Myself and couple of colleagues had the pleasure this week of going to a conference in Wales to learn, contribute, network, see clients and err… drink!
It started with 3 of us on a 4 hour journey to Cardiff battling the rush hour traffic on the M4. Obviously on such a journey it will involve needing the loo when it is most inconvenient and having to stop at the marvellous luxury services to experience the horrors of public lavatories and to purchase totally overpriced unhealthy crap food just to keep us going for the next few hours. Services always amuse me with the types of people you find there, visitors and especially staff. Hey I know we all have to work but the services are not really put in the most convenient of locations to where people live, so the ones that work there not only get paid bugger all, but they also have a ridiculous commute not served by public transport when they could do the same job in a local supermarket. Luckily for me I ended up choosing the till with the biggest tit behind it that after 10 minutes of trying to run something through it, realises they have no change anyway involving a mammoth task of getting someone else to bring it and then count it out – one by f-ing one. I am not a patient person at the best of times so this was absolute torture.
We made up the lost time from services hell and got to the conference safe and sound. Everything was fine until we realised that we had to register and one of us shouldn’t have been there so it involved some clever smuggling through the double doors where the big ole bouncers were keeping crowd control over the exhibitors, but we managed to get her in unharmed. Once through the doors we were faced with the exhibition stands which I love because not only do you get to network and learn lots of information……whatever, but there are thousands of freebies!!! Yeah… sweets, Elton John glasses which later had a double act at the black tie dinner, chocolate fountain, pens, flowers, spa treatments it was great. Needless to say much of the time at the exhibition stands involved munching on something while marvelling at whether or not the person on the stand cares enough about their business to sell us what they offer. The majority of them couldn’t be arsed and instead just shoved a bag of information in your hand and pray you don’t ask questions. That’s not good enough for me however, I sniff out the weakness and for those that look slightly awkward and desperate to get away, well I’m gonna ask them questions, coz that’s what I do, I am annoying and that’s what they’re there for. Plus if I stay a bit longer they will try and bribe me with more goodies!
After a few hours of pondering over stands and consuming thousands of calories it was time to enter the conference for the key note speakers. As always some are good and others are slightly less so. I have to say my interest perked a little after 30 minutes of a monotone weirdo chatting about the agenda, when a nice confident voice shot on stage followed by a rather nice looking face. Now that’s what I want to see! I was totally switched on and in fact he had a lot of interesting things to say too once I got past the shock of a well dressed, well groomed attractive man speaking at such an event. “Mmm I wonder whether he’ll be at the black tie dinner tonight?!”
The evening came and as planned we were going to make an early start. One of our clients at the event promised us some champagne that we can drink whilst getting ready which we gladly collected and another client volunteered to escort us to the evening with the promise of more drinks coming our way – who are we to refuse that?! So by about 7pm the 3 of us were already pissed and staggering our way up to meet our clients for our table. A big mistake made by the conference organisers was to say that the tables were not allocated and was a free for all – wooo mutiny at the gates! With us and our trusty clients already being pissed we had to be first to the door ready to make a run for it when they open to get the best table near the front for the entertainment, best access to the dance floor with easy access to both the casino and smoking area. Bit of a tall order but after scrambling in we nabbed 2 tables and a couple of bottles of wine and took our places for the evening.
The evening plodded on, we polished off the last of the free wine on the table so our clients ordered us another 5 bottles – oh God, it was going to get very messy. One of the Directors at our clients spent most of the night with me and a colleague, laughing over great wine, dancing with us very embarrassingly which was great fun considering we had our Elton John star glasses on for most of the night and he kindly bought me a box of cigars. Naturally I then had to escort him and a colleague to the smoking area for some idle chit chat which ended with me and him walking away complaining about people talking about work all the time because some odd man butted into our conversation and started going on about something incredibly dull in his drunken stupor that we wanted no part of. OK, back to the table to see 4 Poofs and Piano and Shirley Bassey. Hey Posh and Becks were there too, obviously not the real ones but they collared my colleague into having her picture taken with them which was highly embarrassing so I had to pretend she was not with me!
The evening was very amusing all round. There were a lot of drunken text messages to my boss which I am sure she really appreciated though would probably never say as she’s too nice (sorry about that, it is to be expected, we won’t do it again!). There was some awkward PDA messaging going on with a man from SAS. Having stolen our other colleagues PDA we sent him a dodgy message. She then got a message back saying he was on table 27 and if she wants him she can go and get him!! She wasn’t too amused but it made us laugh immensely! There were some deep honest yet loving conversations taking place which I always find myself having with colleagues in these situations, a nasty clingy odd man that tried to pull us away with him to Cardiff for the night and lots of business cards being exchanged probably due to the great fashion sense we had with the ‘Elt’ glasses. To end the evening I think we woke up the entire floor trying to gain access to our bedroom as our colleague had the key and had fallen asleep in the room, rendered practically unconscious! Generally it was a fab night. I was very good and restrained which is not normal for me especially considering the alcohol consumed and I think it is fair to say that a good night was had by all - the relationship between us and our clients is more solidly fused!!!
