I’ve been at one of London’s ‘premier’ venues again today, hosting a conference.

In what can only be described as filthy weather, we (myself and five colleagues) set off in a minibus from our offices to travel to London. When we arrived, the rain was lashing down so hard that we all ended up completely soaked in the ten or so paces between the door of the minibus and the door of Vinopolis.

We’d never had an event at this venue before so we were very excited to see a gorgeous room with high, arched ceiling in plain brick and mortar finish – beautiful! Our delight was short-lived when we saw how disorganised the venue was and how little they seemed to think of ensuring we had a good experience. I was left feeling very pissed off at the lack of interest in things such as the fact that there was a horribly noisy aircon unit in the room, making so much noise that our delegates could barely hear the speakers – when I asked them to switch it off, they said ‘oh, everyone complains about that’ so it was clearly a real problem yet they still refused point-blank to deal with it.

Despite the shortcomings of the venue our first conference of this type was a huge success, which pleases me because it was my idea, spawned from earwigging a conversation on a train. As you know, my job involves working with people from the NHS and I overheard a conversation between a group of midwives who were excited to be on their way to a conference. A week later, we were asked to do a project with a group of respondents who are really hard to persuade to come to market research events so I knicked the idea of a conference with speakers to encourage these people to participate. It worked! (I’m VERY relieved and pleased to report.) So, my travelling to and from Cornwall to my office has already reaped rewards for our company’s business.

The conference ended at eight thirty and we then adjourned into the adjacent restaurant for dinner, which the meat eaters reported was wonderful but the veggies among us were subjected (once again) to a horrible, bland meal and in this instance was also dreadfully undercooked. So, if you’re planning to go there, only do so if you eat meat because, like so many restaurants, they clearly don’t give a shit about their customers who are veggie.

Overall though the event was a success so I’m feeling hugely pleased tonight.

Two years ago, I was shooting garlic and last year, Stella was my friend!