Here I am, hooray! blogging from the NEC for free, at a net cafe at the Rotary Interational Convention in Birmingham.
In another 15 minutes I’ll be off to be a “HOC Ambassador”, HOC means “Host Organising Committee”, and ambassador means I volunteered to help. In my case, I’m told I’ll be handing out goody bags.
We (Rhonda and I) arrived early this morning from the Peak District where we’d been camping and walking (more on that later, with photos of the wonderful midsumer English weather – gale force winds, rain, thunder, lightning…. guess the weather God forgot what summer means). Getting our pass was a breeze – we were booking number 51 thousand and something and they found our envelope within a minute. A quick wander around the “House of Friendship”, get our goody bag, then off to find our hotel in Birmingham.
The “House of Friendship” has lots of stands, many representing charities, many representing fellowship (like the Fellowship of Flying Rotarians (if I remember that correctly) – may be I’ll get back to flying one day). One thing I found funny, a stand taking 4 spaces, selling just handbags – larger than many of the other good causes and larger than some of the Rotary parephenalia stalls. Speaking of which, Rhonda said she’d make me a Bow Tie in special colours… guess I should learn how to tie a bow tie then.
Of to volunteer now. If there’s no image with this post, it means the internet connection is so slow here I couldn’t get one in time. Although I have logged into my MovableType admin page OK, my home page still isn’t up, and even the RI home page isn’t loading.