I was asked a while back to go to Oxford and address the distinguished citizens who attend the regular Oxford Geek Night. I said yes, of course I will, and of course I don’t mind if there’s no money in it, and of course I’ll spend a week or so knocking up a coherent 15-20 minute talk (which works out at a not inconsiderable 3000 words.) Anyway, I did that last night. Jenny and I thought we’d make a swish 24 hours of it, so we got a cheap deal at the Malmaison Hotel in the centre of town, which we discovered on arrival was a converted prison. Looks just like a prison, but with nice carpets. Oh, and they’ve knocked through so you get two cells as your room rather than one. And if the service is bad, everyone in the hotel just bangs a complimentary container of shower gel on their door until the staff come around to restrain us, it’s brilliant.

There seemed to be a row coming from outside the hotel when we were getting ready to go down to the Jericho Tavern, and it was being made by 6 actors on a metal stage in the courtyard doing a performance of Animal Farm. A girl was doing a great impression of a horse – well, as good an impression as you can do of a horse while wearing a shirt and trousers. I’d have been more impressed if she’d donned a pantomime horse costume, but I guess that would detract from the underlying message that Orwell was trying to get across. It was tempting to bellow from behind the safety of the net curtain “Excuse me, could you keep it down a little, thanks” – but I didn’t. I’m too polite.

Bite to eat, then to the Jericho Tavern, where supposedly Google were sponsoring the event to the tune of a free drink each, but I didn’t bloody get one, because I didn’t want to stumble onstage all incoherent and boozy. Hey ho. Ben Walker kicked off with a few pleasant tunes, and then it was my turn to embark on the weighty stuff. The text of the talk is up here, if you’ve got a few hours to spend wading through it – but it seemed to go down very well. Relieved at not having burst into tears or called for my mummy half way through, I had a drink or two – not bought by Google, but by j4 and addedentry. Yum. My talk was followed by one from the founder of Songkick, who said that live music was where the musicians were making money these days, to which I politely shouted “bollocks” from behind my hand. Couple more drinks, few more talks, bought chips from a van in the town centre at 1.30am, went to bed, got up, came home, rest of life, end.

Tomorrow, I will address the subject of tomorrow.