Home...for now

I’ve just begun the 4 hour journey back to Reading from the wonderful city of Manchester. Not that I’ve actually seen any of Manchester, having spent the entire time either in my hotel, or presenting, but I’m sure it’s a very nice place...
I got back from Bath at about 10pm on Sunday (after missing the second half of the Scotland/Argentina game, grr) where I’d spent the weekend with Lu. As you may have guessed from my previous post, I took her to the Spa there for a treat – and given her illness (and, more importantly, given the amount of rugby on TV) we didn’t really get out much other than that. Got to meet/re-meet her housemates too, who seem quite an amiable bunch – they like Guitar Hero at least, which is always good. I’m almost certain that they like me much more since I declared (and proved) that anything they could do on Guitar Hero, I could do far better with the guitar behind my head, because awe of such skill always overcomes impressions of arrogance, or so I assume.

Left for Manchester at 6am the next morning, getting in as the day of presentations I’d organised was already partly underway – fortunately someone else had done the introduction for me, I probably should have planned for that in advance though. My talks went down well, though the day could have been a bit smoother – we’d (I’d) originally advertised it as being specifically for folks in the Public Sector, but then with low attendance figures, had to make it open to all. Unfortunately not everyone noticed this change so a few of them came along hoping for more specialised content than was actually provided. We were also unable to get our SQL guy to do the talk on SQL Server, so we had to have someone else do it, who really got grilled when it came to Q&A time.

After that was all over and I’d collected up the feedback sheets (mostly good, other than the two points above), I got back to my lovely hotel for the night, the Marriott. For some reason (I’m sure I didn’t book anything too mad) I ended up with a room the size of a small flat, with two double beds and three sofas. This all sounds very impressive, but my usual methodology for measuring the decadence of a hotel room is number of light switches, and last night’s was a bit of a disappointment in that area, only having 9. The best to date (with work at least) is 12, which was quite simply silly. I find number of light switches to be an extremely accurate measurement, as it not only accounts for the size of the room but also for the amount of money that went into wiring it up, and putting in extra lamps wherever possible to justify the room rates. I had my dinner in the Player’s Club restaurant, which has managed to combine gourmet cooking with home-style portions, and was absolutely superb. A bit pricy at £25 for a course and a drink, but worth every penny when the expenses account was paying. Half a roast duck, caramelized peaches, stir fried noodles with red peppers and various vegetables – perfect. A bit sad, admittedly, eating in the hotel restaurant on my own, but the traditional tactic of bringing a book along saved me from too many pity glances from the well-dressed couples about, and the waitress’ pity was probably what convinced her to let me play the sublime grand piano they had there for a short while.

Today was another early start, and a lot more intense, as there were only two of us presenting and we went into some real technical depth. The agenda went to pot in about 5 minutes, after I asked everyone attending what sorts of things they wanted out of the day, but I think between myself and Dave, we managed pretty well, with lots of laughs and joking in the middle to prevent the day from dragging on too much. The feedback sheets I got everyone to fill out for this one were extremely good, with nearly everyone commenting on how happy they were with our presentation skills and technical knowledge – the only complaints were about the coffee, which I naturally had nothing to do with (it’s great being constantly surrounded by servants, I might look at employing some at home...).

So, that’s that, sorry I haven’t been blogging too much recently. Remember, I’m in Birmingham over the weekend, and London on Thursday, if anyone fancies catching up for drinks or the like.

Xx