Well I didn’t want to start the year off with a lie so I put a question mark at the end and made it rhetorical.

I have had the best break going, food, beer, pressies and general fatness topped off by time with Beth which made New Year awesome. Did you know that Big Ben didn’t strike at midnight on New Year – I was gutted, waited around ages and it didn’t even ring. The only reason everyone in Parliament Sq realised it was midnight was because the fireworks on the river were flying all over and we couldn’t get back out to see them – sold out good and proper.

Anywho work restarted too soon but with a January Get Together in Macclesfield for NUSSL for 2 days. We meet in January every year with all our volunteers to find out where everyone is up to and make sure every volunteer knows about the work of the company as a whole rather than just their individual role and make sure everyone is happy with their experience too.

I travelled back down to London on Thursday as I had meeting in the office with our New Acting National Director and Acting Director for Member Support. The weekend was shortened to just Saturday which isn’t too surprising but I didn’t mind as we convened for a meeting of the Year of Change Steering Group which I always enjoy as I am around officers who want to change things for the better and work hard to do so.

Monday – NEC. Love NEC meetings. In fact I’d go as far as saying I want one everyday! Strange thing about NEC meetings is that every member seems to hate them not just me. I find them incredibly odd. I don’t know of anywhere else where you’d have a Board of 27 people wanting to know all kinds of operational details. I don’t know of any board that is so cut up into obvious factions. I don’t know of any board who dislike meeting so much or have as much external scrutiny on what we do on message boards and web forums etc. Add to this another level of scrutiny namely the observers and you have a board of around 40 which is absurd to put it plainly. After the NEC I had a Finance Committee meeting HQ until 8.

I had Tuesday and Wednesday in the office which was great to catch up on all my office work and also an affiliation strategy meeting what with the upcoming referenda. Thursday I went to Central London with Ben Elger, Antony BlAckshaw and Matt Cooke to carry out Ian King’s NUSSL appraisal and then took the next day off as it was Beth’s birthday on the Thursday and she was coming down for he weekend and I had some surprises to sort!!!

After a fandabeydosey weekend and 24 presents for Beth’s 24th birthday I had a day in the office on Monday and on Tuesday an NUS Card Working Party meeting which took up a lot of the day. Wednesday was a strategic management meeting till around 2pm and more office work as was Thursday but that also had a trip to Leicester University SU for their GM. I must admit I was very impressed they had over 300 people in attendance and all had loads of questions on everything from NUS Extra to the radio station and policy lapse and was very privileged to be invited down by Chris Higham the President. Friday was taken up at Baker Tilly’s offices. They are our auditors and myself , Kat and Michael Jones our old Director for Resources had to sign off our accounts which was fun! For the weekend myself and most of the ex-sabbs at Teesside organised a leaving do/surprise birthday for our old General Manager Martyn Williams. It was awesome to see everyone turn up and the look on his face when he realised he wasn’t just there to advise me on elections (I had decided not to stand by this point for all you conspiracy theorists out there) and all his old friends had turned up to celebrate for him! On the Sunday I travelled up to Glasgow to begin a week of Regionals for NUS Services.

NUSSL regionals are much the same as NUS’ but have staff and student officers and only happen once a year – plus they are usually more cordial! I went from Strathclyde to Leeds to Loughborough to Bristol to London presenting on the company plan and NUS extra amongst other things. The week was a success but travelling so much and not seeing much of your own bed is more tiring than you can imagine. After this week however, I realised I was going to have to do more!

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