Saturday, November 2

This morning I remembered that I had eaten the sandwich I had bought yesterday for breakfast for supper yesterday. I went to the hotel buffet instead, and it was fine.

I got the bus knowing where I was going to get off. I went into the Roland Levinsky Building knowing where I was going to get my conference badge, and so on.

The conference day was very packed and very interesting. The day was packed with presentations, leaving no time at all for discussion. This was a bold choice but I thought it worked well. Discussion is usually dull, and most often a kind of jostling for position. This day avoided that completely. People talked and I listened.

Some of it was very dull and some of it was very interesting. Most of it was the latter. I chatted with Emma afterwards and we agreed to email each other about ways in which we could collaborate. I felt the day was much more than worthwhile, and was in the end inspirational.

Now I am waiting for the bus and I realise that on Saturday the 50 runs every thirty minutes and not every fifteen. I am looking at Primark’s window where they are gloating about how many meaningless awards they have won recently. Who am I to say they are meaningless, you ask. Read them and weep, I reply. They have won two prizes in the prestigious Comfort Prima High Street Fashion Awards 2012 and one in the ITV Lorraine Fashion Awards.

Prima, Primark: do I spot a connection?

I will get off the bus in the dark at exactly the right stop, and will be glad I did a dry run yesterday in the light. I will check in, print out at my boarding pass (thanks to the more-than-helpful staff at the Ibis, order a taxi, and sit talking for fifteen minutes with the barman over a pint of Marstons and a packet of dry roast nuts.

I will then watch Bruce Forsyth in action and decide that I want to be that not-dead when I am 86.