#boring2010

12Dec10

Wake up at 4, 4.30, 4.45. Almost fail to wake up at 5. Put eyes in, put eyeliner on, rub eyeliner off because it looks too much at this time of day. Put on many layers of woolly clothes, and dirty jeans. Check bag for tickets, money, oyster. Walk to station. Say hello to the woman who has seen me there are at 6am for 3 times this last month, bet she was wondering where I was last weekend on my one rare weekend at home. Get on train, advise conductor of the type of ticket I need. Get off train at Hereford. Try to door of the cafe like I do every time I get to Hereford at 6.20, even though I know it doesn’t open until 7. Sit wrapped up in NATO issue parka. Think station doesn’t look much like is does in the Ellie Goulding video. Get on next train. Curse the noisy group that gets into my carriage too. Buy one of those fake fresh bacon rolls & tea. Manage not to spill all over myself this time. Read the paper, look out of window wondering if I will see the man with the gun again. As always, at Oxford I consider getting off train in order to go to Micks Cafe for a fry-up. Realise I don’t have tube map, but to my amazement I know which lines I need (the brown & the red. I am from The Country, this is how I think of them). Push my way off train. Save 30p & don’t go for a wee at Paddington. Rush down to the underground. Become one of those people who walk down the left-hand side of the escalator.  Get on tube. Keep looking at watch. Check I am going the right way. Check watch again. Change tube. Another line. Check watch again. Get off train. RUN up the escalators (this is AMAZING as I don’t run & can very easily have panic attacks on escalators – what happens if I fall down them?). Wonder which exit to take out of station. Walk up stairs and see a golden Freddie Mercury – I have taken the right option. Rush into theatre & up the golden railed stairs. Say hello to a friend, throw my arms around another. Sign in, grab a badge. Find my friend who has saved me a seat & sit down & start to take off the layers of wool. I resemble a red-faced pumpkin, but at least I wasn’t late for Boring.

If you weren’t there, well then shame on you. I have lost my bit of paper that listed the speakers, but I am sure it is out there on the internet somewhere. I’m not going to go through what I though of each individual presentation, because I have forgotten some of them already. But milk, sneezes, cricket, multi-story car park roofs, fry-ups & paint names were some of the topics. And I am not going to pass judgement of any of the speakers – anyone who can get up in front of a crowd of 200 strangers and not burst into tears & run screaming from the room deserves admiration.

I did start to take notes. The lady sitting along from me seemed to be writing everything down. This is the transcript of mine.

Plane-catalo. Good time for stinger. Duchy single estate – can taste of wheat. Don’t think a long glass of UHT. Plastic smell. In Spain – coffee “I don’t know, I just heard that”. Defeat suicide with friendliness. Animals fuck things up. Not next big thing, our little thing. You may take two people in this room.

And no, I have no idea what the first two notes mean. I stopped writing after the first session, I’m sorry, I know they would have been highly informative. All I can say is that there were some wonderful talks, and at times I lost the will to live.

The conference ended on a  musical note, only right for one being held in the home of a “spectacular West End musical“*. I think we were asked to help put the chairs away, but some of us rushed off to the pub. The bar staff must have wondered what on earth was happening, as scores of people carrying brown paper bags poured into the place. Then the evening was spent talking to old friends & talking to new ones – a fairly typical tweet-up, where conversations (well mine anyway) ranged from hats made of paper, black pudding and the fact that I had woken up at 5am. I have learned from previous gatherings that it is best to leave the party on a high, so hugged as many people as possible and then went to eat yummy Korean food.

Huge kudos to James Ward for organising something that made me WANT to wake up so early on a Saturday morning. I haven’t mentioned the goodie bags that were on every seat, the giant jigsaw that was being assembled in the corner of the room, the competition where lucky people won books or DVD’s or the fact that there were people in the audience with redder hair than me. Well done to everyone involved, and roll on #boring2011.

 

*Not my opinion. Just to be clear.

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