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.
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