I have just got back from doing a woodland charity talk. The audience were the Colchester supporter's group of another conservation charity. They must have had some publicity up, because my mother was very struck a couple of days ago that she had seen my name on a poster. However, it was their first lecture of the autumn season, and they had managed to put the wrong date in their magazine.
The meeting was held in a rather spraunchy modern church. I arrived with plenty of time to spare, having allowed for traffic that didn't materialise, and getting lost, which did but only slightly. I'm always nervous about missing turnings in densely urban situations, in case I get swept miles away in a one-way system and end up taking ten minutes to work my way back. The organisers were there ahead of me, which was cheering. It can be a little lonely, sitting in the car outside a deserted hall and waiting to see if anybody comes to unlock, or if you have got the wrong place.
The organisers were not happy, since the church had dispensed with the services of the caretaker, who used to be very helpful, and they were left to set up the PA system and screen themselves. Initially the chairman couldn't find the light switch, which didn't bode entirely well. I volunteered to do the screen, since it was the same as mine and I knew how it worked. In fact, I'd put my own in the car anyway. The person who booked me to speak did mention that they had a screen, but I'd forgotten, and from long habit would rather go prepared. Somebody had set out the chairs in advance, and they filled the entire church. I rather suspected that we weren't going to get that many people.
The sound system proved less amenable than the lights and screen, and with five minutes to go to the start of the meeting they had to telephone the vicar, who arrived very promptly. I think it was the vicar. He was wearing a fleece done up at the neck so it was impossible to see if he had a dog collar, but his grey trousers looked plausibly ecclesiastical, and his attitude to the church proprietorial. And rather cross, as if he might have been half way through his supper or in the middle of putting his children to bed when he was called out. I would not say he exuded clouds of goodwill to his fellow man. The fixed microphone attached to a lectern turned out to be broken, and the vicar said crossly that it was because people didn't use it properly. The vicar got the clip-on microphone to work and disappeared back to whatever he was doing before, leaving us to get on with it.
I have met people, from a business or academic background, who pride themselves on never using amplification when addressing meetings, and consider use of a microphone a shameful professional weakness. I suspect their typical audiences are two to three decades younger than the ones I tend speak to in the clubs I get invited to address. They like you to use the sound system because their hearing aids can tune into a hearing loop, and even speaking VERY LOUDLY and VERY CLEARLY is no substitute for that. Having to talk to a group of strangers (not a room full, but twenty-five or so looking rather lost scattered around the middle of the great sea of chairs) using a microphone you have never used before in your life, knowing that nobody in the room understands how it works if you have any problems, is not the most relaxing way to begin a talk.
The chairman conducted an extraordinarily short extraordinary meeting, to approve putting membership rates up by a pound a year to cover the increase in postage costs, and I was on. We got the microphone turned up to the right level (I had checked with the vicar where I should clip it before he left) and after that it was all right. I did see the deputy chairman checking her watch several times, but I think she was worrying about when to go and start doing the teas. There were some sensible questions, and they said they enjoyed it, which is about as much as you can ask.
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