Brighton

Meant to update at the weekend, but spent almost the whole weekend asleep, because the week at conference was so tiring. I'm not exaggerating - on Saturday I got up at 11.30am, went back to bed 3.30-6pm, then to bed at night from about 10.30pm and slept all the way through. Sunday I was slightly more awake, but mostly watching TV as it's all I could manage. Thankfully I feel much perkier now.


My hotel for the first three nights was lovely - only a Holiday Inn, but it's apparently a 4 star hotel, and the room was really nice, with an inviting bathroom, which is important to me. I got upgraded to an executive room too, which was cool. Annoyingly, we had to move hotels halfway through, and the last two nights were spent in the Quality Hotel, which was really shitty in comparison, with a room of half the size! It was crappier than the Travelodge I stay in when I go to Leeds. Pah. Thankfully, both hotels offered an all you can eat full English breakfast, which was brilliant for the first four days, but by Friday I couldn't face anymore grease and ate cereal instead. This may also have something to do with the fact that we had two all you can eat Chinese meals, and one all you can eat Indian meal. They were so good at the time, but now... no more all you can eat. It just means I stuff myself to the point of feeling ill to try and get the most out of my money. The Chinese place had a chocolate fountain with marshmallows to dip into it, which was excellent! I also managed to eat rhubarb crumble two days in a row, which I was proud of. This week I am eating many healthy things and no grease or fat, in an effort to counteract the effects of last week. So anyway, food was a major theme.

Conference itself was interesting. I'd been expecting, from what people had said, to be sitting in a room with a bunch of old white men, but really, it wasn't too bad. In both conferences, but especially my departmental one, there were lots of women, many of whom got up to speak. Also, both of the presidents are women, which helps, I think.

Department conference was more relaxed, whereas the national one was much more crowded, stuffy, and uncomfortable, and more formal. National was weird, there were huge political debates which were really interesting to listen to, and then there were also boring, tedious motions about changing one line in the rulebook, which really sent me to sleep. Going from one to the other, you could tell it had that effect on many people, as they all scuttled out to get coffees. Heh.

I never expected it to be so tiring. But sitting listening to people give speeches, albeit small ones, for seven hours a day, is really knackering. I didn't want to do much in the evenings except have my tea and sleep, although I did manage a walk along the beach the one night it wasn't raining, and a walk on the pier one evening when it was raining only a little.

On Friday we finished at 12.30pm, so I did get to explore the city a bit, and go in lots of fascinating little shops - I'd really like to go back for fun one day and explore properly. I went into a shop where they were making fudge right there behind the counter, in huge vats. The whole place smelt amazing. I found a good secondhand bookshop, which made me very happy, of course.

Now I'm back at normal work, which at the moment seems very easy compared to last week, although I'm sure it'll get tedious soon.