wotnopeoplecarrier

It's all a bit baby centric in my life currently - I have 3 pregnant colleagues and a newborn niece. So I feel a bit like an aging expert on all matters maternal and was absurdly pleased to have remembered how to burp and settle a two week old baby at the weekend and then smugly declare it might be time for a little glass of something while the 'owners' fretted about whatever it is you fret about with something the size of a galia melon that's sleeping anyway.

And that's the thing - you can't bloody well remember! Truly - I cannot remember my sons as babies. Yes I recall the tiredness and the exhaustion and in my case the whole 'will they ever leave hospital' but the day to day daily stuff you forget.....no you do...

'Did yours feed every 4 hours?'

'ermmmm'

'Did they like a bath?'

'Err...'

'Did they settle themselves or was it a case of holding them all the time?

'hmmmm'

The plain fact is that after your brain's been addled by 2 kids in 3 years you can't remember jackcrap about anything much. Yes I know I fell in love with my newborns. Yes I am pretty certain they did the eye following thing that tells you they're einstein and yes they probably did support their heads really well and were probably described as 'very alert'

(I'd be alert if someone was constantly tampering with a nappy on my undercarriage but there you are)

i just don't remember the details ok? Yes they're adorable yes I love them but actually the love is very much in the present tense. i remember hoping my first baby would never walk or talk - not in a sick way but because he was just so squidgy and gorgeous that I never wanted his pudgy legs and feet to need anything more than a nibble and a tickle (not rugby boots like now) and then suddenly I can't imagine not having a little tag rugby scruff who loves his Mum and xbox equally.

Amnesia - all parents have it.

Sorry who are you?

We have a very large boardroom where I work. In it is the biggest table ever made on planet earth. It makes the UN table look intimate - it's vast - it has a strip of branded coloured lighting going down the middle of it (which no human arm can reach) and it says 'Look at the size of my nob' Figuratively speaking of course. It's designed to strike fear into the heart of anyone sitting at it, and it does this very well. It is so enormous that it's got built in microphones all over it - and if you sit at one end you need opera glasses to see who's wittering on at the other end.

So anyway, I don't like the boardroom because it doesn't actually represent anything the company stands for anymore. Yes when the old MD was there it did, but life has moved on, and he and his nob (small clearly) are elsewhere. So it isn't often we go in there, only VIPs.

The last time I went in there was when the global HR something or other paid a visit and we'd been primed and primped to say our piece. There were about 18000 people sitting round the table and, not scared of public speaking, even I went a bit wobbly just before my turn. I needn't have worried though, because having listened intently to everyone else and made notes at appropriate moments, this global guru took a call on his mobile and then walked out as i was mid sentence.

'But I was just warming up....don't go!' I protested in vain as everyone looked at their feet. 'I'm just getting to the good bit! come baaaaack!!!!' People laughed, I was mortified, and became a legend after having made the global chosen one feel small. He didn't of course, people just said it to make me feel better.

The very first time i went into the big tabled room was to hear about a reorganisation that might mean losing my job. I wanted to scratch 'jules woz ere' in the veneer but decided against it and probably wisely as I'm still very much employed there.

And today I had to go in there because we were doing a VBP (very big presentation) I wont bore you with the content but the audience was mainly people for whom sitting on the board doesn't mean a week in Newquay. We're talking heavyweight big brains in the commercial sense. The kind of people I find rather intimidating, men in blue shirts with nice pens who you just know supply expensive ponies for their daughters and 6 holidays a year for their perfectly formed wives.

Nothing like me then.

I hate ponies and have sons.

So in the food chain with people like this I'm somewhere between mollusc and amoeba. And yet, due to last minute flapping and faffing, somehow, from a project team of great and almighty, I ended up doing part of the VBP (do keep up) Only a bit - but the expression 'punching above weight' sprung to mind when I found i was to speak about subjects not exactly in my area of specialism. And with slides someone else had prepared. Fatal.

But I was pretty relaxed this morning despite the obvious pressure, got a coffee and chewed the weekend over with the team as always.

I noticed we were looking very tidy and thanked them for the spring clean

'Yeah, I OCD'd your desk' said my planning analyst ' cleaned it too'

Thanks

And then the visitors started

'Hey JPR - you OK? All ready? ' This was my big big boss

'Beyond ready'

'Now I'm scared'

how we laughed!!

5 minutes later

'Hi JPR - all set? anything you need? Feeling nervous?' This was the project manager

'Er, no. All ok. Should I be nervous? Was feeling er OK....'

10 minutes later

'Hey - you happy with the slides? All good to go? Any amends?'

'Erm, no, as I've said a few times I'm not nervous but now really getting quite nervous because everyone's so interested in my nerves could do with...' am cut short by another visitor

'Thank you so so so much for doing this today - really - it's so so appreciated'

Good. Good then. So everyone's happy that I'm not nervous only I am now and I wonder what the hell they're expecting from me. Cirque du soleil? I have a reputation for being creative and I now realise perhaps for being a 'risk'

'Um, Julia, I was thinking, if people don't laugh you would change to things that aren't funny wouldn't you?'

OK so plainly there is feverish debate one hour to go about whether mollusc should be unleashed on lion. Arguably not but it's a bit sodding late to change things.

i am asked to go to a run through. Bloody hell - now I'm really nervous.

Am nervously halfway through it when in the true tradition of that fecking big tabled room someone burst in - the HR director in fact - looked at me and said

'Why are you practising? Christ almighty - you're making me nervous Julia! I don't prepare because I know you don't have to!'

Good........

It went OK, noone keeled over or vomited during my slides which was a bonus of sorts. I didn't fall over some fresh air like I did at the conference at Olympia, nor did I get snowed in like I did for the key note speech I was meant to give at the RAC club on the Mall.

I await feedback - but something in the eyes of the project manager told me that being invited (unrehearsed) to open the intros with

'Yep - I was just thinking that at a time like this what you really need is a piano player' may not have hit the spot.

But at least the table looked good. I should know - I was cleaning the sodding thing with an improvised giant cotton bud made from a flip chart and a duster half an hour before kick off because once lit the dust of a thousand boardroom skirmishes was pooling unpleasantly in the middle of it.

I'm nothing if not versatile.