19 August 2015
I am two-thirds of the way through what is euphemistically known as a “staycation”. A staycation is what happens when you wanted to go somewhere glamorous on holiday – or at least somewhere sunny – but failed to organise anything in time and couldn’t get familial consensus on The Most Rubbish Place To Drag Reluctant Children Along To. This leaves you, in my case, facing the prospect of a fortnight’s worth of day trips to Wookey Hole, Weston-super-Mare and Ye Olde Cheddar Cheese Shoppe, which are, ironically, pretty much top of the list of The Most Rubbish Places To Drag Anyone Along To. To the unbounded delight of said non-consensual family, I have therefore devoted my staycation to practising my domestic goddess skills. I have cooked a meal, for example. The starter was a medley of locally-sourced crisps and seasonal cocktails. The main course was a symphony of hand-cut pizza slices served with a red wine jus (the trick here is to serve the jus in separate glasses, so as not to make the pizza bases soggy). For the dessert, we had a trio of deconstructed cakey bits on a bed of cookie dough ice cream, lightly drizzled with guilt. Followed by Ye Olde Cheddar Cheese and Ye Olde Malte Whiskye and some shards of Weston-super-Mare rock. I think. I may have mis-remembered the last couple of courses. I have also packed up three picnics, arranged some flowers in a vase, and listened to some knock-knock jokes. The picnics were mainly cakey bits, though no one complained. The flowers were mainly in the positions that gravity seemed to want them to adopt anyway. The knock-knock jokes were mainly not jokes at all. In between bouts of being a goddess, I have done some long walks, some of which ended up taking slightly longer than my map reading skills had forecast, and drunk plenty of long cocktails, some of which ended up taking all night. The children were unimpressed by the long walks. I do not know what they thought of the cocktails, but nor do I care. I have also been very strict about not doing emails. At all. This may lead some of my CIPA contacts to ask their IT managers why their inboxes have stopped working. When I return to my own inbox next week, I am expecting to find that CIPA has been absolutely fine without me, but that a lot of people are now duly awaiting my immediate response yours respectfully. Or perhaps – it is a slim chance but it is a chance nonetheless – I will have been deposed by a Chancery Lane-shattering coup and replaced by somebody sensible and dignified. Then I would have to confess to my non-consensual family that they were about to see a whole lot more of my domestic goddess skills and my deconstructed cakey bits. There might well be consensus on their response to that.
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12 August 2015
I have stopped publishing my diary in the Journal. Now it really is a Secret Diary. I am still writing it, but it cannot cause trouble any more. Lots of people email to say they are sorry, and to thank me for all the stuff I wrote about biscuits and straw and tractors and gin. They say Thank you for telling us what CIPA is doing without us having to read the bits of the Journal with the long words in. It is heart-warming to realise that most CIPA members are just ordinary folk who are no better at taking things seriously than I am. There is hope for the profession yet. 5 August 2015 On the menu today: biscuits from the EyePeePee, with a meeting of the Congress Steering Committee on the side; lunch with the other Officers, with a discussion about CIPA strategy on the side; coffee with the EyePeePee and two of our new Council members, with a talk about Council on the side. I wish people would stop filling my refreshment breaks with meetings. The two new Council members tell us that although it is sometimes quite fantastic being on Council, it is also sometimes quite hard to get a word in edgeways. They tell me about a system for running meetings which involves having one person to make sure you keep to time, and another person to make sure you keep to the agenda, and a third person to tell participants to shut up if they are carping on and on about something tangential to the issue at hand and making everyone else cross. I think this is a great idea. I say Bagsy the job of telling participants to shut up. They say You already do that anyway. On which note, we head back for an actual Council meeting. At which, as the Chair, I am at least in theory responsible for keeping to time, keeping to the point and keeping the peace. To complicate matters, there will be a tube strike later, so everyone will want to go home early. I resolve to make it an ultra-short meeting and this will call for some extreme chairing and I am not sure our insurance extends to extreme chairing but I will give it a whirl anyway. I locate the ceremonial gavel to help me keep order. Near to the ceremonial gavel I find a ceremonial mallet. I do not know why we have a ceremonial mallet. Perhaps it is for when we need to erect the ceremonial tent, for instance if we are doing an archaeological dig to find some long-forgotten AGM minutes. I decide it will be useful to have a mallet as well as a gavel, because sometimes a gavel is just not enough to keep 26 patent attorneys on track. I begin the meeting by glaring round the table and explaining how it is going to work with the ceremonial gavel and the ceremonial mallet. I remind people about the tube strike and about how I have been away from home for three days and am going to get back to my family tonight if it kills me. Some of the more competitive Council members take this as an invitation. But we do indeed have the fastest Council meeting I can remember. Helped by the fact that everyone else wants to avoid the tube strike too. This is roughly how it goes: Me: Is everybody here? Good. Me: Does anybody have any conflicts of interest? Good. (We always have to ask this. Nobody actually knows what it means. It is something to do with Governance.) Me: You’ve read the minutes of the last meeting. I presume you approve them. Good. Me: You’ve read the papers for the next item. I presume you’re all OK with them. If not, email your comments to me next week. (I will be on holiday next week.) Me: Good. Next item. Mr Davies: Wait; I haven’t finished writing about the last item yet. Me: Write “ditto”. Me: Next item. You’ve all seen the proposal. Email your comments to Mr Davies. (Mr Davies squeaks.) Me: Good. Next item. Nothing to report. Me: Next item. You’ve read the committee reports. The Business Practice Committee wants us to approve its new member. Anyone have a problem with that? (Fierce look.) Good. Me: Next item. You’ve all read the officers’ reports. Aren’t they exciting? Me: Next item. List of people wanting to become members of the Institute. Any objections? Good. Mr Davies: Wait! Me: Get a move on, man! We haven’t got all day. Me: Date of next meeting. 2nd September. See you there. Bye! And I am off. You cannot see me for dust. And straw, of course. Ten minutes later, Mr Davies finishes writing the minutes. He can embellish them with discussion points next week. 4 August 2015, 1 pm
I have lunch with the Professional Development Working Group. The Working Group has defined its objectives (which are, appropriately, to provide some professional development opportunities) and is now raring to go and planning lots of webinars. I am there to provide continuity. So when they look at the list of Webinars We Did Before they can ask me Why did we do these webinars? Unfortunately I cannot remember why we did most of the webinars and I have a sneaking suspicion it was more to do with who volunteered to speak than any clear sense of purpose. So I waffle on about learning outcomes and development matrices, and then I choose the largest sandwich on the lunch plate so as to be unavailable for providing continuity for the rest of the meeting. 4 August 2015, 4 pm Now I am at the IPO again, with the EyePeePee, the Chief Eggsek and our Chief Shouty Person Mr Lampert. This time we are meeting some people who want to help us promote the UK IP system – and the UK’s IP professionals – in other countries. It becomes apparent that we will need two things before we can really start conquering the world:
The IPO people ask us if there are any more countries or regions we would like to conquer, apart from the ones where the German attorneys have already laid down their metaphorical towels on the sunbeds of the patent world. The others give me a look that says I should probably be unavailable for providing an answer to this question. 4 August 2015, 6 pm I meet with the ITMA President to talk about gin and then mezze and a bit about CIPA and ITMA, although not too much because it would put us off our falafel, and then a bit about the long-term future of the IP professions. I think this counts as a Productive Meeting. Anyways, it is more sophisticated than comedy cocktails and socks. 3 August 2015, 10.30 am
I am doing meetings again. First I meet with the VeePee over a coffee and a slice of fruit toast, and he tells me about his holiday, which makes me almost as grumpy as when Windows® 10 was taking care of me. (It has since got bored of taking care of me and indeed stopped taking care of anything.) Then the VeePee and I go to see some top IPO officials. The IPO are making sure to meet up with the CIPA Pee regularly this year, to check what I am up to and whether the government needs to intervene to save the UK’s IP system from disrepute. So I tell them what I am up to and they make notes and exchange looks but I’m sure everything will be fine. No, really. One of the things we talk about is my plan to take some CIPA people on a day trip to Newport. The IPO are very excited about this visit and we plan lots of meetings and discussions. They will be facilitated discussions; not that patent attorneys generally need a lot of facilitation when it comes to expressing their opinions but the IPO people say the facilitator is more versatile than that and he can do crowd control too. While the IPO are getting excited about the meetings and discussions I am thinking through the more important aspects of the visit, like hiring a coach and what to put in the picnic hamper and who we are going to allow to sit on the back seats, and whether the facilitator is also qualified to do crowd control on the move. 3 August 2015, 2 pm The VeePee and I are meeting with the remaining CIPA staff, ie the ones who managed to get out of seeing us last time but have since been mercilessly tracked down and pinned into the CIPA Calendar by Unlucky Gary. Once Unlucky Gary has pinned you into the CIPA Calendar you are unlikely to get away without a very serious excuse, like being Mr Davies or Ms Sear for example. 3 August 2015, 6 pm My next meeting is with Gwilym Roberts, and it is to discuss stuff about Council and stuff about the EPO course on oral proceedings, but mainly it is to discuss the Battle of the Bands. Mr Roberts has chosen the venue for our meeting. He says the cocktails are very good here. They are certainly very strange. Mine is a lurid crimson colour, like a theatrical prop from The Three Musketeers, and it has a sprig of garden in it which I think is thyme. It smells suspiciously of Earl Grey tea. This feels wrong somehow. If I’d wanted afternoon tea I would have set out earlier. My comedy cocktail is accompanied by a comedy waiter, who deposits it in front of me with such force that the top half lands on the table instead. The table now looks like a Musketeer has just met his end there. Don’t worry, says Mr Roberts, I have a sock. Excuse me?? I have a sock, says Mr Roberts. He does indeed have a sock. He removes it from his trouser pocket and gallantly mops up the comedy cocktail spillage. I do not like to ask why he has a sock in his trouser pocket. There are some things about Mr Roberts which are likely to remain a mystery for all time. Then we have a plate of nachos, because I do not like to do meetings without food, as everybody knows. I say please put the sock back in your pocket now; it is putting me off my guacamole. 1 August 2015
Windows® 10 is taking care of some things for me. Never has a caption on a display monitor filled me with less confidence. An hour later, I return to investigate exactly what things Windows 10 has decided needed taking care of and just how much care it has chosen to take over them. I find that it has taken exquisite care of most of my favourite settings. I stomp around the house being grumpy until even the cat-that-shows-me-its-bottom runs away to display its wares in someone else’s garden. The rest of the family do not have that option so they bring me a gin and tonic instead. I am trying to read the Legal Services Act 2007 to find out what I have to do now that I am President of an Approved Regulator, so the gin is an attractive alternative. I leave Windows to deal with the Legal Services Act whilst I take exquisite care of the gin. 29 July 2015
This time Mr Davies has excelled himself. He has made us a website for our diversity task force, which is henceforth to be known as IP Inclusive on account of that is our brand name and we have a logo and we have even done a trade mark clearance search. Not only is there a website, there is also a Twitter® handle, which is @IPInclusive, funnily enough. And our Twitter account has the logo attached too. It is amazing what you can do with social media these days. All we have to do now is finish doing the stuff we have been talking about doing, like the diversity charter and the support groups and the training materials and the videos to tell the rest of the world how wonderful it is having a career in IP. We have nearly completed these things. And we have the added incentive of a launch party to make sure we do. At that point, we expect an explosion of IP Inclusive logo-bedecked tweets. All of them from Mr Davies. I ask Mr Davies if I can have access to the @IPInclusive Twitter account too. He is nervous about this. I have a bit of a reputation when it comes to social media, because I say outrageous things that everyone is glad someone else said, apart from the people who would rather no one had said them at all. It’s OK, I say. Honest. I will not tweet anything outrageous. I will just tweet about launch parties and liquorice allsorts and stuff. Mr Davies replies with something that sounds like a Chinese proverb, and which roughly translates as “If someone else tweet from your Twitter account you in heap big trouble.” Really, I think he is being unduly sensitive. 30 July 2015 Now Mr Davies has excelled at excelling himself. He has spent all night learning PHP code, DNS setting writing, sub-domain creation and HTML 5. Or at least, that’s what he tells us. Personally, I have no idea what he is talking about; he could have been learning the ancient Japanese art of pastry origami for all I know. But as a result of whatever it is he was learning in the dead of night with a large whisky for company (and quite possibly he has simply copied it from a YouTube® video, and it had nothing to do with PHP sub-domain setting at all), he has created an online forum on our new IP Inclusive website, and on this forum we can all share our thoughts and our documents about diversity. Of course, his main reason for doing this is he wanted somewhere for me to put all my daft ideas that wouldn’t involve them clogging up his inbox every morning or covering his desk with fluff. 27 July 2015
Today I send 164 emails. No, really: I do. The only thing stopping Mr Davies from coming straight over to the Wess Curntry to kill me is that he is off ill with food poisoning. I suspect his inbox is not making him feel any better. The problem is, I am working from home. When you work from home you have to keep writing emails, otherwise people think you’ve stopped working and ask you to do things like shopping and cooking and listening to inane jokes. It is amazing how productive the threat of another knock-knock joke can make you. Most of the emails I write are part of an elaborate procedure for getting wacky ideas onto the desks of other people who are content to let them sit around gathering fluff, rather than on my desk where they absolutely have to be done YESTERDAY, which is just exhausting, for all concerned. So far this year I have dispatched about 90 ideas to gather fluff on Mr Davies’s desk and about 40 to Mr Lampert’s. Quite a few are with various committees, including the Education & Professional Standards & Fluff Committee, the Joint Business Practice & Fluff Committee and the Administrators & Fluff Committee. Ultimately, they all end up on Unlucky Gary’s desk. The ideas, that is. Not the committees. 28 July 2015 Mr Davies sends me 165 emails. No, really: he does. Twelve of them arrive before I have even got out of bed. I guess this is revenge. I guess Mr Davies is not feeling ill any more. I put them at the back of my desk to gather fluff. Hah! 24 July 2015
This week I have been mainly going to meetings. Again. In between the meetings, I have been rummaging in my suitcase to see if I have any bars of chocolate left and whether the clothes I have packed are suitable for meetings or will have to be worn under an anorak. These are just some of the meetings I have been going to:
16 July 2015
It is Thursday, and so it is Southampton. I have left the Onssek and Herman the German Satnav behind, and found my own way to the seaside for the morning. The Chief Eggsek and the EyeEyePeePee are there too, and we are meeting with yet more CIPA members and eating yet more biscuits. At this rate of consumption I will need more than a Presidential escort; I will need a Presidential hoist. One of the meetings is with IP administrators. We all chatter excitedly about improving their professional status and career development prospects, and generally about recognising at last that however brilliant chartered patent attorneys might be, they are basically useless without the folk who remind them to meet deadlines. Mr Davies is particularly excited by the talk about career prospects. There is not much Mr Davies doesn’t know about further education and professional development. He is eager to pioneer learning structures and assessment standards that will be revered across the globe. When Mr Davies has calmed down, he and the EyeEyePeePee talk to our hosts about Southampton and Portsmouth. From this I learn that Southampton and Portsmouth are several hundred miles apart, a bit like Manchester and Leeds, and the clever folk all come from – hang on, I’ve forgotten which it is. And the stupid people come from – well, the other one. And the key is in the postcode, which either begins PO or SO, and people will kill for the right postcode, which is – I’ve forgotten that too. Mr Davies will be able to tell you. |
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