conferencing

[juliet]

Writing this on the Palm, due to being in Great Malvern at the West Midlands Labour Party conference, & thus not with computer. I could really do with one of those clever fold-out keyboards; shall investigate Ebay when I get back.


Conference has mostly involved sitting around not doing much, as when all the delegates are in the hall, which obviously is most of the time, we have noone to give leaflets to. It's the first time in months I've read both the Saturday Guardian & the Observer, supplements & all.

Got here Friday afternoon, & spent an hour or so in the pub with Dave (colleague) before we could get in to the venue to put up the stand. Disaster struck as we realised that the ceiling, whilst high enough to fit the stand in, was not high enough to put it up, which requires a few extra feet. In the end we put it up lying on the floor, which caused much unpleasant creaking of joints & made things significantly harder to put together because all the angles were pulled out of true. Still, got there in the end & rewarded ourselves by going for a v good curry (food on expenses! How cool is that! I clearly haven't got over the novelty yet of having a Proper Job with Proper Job accoutrements).

Saturday daytime featured the not-doing-much motif, although this was interspersed with bouts of activity, & we did dish out quite a few leaflets & talk to a couple of MPs. I got to go into the main hall & listen to John Reid talking about (among other things) Iraq. Nothing particularly new, but interesting nonetheless. During the Q&A session afterwards, he explicitly advocated a 2-state solution to the Israel/Palestine problem, which was good.

Sat evening had a Co-op fair trade wine & chocolate reception - sadly no vegan chocolate, but the wine was good. Then there was a Free Disco, which was predictably fairly dire, but Dave & I danced for a bit anyway when they played decent-ish 70s/80s. Then sodded off home due to general weariness.

Today was much more of the same, broadly, except that we got to pack up & go home at midday. It's been a pretty useful weekend, though - gave out lots of leaflets, talked to lots of activists (who were all onside, apart from one dim Young Labour type, who was all handwavy about "ooh, well, debate is all about not making decisions" (eh?) & how he was fence-sitting. We restrained ourselves from being rude), talked to several MPs who were also positive... I suspect that Proper Conference in September will be more interesting, though.


Home now; caught up on email, now going to go & watch "The City of Lost Children" (Pete's been buying DVDs again). Bit knackered; rather like wintrmute, I'm not sure I've been home before midnight for the best part of a week... & I didn't even get to sleep in this weekend, bah.

Comments

[wintrmute.livejournal.com]

i may have to beg/borrow/steal that city of lost children dvd one day.