Second Day at the Convention

Well it was certainly a rush to get to the computers this morning.

Yesterday it hit me that I didn't want to be here. At the convention that is. Don't get me wrong, but looking out of the Warwick Castle window, I saw the beautiful green lush countryside and thought that there's where I need to be - not inside an auditorium!

Having said that, the Warwick Castle experience was fabulous after a day of presentations. We were piled into buses and treated to shows of jousting, falconry, archery and a trebuchet. We also had an opportunity to climb the towers and take photos of the lush countryside.

The experience was marred however by the disorganisation of the buses to take us home. Over 8000 people tried to cram into the bus car park, with no signage, no HOC marshalls and traffic marshallers who had no idea what bus was going where. After an hour of waiting, panic ensued and thousands started walking across the road in an effort to find transport back to the city. The marshallers were yelling out to people to stay back behind the barriers but with no communication, people were doing their own thing. There was lots of pushing and shoving and after three and a half hours, the final bus loads were just taking everyone back into the city. They dropped us off in a quiet part of town at 1am, we didn't know where we were, to find our own hotels. It was mayhem and I do hope they acknowledge and apologise for this today.

Andrew has had enough and has decided that he will do his own thing as with this and the mayhem at the train station yesterday morning where once again, thousands of people were pushing and shoving to get on the few trains going out at the NEC, it wasn't a good sight. Some people take it in good spirits - we did and we had a luagh with some people - but when you have thousands of people just wanting informaiton on what is going on, and needing assistance (there were many elderly and those in wheelchairs).

Today, I will spend time in the plenary sessions and workshops and we have the home hosting tonight which we are looking forward to but hope the transport issues are sorted out quickly. This convention is very much for the +60s and not many younger people around (as the LA one was) where RYLA, Interact, Rotaract have been relegated to one far corner away from everywhere else and hidden. I believe they should be in the heart with the other stalls.

I'm making this convention out negatively unfortunately as I'm comparing it to the one in LA which was lively and much younger and always something going on with entertainment. The Brummies here are superb and very helpful and always chatty so for customer service they are top notch. Luckily, our hotel is quite good and the people there are very helpful so it helps. I think though I much prefer to be touring the countryside...