Well, gang, it’s that time of the week again. Friday afternoon, 16:30, only 30 minutes to go before the weekly drinks and nibbles session in Dave’s Diner and what better precursor to this well deserved social booze schmooze session than an attempt to update you all on my movements this week.

My second week in the Public Affairs department has been rather a dichotomous affair. Like last week and the Labour party conference in Manchester, in the early part of the week, most of the team was away at the Tory party conference in Bournemouth. While they were “working” and wiling away the hours courting clients and carousing early into the morning, I was dutifully slaving away on a client’s strategy plan. In between eulogizing on employment and waxing lyrical on the troubles of the transport system I was also digging around the net for some information to put together a character profile of Virginia and Peter Bottomley. Incidenatlly – whilst admittedly it may be childish; that surname has always given me the giggles. It reminds me of reading Just William as a kid. Aaaanyway, reeling in that tangent…..

Neil has been doing his best to keep me occupied on the work front and gave me the task of finding the names and contact details of organizations, charities and people with an interest in health issues and specifically, lowering cholesterol levels for a well known porridge oats manufacturer which has a lot in common with a pensieve pontiff… I’ve also undertaken a large bit of research on a Welsh client for Luke since his return from Bournemouth on Wednesday which has been quite the time consuming engagement. For all it’s usefulness, the internet can be bloody annoying. That’s all I have to say on the matter for now.

One thing I have noticed since working here is that people are generally very suspicious. By this, I don’t mean those I’m working with – they’re not watching me out of the corner of their eye or whispering behind my back (though if they were, I guess I wouldn’t know…that’s the paranoia setting in nicely now) – no, I’m talking about people at other companies when you phone them up. Getting such a simple thing as a name has consistently proved to be a most tedious, time consuming and all around telecommunicative nightmare of a task. Countless times I’ve found myself subject to a Spanish inquisition style questioning from the PA on the other end of the line when all I really want is a name. I know in this “period of heightened security” we need to be vigilant but I hardly think giving me the name of your director is going to set you up as a terrorist target. Especially when the person’s name I’m trying to get is the Director of the National Sheep Alliance. I kid you not. To some extent I can understand a certain degree of reluctance to divulge the Director’s credentials to any Me, Dick or Harry; but the national sheep alliance!? I think wool purveyors everywhere are generally safe from the threat of global terrorism – whilst I’m not belittling the importance of wool and other lamb and sheep-related goods; I don’t think they’d be the first target of a terrorist wishing to bring the global economy to it’s knees (no pedantic comments about the outbreak of foot and mouth amongst cows!).

Right, that’s me done again for this week.

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