The second half of august started with a bit of a switch, for the best part of the last fortnight I’d been the NEC member at training events. Now I would have training in media and public speaking myself. The main reason for doing this was that for the last two years I’ve been told I’m not allowed to do anything in terms of well, media and public speaking, was because I haven’t had the training. Right, forget anything I’ve ever done before I became an NEC member, I haven’t had the training. But I wasn’t offered the bloody training until now!

The first was the public speaking training in Leicester. While this was training in writing and delivering speeches, it was really for most was coaching for the priority campaign launch at the end of the month. There had been arguments about the order of the speeches, whether we’d need separate introductions and conclusions and all sorts of bunfights. I was more worried about whether my bit would get done, or end up pushed into reporting next year. With the speech though, no problem, fine, much to the surprise of some, which was much to the disgust of me!

Next was media training in the NUJ HQ. That was fun, especially getting the chance to grill some of my NEC counterparts about the things I would ask them from a journalists perspective. Not wanting to devalue the work of the tutors involved, I did get the feeling that I wasn’t exactly making the best use of my time with both tutors more or less saying the same thing themselves. Oh well, another hoop jumped through.

There had been an NEC meeting to throw in as well, which never really seemed to get past the campaign update. This stalled over whether we should have a national demo or not and whether NUS Conference voted not to have one or not. Yes a bizarre debate to say the least, especially when no-one could really answer the question what we were going to get out of having a demo.

Next up I was off to Scotland for the ‘NUSSL Informal’, a day of training with a trade fair, a night out and what passes for an AGM. I was going up a day early as Mel Ward had asked me to come up and have a look around Forth Street. So I went up on the sleeper, a new experience, well the first time I’ve been on a sleeper in Britain anyway. At least no-one would wake us up in the middle of the night for a passport check.

It was the first time I’d been to NUS Scotland, and met up with Keith in the station, as he was on his way out to look at a potential conference site in Dundee. When he left, I went back to the station for a shower and went to HQ. There was one minor problem, there was no-one to let me in. Well there was, but they were in the basement and didn’t realise I was there for about 20 minutes. Of course the person who would be on the door had gone off with Keith to Dundee. One thing I noticed while stood outside. The building is called Forth Street, but is also on the corner of Union Street. Why they didn’t decide to use that as the address I don’t know. People might even have thought the street had been named after NUS!

The building itself is very salubrious, but the thing that struck me was just how much in the way of materials they had. Maybe it’ll become more obvious at HQ that we have so much stuff when we go open plan, I’m sure it’s all there, but just not that obvious. Of course it was nothing along the lines of the Scottish Parliament (I kept calling it an assembly, just to wind her up) which she did as much as she could to defend, but seriously, you paid how much? For that?

From union show and the committee changeover day, I’ve learned to have a set speech prepared for NUSSL events which ends with me handing over to Ian King. There was a day of events and a trade fair, followed by an evening meal, and a rather interesting, if not prolonged conversation about whether beers were vegetarian or not. The one thing that struck me about the bar at Napier was 11 Smirnoff optics on one bar. More of those than the rest put together.

The AGM in the morning was, I’ve been told, about twice as long as the year before, almost lasting 45 minutes. This was mostly down to the fact there was a contested election for NUSSL Scotland Observer. Oddly enough, this post observes the NUS Scotland Exec, not the NUSSL Board.

At the weekend I went to the Town and Country festival. Why mention that? Well apart from taking the photo of Lorna and Alex that I now show everyone, I also saw this. The mother of all student trophies. The biggest traffic cone the world has ever seen.

Back at work, there was a final run through of the priority campaign launch before on Wednesday something hopefully very worthwhile, interviews for a new finance manager. And we got one we were all happy with.

That night I was staying at Kat and Sians. A couple of weeks earlier Kat and me had finally had that necessary conversation and got pissed, as Andy and me tried not to get beaten up for laughing (for different reasons) watching Celtic get beaten 5-0 in a pub full of Bhoys. I’d ended up on the floor at their house and everything had been a little more fine since then. Tonight I had dropped my stuff off there and gone to Emma Smiths leaving do, which included a monkey mask competition. I had Sians keys so went and got something to eat on the way home. So what happens? Some git tries to mug me. Just leaning over at first to try and take the wallet out of my pocket. Then he shouts ‘Give me all your money’. He got a two word response, which was quite a surprise to him and without too much hanging around there was a bit of a scuffle, with one of his mates making a poor attempt at chipping in. He managed to pull my watch off, which I then ended up stamping on so he couldn’t get it, but also and breaking the strap.

So when I woke up in the morning of the campaign launch the first thing I needed to know was if I had a black eye. No, just a broken watch and a seventies shirt to try and wind Gemma up with. She didn’t blink at the thought of me wearing it, I was most upset! The day went well and ran smoothly. All apart from the questions around the education campaign and this pesky little demo. For some reason most people thought that conference voting to take out the bit of policy which called for a first term national demo, was the same as voting not to have a first term national demo. It seemed the issue would now be readdressed.

The evening version was just a cut down version of the day and even finished early. The typical sort of thing happened afterwards, we were off down the pub en masse. Leaving was such an NEC affair, to go from the Museum Tavern to Camden, setting off one way, then someone saying no, it’s this way, setting off and following them and then reversing again before finally resolving that no-one trusted anyone else, except London cabbies…...

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