13 April 2016, 3 pm
Mr Roberts has asked me to write something for his “Six Things We Love About…” column in the Journal. To prevent me using my initiative too much and writing “Six Things We Love About Gin”, he has given me a title. I am to write “Six Things We Love About Being the President of CIPA”. Darn. Six whole things. Hmm. Eventually, with the help of some Red Bull® and a thesaurus, I come up with the following ideas: 1. You get to meet all sorts of interesting and important people. In my case, these are people who would not otherwise have come within 100 yards of me, for fear of catching a Wess Curntry accent. Or because of the Red Bull fumes. Some of them are not entirely sure who I am or why I am there: I enjoy watching them try to work it out. 2. You get to influence the shape and direction of our beloved Institute, and thus of the entire UK patent profession, at the highest possible strategic and policy level (going forward). Ha ha; in my dreams. Better scrub that: Council would be livid if it thought I’d been attempting such skulduggery. 3, sorry, 2. You work right at the throbbing (yes, throbbing!) heart of the IP profession. You know everything that’s going on, even if you don’t understand it. You will never want for CPD again. So long as you stay awake in the right meetings, that is. (No one can tell you which are the right meetings. You have to guess. It is a game.) 3. People have to listen to you. For me, this is quite a novelty. By implication, of course, you then have to think of something appropriate to say. If this is a problem, there are plenty of folk at CIPA who can tell you some appropriate things to say. They can also give you a list of things Not to Say, but it is quite a long list and I don’t always bother sticking to it. This is why Mr Davies keeps a roll of ceremonial gaffer tape. 4. Wherever you go, people pay for your drinks and lunches and dinners. Sometimes these are posh affairs, with almost as many courses as pieces of cutlery (there is always one extra item of cutlery, to test for Imposters. It doesn’t bother me: I use the extra one to pick the straw out of my ears). If you consume all these free refreshments you get to acquire a Presidential waistline. And then you will need to acquire a new, wider-fit Presidential wardrobe. People will not pay for that. 5. You get to write letters on CIPA headed notepaper. Dear reader, you have no idea how exciting this is. Mind you, people at CIPA have no idea what chaos I’ve caused with the last batch I wrote. 6. You get a Presidential badge and lapel pin and business cards. Plus a Presidential swimming gala medal, or rather, a kit of parts of a Presidential swimming gala medal and if you’re lucky a tube of Presidential super glue. Also, you get to use the ceremonial gavel in Council meetings: this is excellent fun if you regard the ceremonial gavel as a percussion instrument as opposed to a procedural device. So, these are my six things to love about this delightful role. I am only allowed one Thing We Hate. I find this somewhat limiting. But in the end I decide I ought to bow out graciously, so I scrub the 99 things I’ve already written down – which were in any case probably libellous – and instead put: 1. You don’t have much time to spend with ordinary CIPA members. Like, last year I wandered all round the country letting myself into folks’ offices and stealing their biscuits, reminding them that CIPA existed and why they were so glad to be members. This year I have to be Dignified and Stately and go where people tell me to and be careful not to drop straw. To be fair, not everyone would regard this as a Thing We Hate About Andrea Being the CIPA Pee.
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