9 October 2015
Back at base, trouble is a-brewing. Someone on Council is cross that the EyePeePee and I have made plans to go to the AIPLA meeting without getting permission from anyone first. This is my fault, because I didn’t think the Officers needed permission to go out and represent the Institute at one of the key foreign meetings of the year. I kind of assumed this was part of the job description. I did not want to do it, because I am not the globe-trotting gregarious type and anyway I don’t like the Presidential swimming gala medal, but I had braced myself for having to go anyway. Well apparently I was wrong. Apparently these international liaison trips may be part of the job description, but you still have to get permission to put yourself out to go and attend them. You still have to get permission to abandon your family for a week, endure jet lag and network yourself to exhaustion. And of course it will only be Premium Economy permission, because you are a President not a VIP, as evidenced by the aforementioned swimming gala medal. Having worked solidly on CIPA business yesterday afternoon and evening (for which I also failed to get permission); having got up early specially to clean the flat I am staying in so as not to expose CIPA to the costs of a Presidential hotel room; having not seen my family very much at all the last couple of weeks nor expected to see them much for the next couple of weeks either; having earned myself incessant back-ache by lugging a suitcase virtually everywhere I go, I reach the point of actually being a little bit hacked off. So after cleaning the flat, I get an early train home. There are meetings going on today too, but I figure I have not obtained permission to attend them so I’d better not go. The VeePee and the EyePeePee and the Chief Eggsek step valiantly into the breach. I will love them forever for that.
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7 October 2015
It being the first Wednesday of the month, I have to do back-to-back meetings. First up, a Congress Steering Committee meeting. This takes the form of a “debriefing”. A month ago, we all swore blind we would never do another CIPA Congress ever again. Today we say, Yeah, that was fun, let’s do another one, only let’s make it bigger and better than ever before. People have short memories. Second up, the Officers get together to exchange news about all the rubbish things we have been up to. The VeePee is not there because he has damaged his foot, and the EyeEyePeePee is not there because he is fed up of going to CIPA every first Wednesday of every month, but they both of them dial in to the meeting to exchange news with the EyePeePee and me. Mr Davies takes notes, which he will subsequently eat so as to destroy the evidence. Third up, a Council meeting. We talk about regulation, and about the EU referendum, and about various other things that Mr Davies will subsequently eat the notes about. And afterwards, we have drinks with the CIPA staff, to give them the chance to meet Council members and see for themselves why I get so terrified on the first Wednesday of the month. Several of these charming Council members take the opportunity to tease me about my “Welcome Your Judge-ness” speech tomorrow. They tell me I will have to wear a gown for the occasion. They tell me we have some gowns at CIPA for exactly this purpose. I remember being shown these gowns once before, several years ago, by Mr Pope, and I was not any more impressed with them then than I am now. They are way too big for me. When I put one on, as the others insist I do, the overall effect is of a pile of black curtain fabric that has landed heavily on a little person and made them even littler. Later, I email the ITMA President, who is also making a speech tomorrow, to confer about sartorial arrangements. We agree that gowns are overrated. 8 October 2015 I go to court. I have never been to court before. But it is not so impressive really: just a load of seats and a ceremonial dais and some microphones and a few books on a shelf. I do not know why the books are there. I didn’t think judges needed to look things up. Several barristers from the wigs-and-gowns section of the room make witty and confident speeches that cause raucous laughter among, well, lots of other barristers who are present. They all have posh accents. Eventually it is my turn to stand up, wig-less and gown-less and un-posh, to say something on behalf of CIPA. I say: My Lord (because this is how you address a High Court judge – see, I have done my homework), welcome to your new job. I say: I don’t know anything about you myself but some other patent attorneys who’ve worked with you think you’re a thoroughly nice man. I say: From a patent attorney, that is praise indeed. There is some polite sniggering in the wigs-and-gowns section, which the person doing the shorthand later records as “(Laughter.)” I say: My Lord, you are renowned for your expertise with vacuum cleaners. And parts thereof. (Laughter.) I say: My Lord, the UK is a centre of excellence in all things IP-related (I am wittering by now) and that, My Lord, is mainly due to our fantastic IP judges, and we are glad you are going to be a fantastic IP judge now too. The new judge – who is wearing a red gown but still looks a little bit like a load of curtain fabric has landed on him – says Thank you very much. He means Thank you for stopping, not Thank you for starting. Well, that’s one more thing I’ve done to raise CIPA’s profile. An excellent morning’s work. 5 October 2015
No sooner have I delivered my Congress opening speech, than I am required to write two more. I continue to find it bewildering that a liability such as myself should be allowed to go out into the world and make speeches on CIPA’s behalf. I can only think that the sooner Mr Lampert finishes our new Communications Strategy, the better, because although the Strategy will say lots about going out and being shouty, surely it will also say something about the quality of the shouting? The first speech is to welcome a new judge to the High Court. I have only met this judge once, last week, when I had a mouthful of canapé and was therefore not at my best. Also I have never been to the High Court. I am, therefore, about as unqualified to write and deliver this speech as a scarecrow. Except that I am the CIPA Pee. And this is just one of the things that the CIPA Pee has to do. It’s the Law. After I have practised my “Welcome, your Judge-ness” speech, I have to practise one for the week after, which is for women inventors. I have decided to address the women inventors on the subject of “Women in IP”, because at least I am a woman and I work in IP, which will make it harder for them to challenge what I say. It also makes the speech easier to write, although only just. 2 October 2015, 5.15 pm
I drag my ten-ton suitcase back to Paddington to catch the train home. CIPA Congress 2015 is over, and after a week in London I can finally return to the parts of my family that have not yet left to live in the lap of luxury as so-called students. It has been an absolutely fantastic Congress. Here are some of the highlights. 30 September 2015, 12.30 pm
Unlucky Gary and I go for lunch. It is almost exactly a year since he joined CIPA and I figure if he thinks too carefully about this he might just leave. So I treat him to a bowl of pasta and a diet coke, to say thank you for everything he has done to help me keep my life on track since I became President. I fear it is scant compensation for what he has had to put up with. I consider asking him why he sighs a lot. But actually, it is obvious why he sighs a lot. He works opposite Mr Davies and next to me, and the only thing I have ever done to help him is to make a mug of tea now and then. He receives approximately 12½ emails per hour from me, averaged over any 24-hour period, and about the same number from Mr Davies but with more swear words in. I think I would sigh a lot too, if I were Unlucky Gary. 30 September 2015, 4 pm One of London’s most unfriendly taxi drivers deposits me outside the hotel where CIPA Congress is to be held. His idea of customer service is to flick the “boot open” switch from the comfort of the driver’s seat and hope that someone else will remove my ten-ton suitcase for me. Or perhaps his idea of customer service is that it is a bad idea. He is already miffed that I asked him to help me put the ten-ton suitcase in the boot in the first place. I think he would have preferred me to strap it to the roof bars for him instead. The hotel is a posh hotel – although obviously not as posh as my son’s new student lodgings – so I am looking forward to relaxing in my room for a few hours and practising my speech for tomorrow. It turns out, however, that the posh hotel is not quite posh enough to have a functioning booking system. So although there is a room ready for me to relax in, they do not know which one it is. They do not know who I am or indeed whether I am booked in at all. They can do nothing. The hotel is, at the moment, less a hotel than a rather posh waiting room. I wait. The concierge has my ten-ton suitcase, which he has promised to bring straight to my room, except nobody knows which my room is. There is no wifi: the staff think this may have gone down with the booking system. There is no mobile phone signal either, although to be fair, this happens pretty much everywhere I take my phone which suggests it may not be entirely the fault of the hotel. In the lounge bar, they are playing background music of the type designed to emphasise the passage of time: a kind of fatuous metronome of bass notes. I am not a happy bunny. I have to go to a drinks reception tonight and I will need at least two hours to make myself look presentable for it: I am already trying to decide which parts of my beauty- and skin-care routine can be ditched if I am only found a room half an hour before having to leave it again. I think I can probably dispense with the bit about squirting on perfume and the bit about ironing the dress that’s been screwed up in a ten-ton suitcase since this morning, but probably not the bit about deodorant. 30 September 2015, 8 am
It is going to be one of those days. When I wake, there is water dripping into the flat. At first I think it is coming from the tank above the hot water cylinder. It turns out it is coming from somewhere above the tank, possibly the flat above, or the flat above that, or potentially even the sky. But it is landing in my flat, which is the important thing. I ring Mr Davies for advice, because as everyone knows, Mr Davies is a plumber as well as a chicken-keeper and a Chief Eggsek (excuse the pun). He uses some technical terms and I pretend to understand them. He asks me to describe the component parts of the apparently un-watertight hot water system. I say there is a big black tank at the top and a big yellow tank underneath and a lot of water dripping into a roasting tin that I have placed on the floor. I say there are two pipes, a big one and a little one. Gently, Mr Davies talks me through establishing which of the pipes leads to which tank. We agree I will turn off the water and empty the tank, although not into the roasting tin because the roasting tin is unlikely to hold the entire contents of the big yellow tank and the big black tank put together. Mr Davies also suggests I take the lamb chops out of the roasting tin, which is probably a good idea. I attempt to turn off the water. This proves impossible because the flat is in a hard water area and the stop-cock has chemically bonded itself into the open position. I know this because I am a chemist. I think Mr Davies will probably get cross with me if I ring him again, especially as it is Congress soon. So I ring up my friend who is the owner of the flat and he rings up his son who lives near the flat and the son rings up a friend who knows a bit about flats and eventually they visit the person in the flat above who thought it might be fun to install a water feature on top of our tank. And eventually everything gets resolved. So who needs plumbers after all? 29 September 2015
I meet with a group of practice directors. They are in a very grand building where you need a PhD to work out the lift system. Even the toilets are hidden somewhere only a genius could find them. Yay! I am a genius! It is a friendly meeting. One of the practice directors gives me a box of fresh-laid eggs, because he keeps chickens and yesterday we were talking about chickens. Or rather, he and Mr Davies were talking about chickens, and I was getting bored. Being given fresh-laid eggs is almost better than being given cakes and biscuits, although not quite. Mr Davies keeps chickens too, but Mr Davies has never given me a box of eggs. I spend the rest of the day in the flat I am borrowing, dealing with emails and writing letters and boiling eggs. I did the same thing all yesterday evening and all the evening before – apart from the egg boiling, of course. Any normal, even half-way functional patent attorney would have finished the job by now. Not me. 27 September 2015
We have deposited our second child, who is ever so nearly an android, at university, where he is going to study computer science and learn to be a complete android. His new student room is more luxurious than most of the places I stay when I am using the CIPA budget. In fact, his ensuite alone is more luxurious than most of the places I stay when I am using the CIPA budget. When I went to university, the closest you got to an ensuite was a sink hidden in a walk-in cupboard. It was half a term before I even found it. The nearly-an-android does not look back when we drive away. I take this to be a good sign. He is already thinking about how to connect his computers to the university network. He is not particularly interested in unpacking his clothes. At this point, I am supposed to return home to suffer “empty nest” syndrome. What is worrying me most about the empty nest is that it contains a router that only the nearly-an-android knew anything about. The rest of us haven’t a clue what to do when the broadband goes down. Instead of returning home, though, I make my way to London for a week of CIPA-related excitement, culminating in the annual Congress. So I need a train ticket from Cambridge to London. And I would also like to buy a train ticket from London Paddington to Bristol Parkway, ready to make a rapid getaway after the aforementioned Congress on Friday. I explain my requirements to the person who has been allocated the task of selling tickets at Cambridge station. The Paddington-to-Bristol part stumps her. “From which London station?” she asks. And then adds, hopefully, “King’s Cross?” Because she has heard of King’s Cross. Because that is where the trains from Cambridge go to. I would rather she had a slightly broader view of the UK’s rail network. “No, Paddington,” I repeat, patiently. “Which Paddington?” Now it is me that is stumped. “London Paddington. The train station. Where there are trains and… stuff.” I wait while she finds London Paddington on her machine. The machine is the size of a 1920s bus conductor’s ticket machine, with similar computing power it seems. “Ah. Paddington Underground?” “No. Paddington Overground.” I do not think the Underground extends quite as far as Bristol yet. I wait some more. “I’m just checking whether it goes through here.” “No,” I say – and my voice is perhaps a teeny bit tetchy – “Trust me: the London Paddington to Bristol Parkway train does not go through Cambridge.” This is worse than talking to the satnav. “Have you done this journey before?” She seems uncertain that it is even a possibility. “Yes,” I say, wearily. “Just a few times.” “It’s showing me several different prices,” she says, peering at her 1920s ticket machine. I am encouraged by the fact that the machine has found any prices at all, but dismayed to realise I am supposed to help her choose which one is right for me, this being something I usually expect the railway staff to do. I am tempted to get out my own ticket machine, which is a 2012 smartphone with access to National Rail Enquiries®. We compromise. I buy my Cambridge-to-London ticket, aware that if I let this transaction go on much longer the Cambridge-to-London train will have left without me anyway, and we agree that I will buy my London-to-Bristol ticket, should Bristol Parkway turn out not to be a figment of my imagination after all, at London Paddington. Overground. On Friday. I proceed through the ticket barriers with some relief. It is depressing to think that one of the UK’s top-ranked universities has to be reached via one of the most backward train stations in the country. |
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