This afternoon I headed out of the house to go to the Milbank Tower for the Radio Academy's Radio At The Edge conference. Me and Collings were going to be talking about how we got into podcasting and warning the idiots working in the medium of yesterday that the future was about to eat their holes. Well, not exactly, but we had some interesting things to say on the subject - as you can hear yourself if you like, as we
recorded the occasion for a bonus podcast. It's a slightly weird atmosphere and a bit more serious than usual, but we get a few laughs and say some funny things that don't get laughs.
Here we are in action.
Anyway it was pissing down with rain as I left the house. I hardly ever take an umbrella out with me, because they are cumbersome and I generally leave them behind somewhere. But the rain was pretty solid and I thought I'd better take the chance, even though the little voice in my head was saying, "You're going to bump into stuff and then you're going to lose that." I was especially keen not to do that as my current umbrella was one I won in a little Scrabble tournament a few months ago (and I can't believe I didn't brag about this at the time, but I can't find the entry if I did) when I beat one of the best players I know by over 200 points to win the event. And I got a posh gentleman's umbrella for my trouble.
I took the chance. There's no point in having an umbrella if you don't use it. But it was indeed a cumbrella (that means cumbersome umbrella - I didn't ejaculate upon it) and it was annoying having to take it into shops and on the tube. Slightly less annoying than it would have been getting really wet though, so it paid off in the long run.
When I got to the Milbank Tower, Andrew Collings was skulking near the door, putting something in the cloak room and I thought I would unburden myself of the umbrella at least and hung it on a hook. "Remind me to get this," I told Collings, "I am bound to forget it if you don't."
Collings promised that he would.
But he was excited like a puppy that had inherited a toilet roll factory and I suspected that he might not remember. Honestly he's so selfish.
We did the talk and then came out and had a beer with the delegates. It was still early evening, but we felt we'd earned it. I haven't really been drinking for the last few weeks and so I quickly became tiddly as Collings lined up fresh free beers every time the last was empty. In fact he was somewhat ahead of me, chugging them back like he was quite the big man. I thought, "If this is making me this drunk, what effect is it having on the lightweight Collings who gets drunk if he eats a piece of wheat." He was riding high on having described some pie charts to some people who might give him a proper job on the radio - had he not told them to go fuck themselves in the first two minutes.
An hour or so later the dipsomaniac stragglers were being told to leave the building and all headed off to the pub. It was quite a way from the Milbank Tower and we were nearly there when I realised that I had left my umbrella behind. Collings had let me down and my paranoid voice had been correct all along - of course. And though it would have taken me ten minutes to go back and get it, I was too drunk and too tired to be bothered. I let my prize umbrella go. I hope it goes to a good cause. At least I didn't have to carry it back on the tube.
