17 June 2015, noon
The CIPA Officers gather around the too-small table with a picnic lunch. Each has interpreted the term “picnic lunch” differently. The VeePee, for instance, is partial to sausage rolls and crisps and ginormous chocolate buttons, but because he is on a diet he is sharing the chocolate buttons with the rest of us. The EyePeePee is there too, and the EyeEyePeePee, whose butties have sooty fingerprints on them. In the meeting the other Officers tell me off again for sending too many emails. They tell me we are going to have a new System for dealing with this. I am to write a single email, but I am to keep writing it throughout the week until it is a ginormous email, like the chocolate buttons, only not for sharing. And then once a week we are going to have a telephone call to catch up on all the things that are in my ginormous email. The telephone call is going to be at 9 pm. I know why they have done this. It is because they know that by 9 pm I will be a gin and tonic or three short of a clue where to find the ginormous email.
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17 June 2015, 11 am
We meet with top people from FICPI-UK. We talk about how we can join forces to sell the UK profession abroad. Then we talk about how we can join forces to teach namby-pamby business skills to UK practitioners. Then we have to end the meeting because we are in the CIPA Members’ Room and the chairs are too uncomfortable to sit on for more than an hour. For those who have never ventured into the Members’ Room, let me explain. It is at the end of a long corridor, and it seems designed to make you wish you had stayed in the corridor and just carried on walking. It has two ambient temperature settings: (a) too hot and (b) too cold. Neither of these is particularly related to the ambient temperature setting outside, which makes it difficult to dress for a trip to the Members’ Room with any degree of confidence. In the Members’ Room there is a table that is never big enough, no matter how little you intend to do at it, and a selection of chairs. The chairs also fall into two categories: (a) uncomfortably low-slung, so as to prevent you ever quite reaching the too-small table, and (b) broken. Only, the broken chairs (b) are characterised in that you cannot see they are broken until there are bits of dowelling round your ears. There is also a tea and coffee tray. Recently the CIPA tea and coffee policy has been updated and we no longer provide flasks of ready-stewed beverages, just a supply of hot water and a selection of things to put in it. The best one is sugar lumps. As a chemist, I enjoy seeing how many sugar lumps you can put in a mug of hot water before super-saturation occurs. Last week I managed 28. This DIY version of corporate hospitality has met with some approval, if nothing else because you cannot complain about something you have made yourself. 15 June 2015, 10 am
I receive a reply to my letter to the new Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise. She says Thank you for offering to meet me, to talk about IP and small businesses, but as you will understand I am far too busy for that. As you will understand, nothing in the world interests me less than IP and small businesses so I would prefer to do the ironing that day. Actually, she did not use those exact words. But I got the message. It is time to learn better ways of communicating, to those not yet familiar with it, the intoxicating thrill of the IP system. 15 June 2015, 2 pm Unlucky Gary has ordered me some new, Presidential, business cards. There are about a million of them. Roughly. I do not think that if I were President for six whole years I would be able to find enough people to hand them to. And I am most definitely not going to be President for six whole years. Mr Davies said so. In the afternoon some important IPO people come to a meeting at CIPA. I try to palm them off with my business cards but they insist on only taking one each and they don’t seem overly keen even then. One of them complains that the cards are printed on both sides, which means they are useless for writing shopping lists on the back of. Everyone knows that the only reason people keep business cards is so that they can write shopping lists on the move. We have a little chat with the IPO people about unitary patent renewal fees, which CIPA think should be exceedingly low. The IPO don’t disagree with us, but they don’t agree either. The problem for all of us is not being psychic, and thus not knowing how industry is likely to react to different fee levels. Though it’s reasonable to assume low fees will be more popular than high ones. The best thing about the meeting is that the new VeePee, Mr Rollins, is there. Mr Rollins has been busy doing travelling for the last few weeks and so hasn’t been around to witness my first rubbish attempts at being Pee. But it is good to have him back, because Mr Rollins knows stuff. There should always be at least one out of the Pee and the VeePee who knows stuff, I feel. Mr Rollins has some new business cards too. He also has about a million of them. Roughly. 15 June 2015, 6 pm The man sitting opposite me on the train home does not need to write his shopping list on the back of a business card. He is dictating it to someone on his phone. Loudly. The shopping list seems to revolve around meatballs. There is also a need for mushrooms. There are a number of places from which the meatballs and the mushrooms might be procured, and one of the options is to buy the mushrooms in a tin. There must be the right number of meatballs and they must be put in the fridge. I do not know at what point the mushrooms are to be united with the meatballs because the man does not dictate the recipe as well. Which many of us, in the carriage around him, find a trifle disappointing. The man sitting next to me, meanwhile, has an overactive sense of entitlement. There is an arm-rest between us: obviously it is his. Obviously it is not a boundary so much as an invitation to explore where the boundary might be. Without a second’s hesitation, he decides the boundary is several inches into what I regard as my space. I will not tell you what I do in response. Suffice to say it is not very dignified, and fairly not very British, but it does at least allow me to carry on typing without folding my arms against my sides like an apologetic paper clip. 16 June 2015 I go to see the dental implant man again, and it is not a social visit either. During the appointment he calls for a screwdriver and a torque wrench. I am worried I have ended up in Kwik-Fit® by mistake. Still, it probably wouldn’t do any harm for someone to adjust my tracking. 13 June 2015
Well, well, well. Today is World Gin Day. This is a shame, because I was hoping to catch up on world domination and other CIPA work, but even CIPA cannot come between a gin drinker and a once-a-year opportunity to drink gallons of the stuff. I start early, so as to get ahead. By 5 pm I have made a plausible stab at drinking myself under the desk. The inbox is but a distant memory. I appear to be using the Bye-laws as a pillow. I am mumbling snippets from my latest talk for the IPO, in a sing-song kind of way. I cannot even pronounce “yardarm”, let alone see past it. Life is sweeeeeeet. (Only joking. Actually I have done plenty of CIPA work already and only had one gin. So far. And the world domination project is progressing well; I have even made a Gantt chart for it. The rest of the time I was busy falling in love, making other people fall in love, and crying.) 11 June 2015, 1.30 pm
I chair the Birmingham regional seminar. I have forgotten to bring any sound effects so I have to keep the speakers in hand by being fierce in other ways, largely by scowling. It seems to work. Except in the case of the Council members present, because Council members do not generally have a high regard for fierceness, or indeed for the current CIPA President. At the end I present two exceedingly clever trainees with their exam prizes. This is a delightful but also humbling experience. The clever trainees have told CIPA what they want to spend their prize money on, but CIPA is still looking for the best deals on eBay® and for the time being, they have to make do with certificates instead. Over pre-dinner drinks, a fellow Council member gives me some advice for my year as President. He says, Concentrate on the short term wins. By this I presume he means things like biscuit supplies and the odd webinar or two. I presume I should not worry my pretty little head over big picture issues like the prospects for the UK profession or my plans for CIPA to monopolise the entire IP world. If ever there were a conversational equivalent of a gauntlet hitting the ground from great height, this is it. I immediately resolve to reverse CIPA into WIPO before the end of the year. 11 June 2015, 10 am
I have been offered Welsh cakes and Scottish shortbread, Dutch apple cake and posh pastries, mince pies, Garibaldis and pink wafer party biscuits. But today in Cheltenham, my Meet-the-Biscuits campaign reaches new heights. Today I am offered Corporate Biscuits. How cool is that?? These biscuits have been iced in corporate colours and embellished with a corporate strapline. They have been wrapped in pretty cellophane packets and stamped with a Best Before date, just like proper food. Of course I cannot possibly eat any; that would be sacrilege. But I take one home as a souvenir. And when I write my report for Council, to show how valuable my Grand Tour has been, I will append the Corporate Biscuit as evidence. As to whether these corporate consumables are likely to win the President’s Award for Cakes and Biscuits this year, obviously I cannot be drawn. |
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