Food: emergency late night pizza from the all night sea front cafe 'Buddies'. Like Cheers but with more Formica.
Hours since last square meal: Don't even ask. Detox starts on Friday.
Level of intolerance with sleeping at a youth hostel: Under control. Back to my own bed tomorrow!
Sightings of Peter Mandelson: Very few. Someone suggested I come across as a stalker so I've toned it down.
One thing that needs to be dealt with first: I heard Andrew Rawnsley interviewing Mandelson was 'fantastic'. I couldn't get in. There was even a humourless bouncer on the door to reiterate this point several times.
Moving on.
You might have thought that yesterday was all about the Leader's Speech. But along the seafront, a website was being launched encouraging people to stand as Labour councillors. An important point was made about how councillors describe their role primarily in negative terms - it takes up every evening or the endless meetings are really tedious which caused me some alarm as I think I remember having that exact same conversation several times in the bar the night before. So starting now being a councillor is great. It really is. Just don't believe it when people say it's just two evening meetings a month.
Last year I failed to make it into the main Hall for Gordon's speech and felt I'd missed an essential Conference experience. I was almost in danger of repeating this after it took three stewards debating the colour of my invite (white/off white/black but mostly white) before I ended up in the right queue. I'm a naturally sentimental person - cried at Tony's last Conference speech, cry whenever I see footage of what Labour has done over the years, and yesterday was no exception. For during the course of that hour, we're immune from whatever the press is sniping and speculating on out in the real world, and come together to remember what we've achieved, what we still have to do and what's at stake.
The speech felt calm, considered and unifying, steadying the ship for the months in the run up to the election. With my councillor hat on, 24 hour drinking bans (the growing night time economy is something we're grappling with in our ward at the moment) and firmer interventions to support families (given the amount of ASB related casework we get) were particularly welcome.
Afterwards, parts of the speech were clearly not going down well - a lively rally on electoral reform results in the bizarre spectacle of Dave from Blur asking the audience 'is anyone here a fan of AV?'. A few tentative hands go up and I remember, that a bit like Latin, voting systems weren't something they taught us about at my school.
This isn't quite the mood I'm after - wanting instead an air of post speech reflection. That lasts until the news of the Sun headlines breaks in the hotel bars. But by that point, the piano has been wheeled out, and we gather round to sing our way through defiantly rather than in anyway resembling a scene from the sinking of the Titanic.
Louisa Thompson is Labour Councillor for Stoke Newington Central
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