Wednesday 10 June 2015

Office talk

1 May 2015, 3 pm
The CIPA election is back on again, this time with the right number of Council vacancies.  My relief is immeasurable.

I resist the urge to tweet: “Join the @TheCIPA elections, where every vote counts – but only up to seven.”  I think it might tip Mr Davies over the edge.


6 May 2015, 11 am
The Internal Governance Committee is talking about the CIPA offices.  In a couple of years our lease will expire and then we face a difficult choice, to wit:
  • massive, massive rent increases; or
  • massive, massive moving and refitting costs plus massive, massive dilapidations charges.
Alternatively we could move from the third floor to the fourth floor at 95 Chancery Lane, which Mr Davies is keen to do because the fourth floor is open plan and this makes it look like he has a bigger office even if he has to share it.

Later, Council members add their two penn’orth to the debate.  Let’s expand, they say, and then sub-let part of our premises as a commercial venue.  Let’s install a bar and a dance floor.  I think we are possibly straying from the objectives set out in our Royal Charter, and we might need more than Privy Council approval to get that one to work, but I don’t like to say.  We are having too much fun designing the cocktail menu.

Also at the Council meeting, I make a speech to thank the Pee for being a brilliant Pee, and I present her with a bottle of gin and some chocolate.  In my world gin and chocolate are two of the best things that can happen to you.  I then empty some straw out of my rucksack and at the bottom of it I find her one of the much-coveted Vice-Presidential medals from Tesco®, as a souvenir of our time together as Pee and VeePee.  She actually puts the medal on, which is incredibly sporting of her, I think.  There are not many people brave enough to wear a Tesco party medal and some bits of straw at a CIPA Council meeting.

In the second part of my Pee-to-Be speech I ask my fellow Council members for help being President, because clearly I am going to need it, being full of straw and all.

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