The World is my Oyster

I'll readily admit that I fail to see the connection between oysters and my topic tonight ... unless you consider the Oyster Card that I shall certainly not be using in conjunction with it.  I say this for two reasons: firstly because no travel is involved and secondly that, owing to lack of its use and my failure to remember my password to re-charge it, I have long since destroyed my Oyster Card anyway.

Long before my personal involvement in the world of politics, there was a noticeable time shortly after the conclusion of the holiday season every summer when, having been 'back to work' for only a week or two, our parliament vanished again and its members upped sticks and went off to the seaside.  It was the 'Conference Season.'  Somehow, even now, the attraction of a week (or less) by the seaside, but cooped up in an auditorium for most of the time, with the associated cost of travel and accommodation, just doesn't appeal.

I did go to a regional conference a few years ago, which was only a couple of hours' drive from my home and was only a day-long affair.  And I admit that I found it interesting, with stalls representing this or that small specialised interest group demonstrating their themes, their ideas, and their programmes for the coming year.  I think I sat through one long talk in the main hall, and I attended an early group meeting aimed specifically at new members (of which I was one at the time).  Even that event, however, I don't think I'd want to repeat on an annual, let alone bi-annual basis.

So it will not surprise you, gentle reader, to learn that it was with a degree of some astonishment that I received an e-mail this morning reminding me that a Conference for which I had signed up begins tomorrow, and presenting me with the itemised programme in the 'main hall' and details of all that will be going on in the background during the course of the weekend.

Given my aforementioned reluctance to participate in such events, you must already be wondering why I should book for a conference weekend and then overlook the fact.  Two distinct factors are involved in my explanation.  Firstly comes the fact that I don't have to travel for this conference.  Thanks to the wonder that is Zoom, the main programme consists of five separate Zoom meetings, while all the peripheral addresses are all pre-recorded and will be available in the 'members' area' of the organisation's website.

The second, and more important factor is that this is the annual conference not of a political party, but of the charitable organisation that I have recently joined and which I mentioned here a couple of weeks ago.  In the two months since I responded to a news item and volunteered my services, I've discovered not only that the work that I'm actually involved with is as a member of one of a number of teams all doing much the same work in different languages and for different clients, but also that this is but one of several quite different projects that this organisation is engaged in, helping by so doing the efforts of quite a swathe of the vast Christian Missionary field.

Standing as I do on an isolated tip of just one small part of a province of a much greater nation, I feel a great desire to know more about the organisation that I have joined and these other provinces of its activities.  It's one thing to become proficient in the tasks I'm asked to do; it's quite another to have some feel for the overall scope of activity of the whole business.

So there was some shame in realising as I opened that e-mail that I had committed myself to something else tomorrow that would have wiped out at a stroke my attendance at this conference.  While I could doubtless catch up on the peripherals via the website so long as they remain there, I would have missed the 'live' Zoom events forever, and - at this point at least - I have no way of measuring how great that loss would prove to be.  In that shame, therefore, I promptly cancelled my other booking, and shall focus tomorrow on that which is far more important.