It started at 9am. That's what the MicroSoft Office alert told us. Some of us arrived at 9am. Others, however, didn't: they'd seen an email saying it started at 9:15. Those who had read the agenda linked to from a different email knew it started at 9:30, though.
Also, it wasn't in its usual room. This time, it was in the lecture theatre block in room LTB5.
The audiovisual equipment in LTB5 was broken. After a technician came and looked it over and declared there to be a problem, we decamped to LTB8.
The audiovisual equipment in LTB8 was broken. After the same technician came and looked it over and declared there to be a problem, we decampted to LTB7.
LTB7's audiovisual equipment worked fine. The meeting started at 9:45 and was making great progress until at 10:15 the group that had booked the room for 10am finally plucked up courage to come in and tell us we really needed to vacate it.
We went back to LTB5. After some messing about with cables (it's the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, and one of the electronic engineers engineered some electronics) the audiovisual equipment was no longer broken and we could continue with the meeting.
We then broke for coffee. There was an urn of, well, whatever it is the catering section puts in the urn with "coffee" on it. Up until this point, the tap on the urn worked the same as all other taps on such urns: you press it down, brown liquid comes out, then you let go and it springs up. Now, however, it neglected to spring up. People filled their cup, let go of the tap, and the liquid kept on coming. We were standing in pools of the stuff. One of the newer members of staff knew what to do: go grab some toilet paper and soak it all up. The older members of staff also knew what to do, of course: wait for a newer member of staff to clean it up.
The meeting finally ended at something like 1:15pm, leaving just enough time for lunch before we all had to be back in our offices to meet our new tutees and explain to them why they had a personal tutor who's not in their subject area (and to effect this explanation without using the words "box-ticking exercise").
As usual in departmental meetings, I spent most of my time doodling. I sometimes wonder if my doodles may reflect my interest in the proceedings.
