The first time I was out and about in September was to go to Essex, for the first meeting with my NUSSL mentor Antony Blackshaw, still trying to get my head around NUSSL, before going up for a board meeting with some concerns over the treading on of toes and not insurmountable differences of opinion. The board meeting itself seeming so important to Derfel that he came in on a phone conference. From his sisters wedding!

Time in the office had been spent recently still on more priority campaign meetings, getting this survey together and doing what I could to make sure it would actually go out, ringing up unions about their affiliation fees and still trying to get a grip on the accounts. I still couldn’t understand the reticence I was facing when I raised the idea of actually attempting to use accurate budgets opposed to last years ones which were £120,000 out. Oh and of course the George Fox Six stuff. I wouldn’t say I was lumbered with responsibility for them, because I wanted it. I was just surprised no-one else did. Of course the other thing I’d had to do was to pack up my office.

Another thing I should mention at this point is my second job, and indeed my third job. With a wife, seven month old son and mortgage, I can’t really afford to live on what NUS pays, so I still write on and sell the Gary Mabbutts Knee fanzine at some Coventry City home games, and by the end of October, I will have taken I reckon two and a half days holiday distributing leaflets around the midlands.

My next little excursion after a finance team meeting was to Brighton to have a bit of a visit to the TUC, but to attend the Endsleigh annual dinner. Well I am on the board. And while I was there what did I see? Both Andrew Pakes and Douglas Trainer in attendance. I was just glad I wasn’t on their tables or I doubt the conversation would have been civil.

The good reason for me being in Brighton was so that it would be easier to get to Portsmouth the next day. They are facing the nightmare scenario, a union pulled from under the students feet, mostly due to the university not giving a toss for years and then coming in with their big boots. The five hours I spent there felt like the most useful or at least fulfilling time I had spent in my entire time on the NEC.

The next day of course was the long-awaited move out of Holloway Road. The people who had agreed to buy the furniture we weren’t taking had fallen through and no-one else had been got in at such late notice. This caused a staff relations nightmare, with the people who had come in breaking things up, getting them in the car park, and quite rightly not being too happy about it after a few hours. I felt guilty for not getting there at the start. The long-awaited announcement on redundancies, sorry ‘reshaping’ at the LSC would be announced that day, mortgage protection only pays out if you take it out before you get told you’re for the boot! As expected, The Learning and Skills Council will shed a third of it’s staff, including half at the national office where Lorna works. The best story was at the Newcastle office, staff there got an idea of their fate a day early, when a ‘For Sale’ sign was put on their building!

But I did get there just at the right time, with both the sledgehammer and the pigeon holes waiting! We got everything out in the end into the car park and a marker pen and two whiteboards out the front reading “Free Furniture, Round the back today only”. Here we see the rare sight of an overhead projector on the back of a push bike.

Only problem was, because it was my idea, I got the duty of making sure people knew they were taking stuff away at their own risk, though I did take time off to get some food and a pint from the buffet for everyone at The Quays.

I had been up to the office to say goodbye of course up on the roof, where there was a great view of the new Arsenal stadium, the mess in the car park, and of course the reasons why we had to leave the building before it fell down around our ears, as you really got a picture of how close the building was to falling apart, seeing how the external walls sway exactly the same way the stairs do. A hole had appeared in the smoking room floor just that week, and that just months after the press office moved after their floor started appearing on the training managers desk.

So we’d got there, we were out. A massive thank you to everyone involved on the last day. So which wall of my office at home do I put the NUS sign from behind reception on?

Below, Tom Edge stars in ‘The Holloway Redemption”

And the final view in the lift on the way out

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