12 May 2016, 8 am
I greet my children with the happy news that I am free of the shackles of the CIPA Presidency, and will now be able to spend more time at home. My daughter says: That’s nice I’m off now ’bye. My twelve-year-old son says: Does that mean we can’t have sausages for tea anymore? I say You betcha; it’s vegetables and quinoa now I’m around in the evenings. (I have only a vague idea what quinoa is, but I know it is healthier than sausages.) We then move on to more important, practical matters, to wit, the respective locations of his school uniform – and parts thereof – and his PE kit and parts thereof, which are severely lacking in clarity and sufficiency in the context of today’s school timetable. I leave this for my husband to sort: the two of them have found a way of being confused together and it probably works best if I am out of earshot. I turn instead to the tricky business of Not Doing CIPA Emails. I expect this to be quite hard, because there are a lot of people I want to recommend the militant feminist book to, but then the mother of all headaches arrives and neatly incapacitates me for the day. It feels like someone is pumping my skull full of lead, and that the weight of the lead, bearing down on my neck muscles like a car crusher, represents everything that’s worried or upset or frustrated or demoralised me during the last twelve months at CIPA. That is a whole lot of lead. It is time to retire to the sofa and be pathetic for a while.
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11 May 2016, 8.30 pm
I am sitting on a train. The train is stationary. It is nominally the 2015 to Swansea, but 2015 has been and gone without sign of progress, and Swansea seems to be a figment of the train manager’s imagination. We are Losing Time. If we are not careful, we will end up being Delayed. It is hard not to be miserable, when you have just stopped being the CIPA Pee and you really, really want to get home and have a celebratory drink, and then someone announces that due to some rain west of Swindon, the rail network is not simply losing but positively haemorrhaging time and can no longer guarantee to get you home on the same day you set out. It is not as though rain west of Swindon is an unusual occurrence. You’d have thought they’d have had a Plan B for if it rained before a train left Paddington. Ah well. It may be late, but I have been the CIPA Pee for a year and survived, and now it is Someone Else’s Problem, and right now that is sufficient to keep me smiling. 11 May 2016, 11 pm It is perhaps fitting that my last Presidential commute should be one of the worst. By the time I get home, it is too late for the celebratory drink, because everyone has already cleaned their teeth. We are most particular about toothpaste and alcohol at our house. It is dark and I am tired. So tired I can barely locate the front door, let alone the keyhole. Once again I have found the bounds of my enthusiasm, and they are right here, right now. My wonderful, long-suffering husband waves a bar of chocolate at me. This is a tactical move. If I take the bar of chocolate and eat it, all will be well. If I look straight through it, he knows to give me a wide berth. Tonight's berth will be the widest yet. 11 May 2016, 6 pm
So. I am no longer the Pee; I am the EyePeePee. Such is the Circle of Life. To celebrate, CIPA has laid on peanuts. People congratulate me on having survived. They tell me I should take a good long rest. Some of them give quite detailed instructions as to how long I should rest for and the things I should not feel obliged to contact them about while I am doing so. The new EyeEyePeePee and I exchange thank yous for all the support we have given one another and all the gin and tonics we have shared. I tell her about an inspiring book on gender inequality and militant feminism, and she promises to read it before the next Council meeting, so that we can be militant together. Because we are both patent attorneyettes, we both know how it feels to suffer from Imposter Syndrome, but we have also both discovered – each in our own way – that a well hidden imposter can cause an awful lot of trouble. Me, I have discovered that if you float in with the Biscuit Pixies, people don’t always see you coming until it’s too late. 11 May 2016, 5 pm
The last thing I have to do before I’m off the Presidential hook is to hold court over the Annual General Meeting. In front of me I have Mr Davies’s detailed notes, along with the VeePee’s not so detailed amendments. I am wearing the ceremonial swimming gala medal and several errant cake crumbs. I cannot read Mr Davies’s notes without removing my glasses, and if I remove my glasses I cannot see where I am. I opt for retaining the glasses, because there is little point suddenly starting to be in control of the situation in the final 20 minutes of a year-long Presidency. As usual, I rely on the audience to shout instructions at me, and Mr Davies to whisper and hiss and scowl at me (and to pass me handwritten messages, which of course I also cannot read with my glasses on), and in this way we lurch our way through the various thrilling items of the agenda. One of my official jobs is to present the exam prizes to this year’s clever students. It is comforting to know that we are still turning out clever students, even if the exams they take have been renamed so as to confuse people of my generation. There are no actual prizes to hand out, however, only certificates. The clever students have said thank you but they would prefer to buy their own presents, and asked for the cash option instead, like you would if your grandma offered to buy you a new party dress for your birthday. The clever students are clever indeed. I would not trust CIPA to buy me a present, whether a party dress or anything else. Another of my jobs is to announce that the membership fees are not going up this year, because Mr Davies has agreed that we can make some “efficiency savings”. I have never heard anyone say “efficiency savings” with such a dark look on his face. No ice creams then. And the VeePee’s hints about CAKE are likely to remain misunderstood for some time. My final job is to announce the results of the election (da-da-da-DA!!). Except that it turns out this is Mr Davies’s job, not mine, and I am not going to argue with someone who has such a dark look on his face. Mr Davies says that as luck would have it, there were the same number of candidates as there were positions to fill: one for Pee; one for VeePee; eight for the eight vacant seats on Council. So (ta-DA!!) everyone has been elected. If you are wondering why we went to the effort of holding an election at all, remember that in a democracy, people have to be given an opportunity to spoil their ballot papers every so often. And then – at last! – I remove the swimming gala medal from round my neck, brush off the cake crumbs, and place it duly and properly around the collar of the next mug in line. And he takes off his Vice-Presidential swimming gala medal, which also has crumbs on, for me to place around the collar of the new VeePee. Following this touching ceremony, I retire from the ceremonial dais, my work done, and our two new Officers make little speeches saying how much they are looking forward to the year ahead. And I look down at my feet to avoid catching Mr Davies’s eye, and pretend it is the cake crumbs I’m choking on. The new Pee is kind enough, in his speech, to thank me for being such a detailed President, and in particular for doing so many namby-pamby things like the diversity task force and the being nice to EyePeeReg. He also thanks me for my boundless enthusiasm. This is ironic on two counts. One is that everybody knows – surely everybody knows? – that my enthusiasm is an in-the-moment, puppy-dog type of enthusiasm that arises largely out of not understanding what’s going on, or in fact what might go on afterwards. The second is that my enthusiasm is by no means boundless, no sir. Indeed, over the last 24 months CIPA has actively encouraged me to explore where its bounds lie, and I now know exactly where that is, namely, some way short of my aspirations. Often, in fact, the bounds of my enthusiasm have sat well inside the scope of whatever daft project I was supposed to be progressing at the time. And I have wished I had some of Ms Sear’s Gantt charts, because Gantt charts are specially designed to make people carry on with a project beyond the expiry of their enthusiasm for it. 11 May 2016, 2 pm
The VeePee, the VeePee-to-be and I have been invited to meet the new IPReg Chair. To my delight, the selected meeting venue is a coffee shop. So my penultimate official engagement as Pee involves sitting on a comfy settee, drinking frothy coffee stuff and having a little get-to-know-you chat. I approve of this. Namby-pambiness is catching on. We exchange thoughts about the issues of the day and how we can help the IPReg Chair to understand how it feels to be a patent attorney. She looks sympathetic, as though deep down she recognises that a grumpy patent attorney is simply a misunderstood patent attorney. We have been saying this all along, of course. Patent attorneys are often misunderstood, although I have to concede it is not always the fault of the person doing the misunderstanding. Because this is a namby-pamby meeting, we do not stand on ceremony. The VeePee therefore feels it appropriate to drop broad hints about having some CAKE with his peppermint tea. These hints are ignored. Or misunderstood. And I take it upon myself to recommend an inspiring book about gender inequality. Which has nothing whatsoever to do with regulation and everything to do with me trying to incite militant feminism wherever I go. Finally, the new IPReg Chair explains that from now on, IPReg is to be known as EyePeeReg. She says it is daft calling it ip-Reg because “ip” doesn’t mean anything so how can it be regulated? I refrain from pointing out that EyePee is also a bit intangible and ephemeral, that it too verges on the meaningless and that it is likely to be no easier to regulate than ip. No – if she wants to be EyePeeReg from now on, EyePeeReg it will be. The important thing is to continue the namby-pamby coffee meetings. Anyway I am worried that if we don’t move the conversation on, the VeePee will start suggesting they call themselves CAKE-Reg. 11 May 2016, 3 pm After the meeting, the VeePee stomps off grumpily to find a CAKE shop. He has strict instructions about the types of cake to bring back, but when he returns to CIPA he appears to have double the number of cakes he set out for, on account of there was too much choice and he couldn’t decide. This is why he and I get on so well. The two of us – helped by the VeePee-to-Be, the Onssek and the EyeEyePeePee – valiantly tackle both the cakes that are supposed to be there and the ones that are not. 11 May 2016, 9 am
I say my goodbyes to the student flat. It was never a student flat at all, not really, and it certainly lacked the oak panelling and forelock-tugging support staff that my son associates with academia. And yet, sometimes in my pretty menopausal little head I enjoyed imagining it was. Like I enjoyed imagining I was a proper grown-up CIPA Pee. On my way out, I visit the bins with two bags of evicted rubbish. I hope no one will notice that one of the bags is sizzling. 11 May 2016, 10 am It is time to remove my name from the IN/OUT board at CIPA. This is my last day here as President. I expect, henceforth, to be more OUT than IN, and also not to be dragging my suitcase behind me when I’m IN. Not that putting my name on the IN/OUT board ever served much of a purpose. Everyone could tell whether I was IN or OUT anyway, by the ambient noise levels, and by whether Mr Davies had been moved to invite himself to a meeting in some other part of the European Union. Still, an IN/OUT board must be accurate, and so it is only proper that my name be replaced by that of the current VeePee, if nothing else to remind him of who he is and why he’s there. For similar reasons, I should probably put my name on an IN/OUT board at home now. With a view to being IN a little more often. 10 May 2016, 10 pm
Mr Davies is cross. He has spent ages writing the agenda for this year’s AGM – by changing the date on last year’s – and now the Officers are being patent attorneys about it. Specifically, the Pee-in-Waiting wants to rewrite it with the thank you speeches in a different order. This is unheard of in the history of CIPA. No Pee has ever rewritten an AGM agenda, not even me, and I have rewritten most everything else I’ve come across. Mr Davies smells Trouble. Our main problem is we cannot find time for everything. The VeePee-in-Waiting says he has an hour’s worth of acceptance speech. Then there is my three-volume end-of-Presidency speech. And I presume there will also be a little something from the Pee-in-Waiting, even if it isn’t very detailed and if all the thank yous are in the wrong order. And at some point we have to fit in our guest speaker, who is the new ITMA Pee and might want to talk about being Chartered 125 years too late. I suggest we include an interval. Unlucky Gary offers to sell ice creams. This makes Mr Davies even more cross: he has not budgeted for AGM ice creams. 10 May 2016, 7 pm
I have located one of my children. He is in an oak-panelled cafeteria, wearing a Voldemort cloak, and he has invited me to dine with him. This is all something to do with getting a degree, apparently. Funnily enough, nothing has changed since I was here thirty years ago. The same curious mixture of the sedate and the ludicrous prevails. A candlelit meal, accompanied by grazed plastic jugs of tepid tap water. Grace in Latin; plates of stew. A top table, resplendent with bewildered-looking Fellows. Uniformed waiters with subservient forelocks – serving doughnuts. It is comforting to see that for all its ceremonial gavels and AGM rituals, CIPA is by no means the least modern of the British institutions. After we have dined, my son reminds me that another part of getting a degree involves studying for exams. I do not ask what rites and rituals accompany this aspect of his university career, suspecting that some things may after all have changed in the last thirty years. I return to London, where I will check the plastic pot situation and see if there is something non-school-dinner-like for supper. I am still hungry. I do not like stew. Even by candlelight. 10 May 2016, 4 pm
I am on a train, reading a book about gender inequality. And I am becoming, by the minute, an increasingly militant feminist. The key thesis of the book so far is that all the tosh about male and female brains being “hardwired” differently, so that women are better equipped to do the drudgery and men to do the Being Important, was potentially wrong after all. It was convenient; it was comforting (to some); but it was just a little bit scientifically and sociologically suspect. As someone whose brain has never been “hardwired”, much less equipped to do drudgery, and in any case has a tendency to short-circuit under pressure, I have always suspected this. The thing is, guess what, you can manufacture gender differences by priming people before you experiment on them. For example, if you tell people before they do a maths test that men normally do better in it, the men will do better in it. If you tell them that women are expected to perform better, the women will do as they’re told and perform better, often ten times better. To extrapolate, if you go round telling people that they are rubbish and incompetent at their jobs, but would be really really good at looking after your children, they will turn out to be much better at looking after your children than they are at their jobs, and will eventually give up their jobs to look after your children. Try it. There are of course women for whom this doesn’t work. These are the ones who turn out to be rubbish and incompetent at their jobs but also not really fit to look after anyone’s children, including their own. Such people can sometimes be found a niche in an off-beat profession such as patent attorneyism. Honestly I never told my husband he was rubbish and incompetent at his job. He chose to do the childcare because he felt it would be safer that way. Which brings me to something else the book says: that the women who do traditionally male jobs, like in science and engineering and Being Important, tend to cope with their own and everyone else’s surprise by pretending they are not proper women. I can relate to this. Underneath my high-powered, analytical, spatially aware, technically competent and quantitative pseudo-male exterior, I am actually extremely ladylike, but I keep this a big secret in order not to undermine my skill with a calculator. It may be difficult to imagine that someone surrounded by so much straw and crumpled clothing is actually a walking, talking epitome of all that is traditionally considered feminine, but may I suggest you are not trying hard enough? No really: I do have some nail polish. Somewhere. It is pink, I believe. It has also solidified in the bottle. But, unusually for a woman, I can explain why. 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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