Recuperating today after going to a great conference yesterday in Chester, which is objectively one of the UK’s prettiest cities. I grew up not far away in Stafford and my heart always relaxes a little at the sight of black and white timbered buildings; somehow it still feels like home.

But conferences. In theory I love them. And I sort of do: it’s chance to meet lots of other people who are interested in similar things to you, and to hear what they’re working on. And see colleagues that I like, and go out and explore new places (thank you Chester). But I also find them difficult in all sorts of ways. Sensorially they are overwhelm. People everywhere, having to navigate through unfamiliar spaces, wondering if the technology will work and your slides will display or the failing tech will be the distraction that makes it hard for people to focus on what you’re actually saying. Poor public transport, noisy and unfamiliar rooms (shout out for the unadvertised live music gig and lumpy mattress) that nibble away and fray everyone’s energy levels.

Then there are the voices.* Maybe you don’t have them, but they hiss in my ear. Maybe what I’ve got to say is wrong, I’ve not prepared enough, the people in the room are experts and they will know what you’ve got wrong. Maybe my personal praetorian guard against hubris, or auriga, ‘respice post te. mulierem te memento’.** They’re not helpful though. It makes it hard for me to relax and talk properly with the people in the auditorium, my eyes glued instead to my talk. And why is it at this point that I realise that even though I now need reading glasses, I’ve not accommodated myself with a nice large print printout of it? I don’t know. I also don’t know – because I looked at the paper and not the audience – what people made of it. Did I get it right? Pass. The format of quick papers meant there wasn’t much opportunity for questions, not getting any always makes me dubious. I didn’t die out there, my paper ran to time, it was probably ok.

The train journey back was miserable – too many changes, standing (again), too many drunk football fans (I have had enough bad experiences with drunk football fans on trains that just seeing them now sets my teeth on edge). The men limited themselves to shoving their way up and down the crowded carriage pointlessly, each man excessively polite in asking me to squash myself into the train corridor wall so he could get past and each discover for himself what his mates had already told him: there were no working loos. Four and a half hours of trains and I was glad to be home. I do like conferences, really I do, they are important. I just wish I liked them better.

*Today’s soundtrack: Taylor Swift ‘anti-hero’. It’s me. I’m the problem it’s me.

**This is one of those bits of Latin that’s entered myth. Tertullian writes about the voice that accompanied a Roman general in his triumphal procession. (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0570%3Achapter%3D33%3Asection%3D3) In modern tellings the voice has become that of either a two-horse-chariot-driving slave (auriga) or your conscience. The original Latin – as far as we have it through the various manuscripts that have come down to us – obviously refers to a man, I’ve swapped this out for ‘woman’, which isn’t quite the straight swap as women are generally heard less as experts but that’s not what I wanted to discuss here really.