6 May 2016
Today I send several emails chasing people about things they haven’t done yet, in which I go on to announce that I am stepping down next week and taking a nice long holiday to recover, so won’t be there to help with the follow-up. This feels good. I am also planning an out-of-office reply that gives the names and contact details of the new Pee and VeePee, and explains that they particularly like receiving photos from other people’s holidays. 8 May 2016 Mr Davies is tweeting about some Women in IP awards. He queries why the current CIPA President is not among the UK’s Top Twenty Women in IP. It is not clear whether he is cross with me for not being Top Twenty enough, or with the awards organisers for failing to recognise the service I have done to the IP world by staying away from client work for two years. I feel I should explain to him that you do not get to be a noteworthy Woman in IP simply by eating biscuits with other Women in IP. You also have to do stuff like protecting and enforcing your clients’ IP rights, or influencing the laws by which such things are done, or at the very least generating erudite texts to help other people do such things. A not-so-secret diary does not count as an erudite text. Not the way I write it, anyway. And the last time I offered to protect and enforce my clients’ IP rights they said no you’re alright, thanks, we’ll lock them in the tractor. I cannot make this explanation fit into 140 characters. But I’m sure someone else will tell him. Twitter® is not usually short of people putting other people right. 10 May 2016, 10.30 am My train is running late. But it’s alright: there is a good reason. My train is running late (“This is your Train Manager speaking”) due to its having lost some time. I see. It must be difficult when you start losing time. It’s one of those things you just can’t prepare for. One minute you’re barrelling along fine, the next you’re losing time, and then before you know it the lost time is making you late. People need to get better at spotting time-losing before they run into it. There should be time-loss detectors on the front of all trains, and anti-time-loss systems in their control panels. Drivers should have training in time loss management. Do I sound cynical? Forgive me. 10 May 2016, 1 pm I am back at the student flat, for perhaps the last time. When I stop being Pee I will stop needing to be in London so much, and thus stop needing a place to retire to with my sad person’s plastic food pots and cocktails-in-cans. There are several bits of my life that took up residence in the flat and now need to be evicted. These include: a tatty pair of running shoes; a travel hair dryer that has all the pneumatic impact of a bicycle tyre with a slow puncture; various essential cosmetics such as shampoo, shoe polish and that oily stuff that stops your skin falling off; six cans of Red Bull®; a nearly-empty bottle of gin; some muesli; some fruit and nuts, intended to make the muesli a bit less like a treatment regime; and a large amount of cling film. The cling film is not strictly mine, but the other two ageing patent attorney students are not around to claim it, so tough. Also in the fridge – and equally in need of eviction – I find a plastic pot dating back to the week of the student get-together. M&S® had rather creatively labelled it “Sizzling Fruit Salad”. It is sizzling now alright, but in a biochemical kind of way that there is a proper equation for. I don’t think that is the kind of sizzling M&S had in mind. I will pop it in the CIPA fridge tomorrow. It will feel at home there. 10 May 2016, 2 pm I suppose I ought also to do some cleaning and laundry and stuff. The supposal does not last long because first I have to finish the gin. But it lasts long enough for me to trip over the vacuum cleaner flex a few times, and that in turn is enough to make me decide that it is a rubbish vacuum cleaner and I want no more truck with it.
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