I can't face spending Friday night grappling with hotel wi-fi in the Grantham A1 Travelodge, so will write all about my exciting travels when I get back, and spend tonight with Marcel Proust. I'm on to book two, about a quarter (or maybe ten per cent) so far is spent dissecting the snobberies, intrigues and cruelties of a provincial dinner party, and I'm still hooked. It is full of brilliant throwaway comments, as when Proust observes that his ghastly hostess, who despises anything learnt, has learnt to despise learnt things.
I am going to Grantham for a Woodland Trust 40th Anniversary Conference. I didn't bother to go to their last volunteer's jamboree, because it was such a long drive, but I thought that this time I would. Getting myself seated in a strange hotel outside Grantham in time for a 10am opening address was do-able but would be stressful, starting from north Essex the same morning, so I'm going up today, and will have a look at a National Trust house and Grade I listed garden in the area. Actually, I think they might be next door, judging from the names, and descriptions of how to get there.
The Woodland Trust e-mailed me a multi-page full colour Adobe brochure about the event, which I was too mean to print off in full. It doesn't include key bits of information, like what time you should arrive if the formal proceedings kick off at ten, and whether there will be coffee beforehand, or whether you have to wait for that until the first break. That doesn't matter so much to me, as I'm staying just up the road, but I hate conferences where you travel miles to get to them, starting very early, and find you have to wait until you've listened to an hour and a half of stuff before you can have a hot caffeinated drink. Still, I'm looking forward to a conference, with name badges, and role specific workshops. I'm pissed off I didn't get into the afternoon session with Ted Green on the Ancient Forest Myth. Ted Green is practically God, and I've been a member for over twenty years and a volunteer for over ten. Such things apparently count for nothing. Clive Anderson will be dropping everything to chair the panel debate in the afternoon and deliver the closing speech (according to a rather breathless e-mail two days ago). So he ought. He's the President, and this conference has been booked for months. It will be entertaining to see him, though.
So that's it. Time to hit the road. Have a nice weekend, everybody.
Supposed that office carpet cleaning service doesn’t exist this day and you have hectic schedule would you want to file a leave or find person and pay wages just to do this now that we are all professionals.
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