As Busy As A Mad March Hair Part 1
Wow. It feels like I’ve not really been home for over a month now. It’s been non-stop fun and travelling!
It all started when I went to BarCampBrighton2 in March. It was my 3rd BarCamp and the best yet. If you follow me on Twitter you will already know about the crazy train journey I needed to take to get into Brighton. I had a really early start, the train departed at just before 7:00am - well, it was early for me, I am a student after all. 4 trains, 3 changes, 2 bottles of water, a shrink wrapped sandwich, a Twix and many many hours later I arrived in Brighton. My intention was to stay at The Grapevine, recommended to me by Andy Budd - although I’m sure he has never stayed there. It’s a sort of student, backpacker, hostel type place where you get a bed for a tenner a night and that’s it. I was seriously strapped for cash in March. Jay Gooby got wind of my plans and was having none of it. He sent word out to all attendees via email that I needed somewhere to stay and the esteemed Jeremy Keith very kindly reciprocated. So upon my arrival to Brighton I headed over to the Clearleft offices and chilled out for a bit while Jeremy finished up his days work. Jeremy and his lovely girlfriend Jessica were superb hosts and the evening was spent playing Semantoply, eating excellent homemade pizza, drinking fine wine and thrashing Jeremy at Guitar Hero (it was my first time playing, I don’t think he was too impressed with my l33t skilz). Thank you Jeremy and Jessica for taking me in.
The following morning a BarCamp was to be had. I could waffle on for far too long about how good it was but the event was well documented by a plethora of live bloggers and many of the talks were even broadcast as live video on the web so I will spare you. Suffice to say it was a brilliant two days well spent at a great venue and with great people. It was really good to meet familiar faces again and make lots of new friends. I took a lot away from the event and felt fired up and inspired which is always a good thing. Unfortunately I had so much fun I neglected to realise my train home was not till the Monday - I had originally planned to take a sleeper home on Sunday night - and I had no where to stay. Luckily Mark Ng had a comfy sofa and was heading into Brighton to work in the morning. He lives in Bournemouth and it was a little strange travelling almost a third of the way home only to travel back into Brighton to take the train home. Mark and his wife Tepanga had me fed and watered and their hospitality was most welcome, thank you.
I had all but one nights sleep in my own bed before I was on the train again, this time to Plymouth for an overnight stay before another early start to arrive in Exeter for the UCAS Fair. I was helping to man the University of Plymouth Colleges stall as thousands of plucky sixth-formers arrived by the coach load to grab as many prospectuses as possible. It was a fun but tiring day but definitely worth it as I got paid extra on top of my usual student representative duties.
Easter weekend was spent “oop-north” at my girlfriends parents which was a nice change of pace. I entertained myself by singing “I’m dreaming of a white Easter” on the drive up. The weather was seriously screwed up but Easter was very early this year. We returned safely home and I had a few days rest before my next endeavour to Blackpool. Blackpool is a funny place and it was my first time there. I was there for the NUS Annual Conference, you may have heard about it on the Channel 4 news or read about in the paper. NUS Conference is a funny thing which is probably why the have it in Blackpool. I described it as “watching paint dry, but the painting is a Michelangelo”. Despite never really working out all the political factions and how you can be a member of the Labour Party but describe yourself as an independent because your not a member of Labour Students, not to mention those crazy Student Respect kids, I had a good time. I even found a spare moment to go up Blackpool Tower for the first and, I think I can safely say, last time.
Thankfully I had a whole weeks rest after that with my only commitments being getting some college work done and a couple of trips to Plymouth for Union Parliament and the Volunteers In Plymouth Awards for which I was nominated for one but didn’t win. I did get a little broach though. Then it was time for my final excursion in this period of time, a train to London for Future of Web Design. That will come in part two where I will tell you why it took me 3 days to get home.