Pinky Attends a Conference.

                               

Phew! I just finished a two day conference with 1 999 other school teachers and let me tell you it was exhausting sitting on my bottom for seven hours straight each day.

On the first morning I car pooled with my colleague and friend, twenty-three old Ash. We drove into the venue’s car park and were abruptly stopped by a man in an official turquoise T-shirt.

“Are you teachers or Principals?” he rattled off in a somewhat jaded voice for so early in the morning.

Assuming that all the empty spaces were being reserved for conference delegates we confidently replied, “Oh we’re teachers.”

“Sorry girls,” he said, “but these spaces are reserved for principals and clergy. You’ll need to drive down there, turn left and park over in the far lot.”

“What’s a clergy?” asked Ash innocently.

“A priest or a nun,” I replied wondering why the principals were deemed so important.

The attendant had pointed to an adjacent car park that seemed quite an unreasonable distance away considering the unseasonal and teeming rain.

Swearing in an extremely bad role model-like mode I drove my young colleague around and around the completely chock- a- block full car park.

“Look Ash,” I spluttered belligerently, “there’s nothing left in this car park so I’m going to sneak back in to the principal’s car park and hope that bloke doesn’t spot us. Bloody principals, who do they think they are anyway?”

Now if you have read this post…here  you will be aware of the fact that my car is as bright yellow as a jaundiced custard pie and very difficult to forget, let alone camouflage.

We were triumphantly parked and undoing our seatbelts when Turquoise man’s flushed and annoyed face appeared at the car window.

“Girls, girls, girls… I said this is for principals only.”

“Oooh,” I feigned stupidity, “I thought you said ‘teachers and principals’. Sorreeee!”

So we were forced to park in some desolate area across the road and my carefully fashioned blow dry went to hell in a handbag.



Now while listening to seven hours of non- stop lectures all day I came to realise why my students develop that glazed look on their faces after listening to me pontificate for a measly ten minutes. 

Don’t get me wrong, we were blessed with some outstanding and knowledgeable speakers but even when I was listening to a particularly talented orator I would feel my mind begin to wander.

What can I cook for dinner tonight that will involve the least amount of physical labour? Do we need milk? Or more importantly, did I pop a bottle of wine in the fridge for tonight? I wonder how the dogs are going locked in the laundry together? I hope the Fox Terrier hasn’t finally snapped and eaten the Chihuahua. What will I write my blog post about tonight? Where on earth did that girl sitting in front of me buy her shirt from? I love it! Is that cellophane rustling? Has someone brought a packet of lollies? Ooooh, I hope they’re Fantales. How long until lunch? What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I concentrate for more than ten minutes at a time? Maybe it’s finally the menopause striking? I wonder what is for lunch?

Then there were the serious moments in the seminars when the entire auditorium went deathly silent. 

You could hear a pin drop. 

During those hushed and reverent moments I would invariably feel an irresistible urge to pass wind. 

(This is something that happens to me whenever I visit a library or strangely a video shop and I don’t know why.) 

I could never be anti-social enough to actually release the painfully trapped gas mind you, and I can’t think of anything more humiliating, but it means I have to sit at those times with my buttocks firmly clenched until the feeling passes or the ambient noise starts up again. 

The other weird thing that happens during those soundless moments is that I occasionally get an urge to scream out like a crazed Tourette’s sufferer. 

Of course, again, I would never do it, but I get the compulsion just the same. Am I alone in experiencing this strange impulse? 

Yes, I probably am and this will no doubt be the last time any of you read my blog. 

“That confirms it!” You will be thinking right now. “Pinky has either run out of things to write about or she has really lost it. I’m not going to read her silly rubbish anymore!”

But I had to ask…