Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Meeting Manipulator

Ye gods, my feet haven’t touched the ground today. Which, I have to admit, is a thousand times better than being depressed and slow as yesterday was. I have arranged extraordinary meetings just in case we weren’t having enough meetings in the original schedule, put on a new meeting just to keep the punters on their toes, cancelled a meeting that nobody could be bothered to attend, and am working towards rescheduling it just in case their interest might have awakened later on. And along with all this, I have hustled for rooms and equipment, dealt with catering, completed the minutes I started yesterday and drafted a plethora of agendas just in case some darn fool out there might want to attend an additional and as yet unformattable meeting if they have a spare half hour. That’ll show ’em. Of course, I may well have forgotten something absolutely vital in the middle of it all (anyone seen the Registrar? – is he waiting for a meeting …?), but I doubt anyone will notice as their meetings will flow so smoothly (ha!) from one to the other that nobody will see the join. In my ruddy dreams, eh?… The life of a minutes secretary is a real rollercoaster, you know.

Lunchtime was spent chairing the next UniSWriters meeting. Another meeting – gosh! Nobody had done much work over the holidays, although Alan produced an utterly wonderful start to a story about a cantankerous but charming llama. Called Rasputin. Hope he finishes it, as I’m desperate to know what happens. It’s a Watership Down tale but for llamas. Yes, we do have them in Surrey, you know. Llamas, that is. Sadly, people here can actually go llama-walking in the Surrey Hills. Seems bizarre to me though. Oh, and we did a rather useful writing exercise on emotional tone and perspective, which I gleaned from the terrifying Mslexia Magazine (so it’s not all bra-burning and poetic obscurity then …). Everyone produced really good stuff from it, and I think I might even have got the skeleton of a poem I’ll work up later. We’ll see.

Tonight, I’m off to Guildford Writers (http://www.guildfordwriters.net) for the usual fortnightly meeting (argh!! Not another meeting – please, please, somebody take me away from all this!...). Think I feel well enough to go this time too. But I’m really not up to reading out anything from the novel, so have printed out a couple of pieces of flash fiction to take. I hope that will do. I do so hate reading stuff out – it never gets any easier, more’s the pity.

Oh, and it’s been the boss’s birthday today, so we’ve had chocolate cakes and baklava. Hurrah!

Today’s nice things:

1. Being busy
2. UniSWriters
3. Cake.

Anne Brooke
http://www.annebrooke.com

No comments: