Last week I had a 3 day conference for work. It's a conference that happens reasonably often and I've always intended to go, but due to project activity I always seem to miss them. The conference was really interesting. It was held in Southampton and I'd been booked into a hotel for a week. I didn't have high hopes.
I'm not sure what happened, but once again I really lucked in. My hotel room was extremely posh and HUGE. But the best thing about it was that it had a balcony overlooking the port. This week's image was taken with my morning coffee on the third morning. I'm not going to lie to you, had the photo been taken about an hour later the road you can see would have been filled with back to back traffic. The perfect view was somewhat ruined by the very loud traffic, but you can't have everything.
In fact the room was absolutely perfect except for the bed. It was a king sized bed - absolutely huge and when I saw it I was very excited. However, it was all smoke and mirrors. Whoever had decided on the facilities was obviously a doctor because their preference was for a mattress so hard it didn't have much more give than the floor. The pillows were also like cement that was about an hour off it's final set.
I'll come back to the bed......
As I travelled to the hotel I went as slowly as possible, basically every time I go to Southampton I get some sort of traffic related penalty, a parking fine, speeding fine or some such. I must have driven the other drivers insane as I tootled along at about 27 miles an hour, not sure if the roads were 30mph or 40mph. I got caught out by this before, Southampton doesn't seem to think that putting up signs with the speed limit is important. As such you end up driving down a straight road with no houses around it with no idea if it's 20, 30, 40 or 60mph. As I say this time I went for 27 mph and ignored the tooting cars around me.
As part of the conference meals were also included and as it was my first one I assumed that attending the dinner was a 3 line whip. So when the menus came through I duly put through my order. The food was amazing, but basically it meant that the conference started at 09:00 and went on until 21:00. That's a long day with a lot of human in it.
I arrived on Monday evening, the night before the conference. So I could have a good nights sleep beforehand. I didn't..... I literally couldn't get comfortable on the bed. I tossed and turned but at 02:00 I was still awake and feeling a bit desperate. In the end at about 02:30 I did fall into a restless sleep.
At 06:00 my alarm went off and I went down for a swim. That was nice, I love a nice swim the hotel and it gives me an excuse to have a reasonable breakfast. The first morning of the conference was really interesting, but by lunchtime I was on my knees with tiredness. We went into the restaurant for lunch and I suddenly decided sleep was mot important. I peeled off, went back to my room and managed to get 10 minutes sleep. That at least saw me through the afternoon.
In the evening I decided to have a glass of wine with supper. You know how sometimes you can drink wine and it doesn't touch the sides and other times it hits you like a sledgehammer. This was a sledgehammer. I guess because I was so tired.
As soon as I finished eating I head off back to my room. Got into my pj's and fell straight into bed exhausted. Once again I was tossing and turning trying to get comfortable. In the end I gave up on my pillow and tried to use my duvet as a pillow instead, but I ended up in knots.
When the morning light came up I suddenly noticed my sheets. I'd literally fallen straight into bed with tiredness. I'd forgotten to wash off my makeup and before I went down for supper I'd pepped myself up with a good layer of bronzer. The entire bed (white sheets obviously) was completely smothered with bronzer. You can imagine what it looked like.
Before I went down for the day I popped the 'Do not Disturb' notice on my door - I wasn't letting anybody else in that room until I was out of there!
My final night in the hotel was much the same, then at about 02:00 I had the idea to lie on top of my duvet, to scrunch the top of it up as a pillow and then to pull any left over duvet over myself as the cover. I immediately dropped off and slept properly for the first time in days. Right up until my alarm went off at 06:00 for a swim.
At the end of the conference I drove home. I got about half way and I desperately needed a wee. Every single garage I stopped at didn't have a loo. By the time I got to Shoreham I was in quite a state. I also anticipated an hours delay in roadworks. So I went to the shopping centre in Shoreham and had a wee there. Blessed relief.
I made a snap decision not to get back on the dual carriageway, but to go along the seafront. Quite a long journey from Shoreham to where I live and also I'd have to keep a close eye on staying at 27mph again. But by then I just wanted to get home.
The rest of the journey was unadventurous, but took a while. I got home and it was lovely to see family again and would also have been nice to see dog if she hadn't been so completely over excited and jumpy. It took me about 2 minutes to tell her to chuff off! She didn't seem to care. I say it to her so often I think she thinks it means 'good girl'.
I was in my own bed by 20:45 and had the best night's sleep in days.
I managed to get through Friday at work, trying to catch up on a week's work then the weekend was extremely quiet. On Saturday I could barely get off the sofa to walk the dog, Sunday was the same. I decided to purchase an old version of America's Next Top Model - back from the 2000's. It was quite funny to watch, it's amazing how things have changed in 20 years, there'd not be a series like that now.
One thing that was quite funny was that they made the models dress up as big stars of the day, they had Brad Pitt with Angelina Jolie, Donal Trump with Ivana, Britney Spears with whatever her other half was and Witney Houston with Bobby Brown. Talk about the wrong side of history!!!!!! It does go to show how f**ed up celebrity is though.
In a bit of a rush today, so apologies for spellers, I'll come back to this later in the week to smart in it up.
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