1 March 2016, noon
The highlight of today is a meeting of the Approved Regulators’ Forum, or ARRRF as we say doon ’yur in the Wess Curntry. The ARRRF is where the top people from CIPA, ITMA and IPReg meet to explore, at the highest level, the extent and the implications of their mutual misunderstandings. Usually it is a fairly sombre affair. Sometimes it is a fairly heated affair. CIPA and IPReg have a history of mutual misunderstandings that, to be honest, they have had to work quite hard together to sustain. But today’s meeting is different. The Chairman of IPReg, Mr Heap, is retiring and this is his Last ARRRF. Which is a bit like the Last Larrrf, only not, but happily for Mr Heap it means this is the last time he will have to meet with CIPA Council members except six stiff drinks into his retirement party. Today Mr Heap is not interested in exploring misunderstandings. He is too busy admiring the farewell cake that the ITMA Pee and I have presented him with. I have tried to convince people that the ITMA Pee and I made this cake together, but the Patisserie Valerie® box is a bit of a give-away. And anyway the cake looks just too elegant to have been anywhere near a domestic anti-goddess like me. Mr Heap is well chuffed with his cake. We all stand round it and have our photos taken to show that the extent and implications of our mutual misunderstandings are insufficient to interfere with our appreciation of patisserie. Then Mr Heap points out that we still have to eat our main courses before we’re allowed cake, and there is an awkward moment when the mutual misunderstandings almost get the better of us. We learn that Mr Heap would have liked to be a chef, had he not become an IP regulator with a shedload of mutual misunderstandings to deal with. Looking at the way he wields the cake knife, I can quite believe that; it makes me relieved we have put our misunderstandings aside for the moment. We all agree the cake is splendid, and therefore could not possibly have been made by the CIPA Pee. The ITMA Pee says the custard stuff is particularly splendid. This shows that unlike Mr Heap, he is never destined to be a chef. The VeePee takes minutes, but there is a big custardy gap in them while he enjoys his slice of cake.
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1 March 2016, 8 am
I will be spending the next three days in London. Over those three days I will undergo a succession of virtually back-to-back meetings, some of which I will have to chair, which means I will have to concentrate. I cannot wait. For it to be over. 26 February 2016, 1 pm
We made it to our appointment. Mr Lampert made it too. The VeePee, however, overslept and finally responds to our emails saying we are to pass on his apologies. In his defence, he has spent the last few days in Washington trying to get the whole world to agree on a harmonised grace period. I imagine that could well make a person loathe to get up of a Friday morning. Anyway, our appointment is with the Society of Chemical Industry. The SCI has an extremely posh building on Belgrave Square, right in the heart of where my son and I were last week taking photographs of F-type Jags. Belgrave Square is a leafy green square which is quite literally crawling with F-type Jags, and Bentleys, and Rolls-Royces, and which is further encircled by the most splendid buildings one could hope for, their facades sporting colonnades and flagpoles and other most British-looking embellishments. It is the type of square which makes you realise that Britain really doesn’t need the European Union, so long as you don’t care about the plebs. The SCI has some tenants in its extremely posh building. And it has some space for some more tenants. And to cut a long story short, it has hatched a plan with Mr Davies which involves CIPA telling the landlord at 95 Chancery Lane to stuff his market rates and his badly-carpeted corridors and his deelapidayshuns where the sun don’t shine (ie in the CIPA library) and moving to Belgrave Square. Because it is a lovely building, with plenty of lovely office space and some wonderful rooms we could hire now and then for meetings and seminars and parties I mean OGMs. And when we hold our seminars and, er, OGMs, we can invite the industrial chemists along too, which is called Synergy. Or Self-Catalysis. Or something. I can imagine what certain members of Council will say to this plan. They will say: but Belgrave Square is not near to the Inns of Court. It is not near to where the barristers live. It is not near to where the judges live. Ah, but, Mr Davies will say, it is nearer to where the government lives, and The Queen. It is more splendid-looking. It contains some chemists, which is called Synergy or Self-Catalysis or something. It has a board of past-Presidents on its wall, just like ours only BIGGER, and a picture of The Queen too, just like ours only less frumpy. On the walls up the splendid staircase, there are line drawings of famous chemists. And the beards on these chemists are one hundred times more impressive than anything ever seen on a patent attorney. It has a flagpole, for heaven’s sake. We could get ourselves a CIPA flag!! Also, Mr Davies will say, the rent would be considerably cheaper. And in addition, we would not have to pay to rent badly-carpeted corridor space, and we would only need to rent the posh meeting rooms and lecture halls when we actually needed them for posh meetings and lectures, which is better than at 95 Chancery Lane where we pay for a massive red-walled hall and then hold committee meetings in it which involve five people, a coffee pot and a telephone. It is just not good business, he will say, to pay the Chancery Lane market rate for a big empty room that occasionally gets to house five people and a coffee pot. And which has a naff front entrance that looks like the side-door to a pub (correction: that is the side-door to a pub) and a load of scaffolding outside and office space that depresses the hell out of our employees. However many legal bookshops there are up the road. The SCI people treat us like royalty. They have laid on a massive picnic to show they can do In-House Catering. There is a waiter to bring the food to our seats and refill our glasses, which I have to say is different to any picnic I’ve ever been on. There is also a massive amount of food, because the VeePee is not there to eat his share. We get shown round the building and given complimentary copies of their journal and treated to a presentation about what the SCI does. Apparently its members are some of the most important people in the chemical industry. Would we really prefer to rub shoulders with barristers? 26 February 2016, 10 am
I return to London. Mr Davies meets me at King’s Cross looking very much the worse for wear. I have no sympathy. He should not have thrown that massive party last night, whether or not it was disguised as an OGM, and in particular he should not have turned it into a tequila drinking competition. He reminds me that after last year’s East of England regional meeting, I did not get to bed till 4 am and felt ever so slightly fragile doing my meet-the-members visits the following day. I could not even face the biscuits I was offered. We agree not to pursue this conversation any further. So I talk to him about other things instead. Proper, grown-up things such as any President and Chief Executive might discuss, to do with regulation and the lease on 95 Chancery Lane and the Journal and next week’s Council meeting. And he looks not the remotest bit interested in any of it. I gently push him onto an underground train and prop him up against a pillar, hoping I can get him to our 12.30 appointment without having to turn him on his side and roll him there. 25 February 2016, 8 pm
I take my son to dinner, because he is a student and therefore never gets enough to eat, or at least, never gets enough to mop up the alcohol which his intensive academic activities require him to consume. Although his halls of residence include a kitchen, the microwave no longer works after he tried to boil an egg in it (yes, reader: with the shell on – an improvised explosive device of the highest order). Self-catering opportunities are therefore limited and parental sustenance essential. Following the sustenance, he shows me round Cambridge. This makes me feel old. It is thirty years since I showed my own parents round, and it is amazing how little has changed. Except that today’s students do not have to communicate with one another via written notes in pigeon holes, because they can text and email and post pictures of what they’re eating (or what they've exploded prior to eating) for all the world to see, and the Internet of Things ensures that wherever they are, their every wish is fulfilled. My son still has a pigeon hole, but I get the impression he is not expecting to find any pigeons in it. |
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