Fun and games

Friday

Today we got down to business with presentations, motions, discussion and appointments. We seemed to get through the agenda in a timely fashion and had morning and afternoon tea breaks and lunch all in the same area downstairs as for the icebreaker and the meeting upstairs. It is quite convenient to be so self contained.

As usual we are in a large rectangle with the exec committee at the head and the presenters at the bottom and 2 sides with some 20 people each. We are somewhat cramped and half of us have a table leg to contend with. I am in the other half fortunately.

As this is my 4th IBD, I have been assigned a new members as a buddy, and he turns out to be the Italian rep who is also on the web board with me.

The day's business finished at 5pm but there was an opportunity to comment on or ask questions about upcoming motions. As I have 4 motions myself I needed to look at these and reply or at least think about what to say when they come up in the agenda.

As usual I bought small Koalas for everyone and this time also gave out bookmarks with our 50th anniversary AMC details. It seems these are still popular with everyone.

There were also pens, notepads etc from other Mensas with Spain giving everyone a small bottle of olive oil and France a small torch.

Dinner was at 7pm, so after the trek back to my room I had a look around the grounds. This estate was at one time a school and some of the older buildings are from that era, as were some religious statues in the gardens. There are vast amounts of lawn surrounding the buildings and huge trees.

I rinsed out some of my dirty clothes which I am hoping will dry before too long.

I showered and changed but was a bit late for the 7pm start for dinner. We had one room to ourselves and a vast buffet. Not being able to choose between a casserole and rice, Fish and Chips or a Roast Pork dinner, I had them all. I restricted myself to only 2 desserts.

After dinner I encouraged some people to try the Cogz game and when the dining

room closed at 10 I played a Chinese card game with 2 Spaniards and a Swede.

I wasn't really sure what we were doing but my partner, who owned the game, and I won all 3 hands.