Committee

In a council meeting today and wondered if I had stumbled into some kind of temporal vortex where the laws of normal work and time do not apply.

The group spent half an hour in discussion, trying to work out a new name for a project. Lets pretend it’s currently called Soapy Dish Trumpet. We talked about whether it needed to be called SDT – but that might confuse people that can’t understand acronyms right? We talked about calling it Only Soapy for Some People Brass Trumpet – but that’s far too long right? We talked about calling it Soapy Trumpet and Dishy Brass – but they were both too generic. We talked about calling it Soapy Piccolo – but we could all agree that the project was about trumpets. We even thought about Soap Trumpet – but that was too trendy.

In the end, some bright old spark raised their blue polyester shirted arm to suggest Soapy Dish Trumpet – and everyone liked that name. We took a quick vote and it was decided Soapy Dish Trumpet was the new name. Then they realised it was the name the project already had. Oh well, at least they had consulted. I was happy at least. It meant I didn’t have to do the work involved in changing the name.

Then we talked about some other stuff. The stuff needed a volunteer, but no-one wanted to do it. No one wanted to take on any more work, but it was not clear what they did now. So it was noted on the minutes that a volunteer was needed. Then we set dates for the next meeting – “Not on a Friday” said several people. “I want to get home early”.

All the while, the quiet of the meeting was disrupted by a service user hyperventilating – whether from sickness, or excitement from the proceedings – was not clear. You need service user representation on these thing you see. The poor guy insanely gibbered and offered up inappropriate comments at various points. Everyone smiled politely and said “that’s right Johnny. That’s right”. They wrote down what he said and looked nervously at one another.

‘Yeah’, I thought ‘that’s right’. That’s why I pay so much council tax and no-one takes my rubbish away anymore if it doesn’t fit in the bin. Still, I kept quiet. I was happy at that point to be taking the tax dollars, happily folding down my laptop and heading sharpish for the door.