingham castle waiting for the points to take us through the city and on to the north.

*if, then, having run the gauntlets of Langley Mill and Alfreton, the train doesn’t join a multi train queue sitting stationery/ary on the track waiting for a Bridge Inspector to pass a bridge as fit after being struck by a lorry.

While I’m sitting here motionless, there is a team of envelope stuffing volunteers waiting in the office to be tasked.

Somehow, freight and intercity trains are able to zoom past. We can see the crooked spire, we’re stuck behind CineWorld. We could walk to Chesterfield from here, if they’d let us. The train is closer to the office than to the station!

I’m just glad I picked up a Pratchett before setting off. And I hope the Bridge Inspector isn’t travelling by rail.

Another day

Another day.

Today, I went to the dentist at Cripps Health Centre (I need a filling. I’m slowly replacing my cheap silver fillings with invisible white ones, so the new filling will let me replace an old one on the cheap. Bright side, eh?) While I was there, I got hygiened, too.

Into town for a meeting about our next Focus leaflet, which I have to lay out whilst in Harrogate this weekend ready to print next week.

On to D&A for an eye test. I went in determined to replace my current “transition” specs for a new plain pair and some sunglasses. I have had these glasses since before I could drive, and although they go dark fine in the open air, they don’t at all the far side of a windscreen.

Had a lovely time in D&A. After a slow start where all the staff ignored me, they eventually spent over an hour helping me choose new frames, with whizzy computers to show me what they will look like, and even to calculate just how thick the milk-bottle bottoms will be, to help me decide whether I need UltraUltraThinPlusUltra lenses, or can get away with just the UltraThinPlusUltra ones. Eyes have deteriorated slightly to -8.0 in one eye and -8.5 in the other. But apparently I could now have contact lenses if I fancied the idea of plunging a giant piece of plastic directly through my tiny eye holes first thing every afternoon. Which I certainly don’t. Not when I can have sexy “Blade” frames.Back into town to sign some letters I had typed while I was at the optician. I never got to grips with the dictation machine. When it comes to long letters, I much prefer to type them myself, because I can compose sentences better when I can edit them and shift words around to improve meaning. Normally, then, I type the texts of letters, then e-mail them to our wonderful admin support workers, who top and tail them, print them on headed paper, and log them through our system that is supposed to remind me to check whether I get the answers I want. Then all I have to do is sign it, and they get them into the post.

Back to Sherwood, where I get a hair-cut (scary short, not the best cut I’ve every had) and pop into an antique/junk shop to hunt for lamps.  Unsuccessfully.
From there back home, where the new breadmaker has arrived. Of course, I can’t wait to try it out, so set it going making a wholemeal loaf. Which takes over three hours!

In the meantime, quickly through the shower to rinse hair off me.  Start of trimming my beard, and slip, and take a huge great chunk out.  Hmmm.  Shave down to goatee.  Can’t get it even.  Shave the whole lot off.  OMG.  I don’t like my face.  The beard will return.

Heat up some pasta and the remains of a bolognaise sauce from a day or two ago, eat, then hurry back into town for a group meeting ahead of Full Council on Monday when, like councils up and down the country, Nottingham City Council will set its budget for the year. We will spend eight hours or so talking about it, and the outcome will be that Labour’s budget, with a council tax rise of 4.8%, will go through. They will spend a lot of time talking about how wonderful they are. We will spend less time disagreeing (because there are less of us) and putting forward our own suggestions. Eventually, they will vote us down.

Group meetings are never short, largely because we don’t stay on topic (and I’m as bad as anyone else when it comes to distracting ourselves and allowing myself to be distracted). So, it doesn’t finish til 10pm, at which point the poor staff are tapping their feet and ready to lock up the building and get home.

Back on the bus home (I’m really getting VFM out of my bus pass today) and I can taste the bread out of the breadmaker. The loaf is a deeply peculiar shape, practically cuboid, but it’s certainly tasty. I’m a bit disappointed that the device for putting in fruit/nuts/olives at the last minute is in fact just a beep to tell you to put the additives in yourself.

I should get my car back tomorrow, just in time to drive a few people to Harrogate for conference. First, though, I will be going to work in Chesterfield by train. When I got my job, almost a year ago now, I firmly told myself I would regularly commute by rail rather than driving over every working day. Tomorrow will be the first time I take the train.