6 November 2015, 2 pm
The Chinese visit over-ran. A black cab driver then treated me to a guided tour of London’s road closures, diversions and traffic jams, with a complimentary ticker tape of political comment. The net effect is that I have arrived back at the EPO proceedings workshop a little later than planned, to wit, after the lunch break, and politically flustered. I sneak back sneakily into the canteen, and help myself to leftovers. Although I am not obviously connected to a conference, and indeed could easily be the local bag lady, the staff appear happy to let me do this. They even clear my plate away afterwards. It strikes me that this would be a good way of getting a free lunch most days of the week so long as you were good at bluffing. And after my conversation with the Chinese visitors, I regard myself as a bluffing aficionado. 6 November 2015, 5 pm I have spent the afternoon wandering between mock opposition hearings to see how well the delegates are doing and to make sure the tutors are still awake. In each of the hearings I helped myself to a biscuit or two, to supplement the lunch leftovers, so that by the end of the afternoon I am strung up like a toddler on Haribo®. In the final plenary session, the tutors and I share the benefit of our Great Wisdom and Experience around presenting at oral proceedings. I actually have very little Wisdom and Experience in this field myself, but as we have already established, I am good at bluffing. The delegates probably think I have taken part in 500 hearings and won them all. There is little to gain, I feel, by correcting them. My words of wisdom are about putting your key points clearly and concisely. There is nothing worse than an advocate who makes a good argument in the first thirty seconds and then spends another five minutes repeating it, embellishing it and eventually grinding it into an unrecognisable mush. Good arguments are not like homeopathic remedies: they do not benefit from dilution. Their vital energy is not released by adding gesticulations and sock fluff. To emphasise my own clear and concise key point, I tell the delegates about my lunch-time meeting with the Chinese. About the need to express yourself in bite-size chunks and then wait, for agonising minutes, listening to the echo of your own inanities while the interpreter struggles to translate the sock fluff. You have to make your point clearly and then move on to the next, I say. You cannot waffle. Interpreters don’t do waffle. Mr Roberts gives me a look that says: now it is time for you to shut up too. I give him a look back that says: you are only here for the entertainment. I’ll bluff as much as I like, thank you.
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