First time in 5 years that the “field” have met, as a group. Generally it’s at a cheap hotel, slightly dated and usually in Swindon. This time it was in the Peak District where pints were £3.50 and the food was barely 2/5. The bread was great for soaking up the booze and the sauce of the sweet and sour and coloured water it presented itself in. Theres about 230 of us, all weird and technical, with varied interests most of which used to feature beards and ale, but now I’m one of the old guard, not quite ripe for retirement, but slowly souring with resentment that I have to stay another god knows how many years. But with a few beers inside of me, and the days worth of being talked at passed into dappled memory as a splinted group made airway out of the conference centre, this time it was Christian one, hoping to capture a few lost souls possibly. I had 3 beds in my room, no telly but only one bible. I suggest one reads and the rest listen. No time for that, the meeting went on far too long and I yearned for the  accent rich bar, folk from far and wide, some wider than others, in part due to the sedentary nature creeping into our job. I’m spending a lot more time sat at my desk these days, just when I should be accelerating into fitness, trying to keep myself alive beyond retirement and into old middle age.

Day two, not that this is, in anyway, a diary of important noteworthy events, started with a whimper. Full english still cloaked with the weird smell i’ve been conscious of since arriving, a nasal hallucination as once described by Oliver Sachs, maybe its me, or the Lidl deodorant, which is hard to believe because no one fucks up scents these days, there’s no Aye Karate on the shelves these days, people just smell of B.O if anything, did I tell you my son carries a can of deodorant in his school bag, that surprised me. So the chap who was first on, and thankfully the vinegary smell had subsided once we got into the concert hall, had a grand title and proclaimed that this was the best job he’d ever had within the organisation over his 24 years here. And after listening to 40 minutes of utter waffle-wank, he could have been speaking about  timber or car parks, made no sense to me and thankfully I spoke to my neighbours and both regarded this charlatan with scorn, as he smiled his way down the steps back to his chair, where he sat fro the rest of the morning grinning like a vacuous Bullingdon Club member, entitled and really without much of a care as to what he does or how it affects the rest of us.

Now being slightly drunk probably when I woke up, full of the joys, prior to breakfast and was now experiencing a crash which could only be remedied by the junkie’s breakfast; Coffee and Cigarettes. Note to self, the coffee makes things a lot worse if you drink too much and the cigarettes helped to bring on the fear as I started to sweat and question why I was actually here. 

Ive been known to miss the second day in the dim and distant past, turns out some other bloke missed the meeting, he slept in the corridor until 6, then found his room, passed out, showered and came down just in time for another ropey buffet lunch and the long drive back to London. His boss approached him and said,

“I know you’ve missed the talks this morning and I think we should probably talk about your behaviour going forward, but now isn’t the time”

The guy replied, loudly…

“When I drink, I drink hard. When I work, I work hard. There is nothing to concern yourself with”

And then it took me 5 hours as a passenger to travel the 80 miles or so home.