I am Now Going To Ask Miranda to Bring Us To A Close

In a welcome break from alternately humdrum and hectic office existence, I am sent to Birmingham for a conference. High-flying industry speakers are promised, and there is even loose talk that there may be a minister present. Besuited and with shirt freshly be-ironed, I stand alone on Levenshulme station just past dawn, watching the sun rise cinematically over the Al Waalis Banqueting House and Wedding Parlour (or as it may be known to older readers, the Palace Nightclub). Presently, the 7:04 all stations to Buxton hoves into view.

One large americano from Stockport station cafe and two chapters of a slim French novel later (because this is all part of the guilty pleasure of being sent to conferences in faroff cities, you have to make the most of the opportunity to impress your fellow longdistance commuters by trickling overpriced cardboard coffee onto your freshly ironed shirt and peering enigmatically into the middle distance just outside of Stoke in response to a particularly evocative passage in an impressively battered European paperback) I am arriving at New Street. Pausing only to take a hasty snapshot of the front of the train (a special request from Frankie, who, on being told I was off to the Midlands for a meeting on a train, breathlessly exclaimed - 'OH! I wish I had your job!') I navigate my way through the Palissades and emerge into the astonishing late September sunlight and into a Birmingham quite unrecognisable from the city I knew the best part of 25 years ago.

After perhaps 20 minutes of wandering the pedestrianised walkways in the vague hope that the Birmingham Hippodrome may reveal itself from the shadows of the neverending concrete spacescape of the Second City, I give in and ask a student boy- who in a fine advert for the Youth Of Today, is obliging enough not only to lead me more or less to the door, but also to listen politely to my disconnected reminiscences of watching Pop Will Eat Itself in Digbeth in 1987 and missing the last 558 bus back to Wolverhampton. I arrive at the conference venue with 10 minutes to spare, and even have time to slip into a telephone booth, Superman style, and put on the black and white patterned tie that I save for weddings, parties, and the sort of conferences where the presence of Ministers of State is rumoured.

I needn't have bothered. The Minister of State (a clue: he's part of a Tory dynasty, and his father inspired a Spitting Image Puppet with a hairstyle in the shape of a Walnut Whip) is conspicuous by his absence, and, presumably as a result, shirts without ties in the style made fashionable by Tony Blair appear to be the order of the day. I hasten through the foyer and (once again in the style of Superman, except this time in the gents toilets) take the tie off again. There follows a conference, which follows the time-honoured format of six and a half hours of Death By Powerpoint, punctuated by fifteen minute intervals (they are called 'breakouts', which tells you all you need to know really) during which the etiquette is to network furiously while trying not to make it too obvious that what you're really interested in is the biscuits (there's also a wierd subdetail of conference etiquette, the nuances of which I have never properly mastered, around deciphering the name badges of female delegates without arousing the suspicion that you're lingering on their, er, backdrop, for a millisecond more than is appropriate among Guardian-reading professionals during the hours of daylight).

I manage to avoid death by powerpoint, partly by taking furious, caffeine-enhanced notes on my powerpoint handouts, which, in an effort to remind myself when back at the office who said what, say things like 'Possibly Scottish Ex-Indiepop Girl Turned Executive With a Heart of Gold, Tripped Over High Heels When Approaching Podium', and 'Diffident Hugh Grant-Alike, Halting in Delivery But With Public School Sourced Sense of Entitlement'. There is a closing speech ('I am now going to ask Miranda to bring us to a close' are the exact words of the ageing louche of a compere), and a final breakout in the foyer, this time featuring the lifesaving addition of complimentary, lottery-sponsored glasses of chilled chardonnay.

And then, back into the unseasoble teatime sunlight of the Second City. Which would have been the end of the story, except that the direct train home to Manchester is delayed (engineering works at Temple Meads) so what with that, and the glass of chilled lottery-sponsored chardonnay, and the two pints of strong lager in the bar at New Street (which by the way absolutely hasn't changed since 1986) I end up making one of my once-a-decade pilgrimages back to Wolverhampton, scene of my indiepop halycon days. Which I'm not sure turns out to be a good idea, for reasons which... I think we will save to the next post, don't you? Until then, then...

Comments

[Tim]

Your way with words never let's you down, does it? Marvelous stuff as always, damn you.

[looby]

Hurrah hurrah hurrah - my tear ducts are about to reach as happy an Ending as the saucily introduced Miranda promised.

[Iain]

This site is possibly the only place in the world where the promise of a story about a pilgrimage to Wolverhampton would actually leave me quite excited!

[ISBW]

'Breakouts'???

[Sue-Ann]

love the little vignette of reading on the train.

And love the title :-)

[Martin]

Lest I join the ranks of the adulating crowd praising another unquestionably high-standard update about Nothing Much In Particular, I feel I really must ask: why is it necessary to go into the gents to take off a tie?

[Jonathan]

Martin- if there is one thing I have learnt in my years of conference attending, then it's that adjusting one's collar in the foyer is the height of bad form for a gentleman. Quite beyond the pale, like stuffing a packet of biscuits down your trouser leg during the morning breakout, or peering over a chap's shoulder to read his Powerpoint handout notes.

Everyone else- thank you for your comments and sorry that I haven't gotten round to responding to any of them, what with being immersed first in the 1980s then in the 1940s. What I have got for you though is another post so if you are so minded please comment on that instead I do read and appreciate every single one as I think you know!