Sausage rolls

Before we start: I didn't realise this, but sausage rolls aren't really a thing in the US, apparently.  If you're not familiar with this delicacy (essentially sausage meat cooked and encased in puff pastry) you may wish to do some brief research.  I welcome any and all Americans - and other nations - to discover the sausage roll. And if you like the sausage roll, just wait till you have a yum yum.

I've been to the bakery today.

You see, my son quite likes on a Saturday morning to go to the bakery for some sort of biscuit - today it's a dinosaur biscuit - and while we're there, it seems churlish of me not to partake in something, after all I must have burned at least three calories walking there, and I wouldn't want to risk fainting with hunger on the way back.  So, I decided that a sausage roll might be nice.

The trouble is, you can't just buy one sausage roll.  Technically, yes, I suppose you could, but when the price for one sausage roll is in the region of £15,000 each, or four are on offer for just £1, you get four.

But what do you do with four?

They are provided hot, or at least warm, from being cooked this very morning.  Over time they will become less pleasant as they cool.  So it makes sense to eat them all up.

But is four sausage rolls excessive, as a mid-morning snack?

Well, yes, they are.

One is absolutely fine, and two is a good amount I would suggest which indicates that you are going to be involved in some form of physical labour (knocking down a wall, perhaps, or stopping a car rolling down a hill with nothing more than your burly muscles and iron will) and therefore in need of the energy provided by two sausage rolls, but more than two is excessive, however tasty and warm they are.

Don't get me wrong, they obviously have no calories because my wife isn't present to see me eating them.  But the quantity is really just a bit too high for my conscience.  If only they had been formed into a single really big sausage roll, then it would have been fine (or even chopped up into those mini bite-size sausage rolls you can get for buffets, you can eat an infinite amount of them)

Then I realise, wonder of wonders, that it is actually twelve o'clock - that means that they can be classed as lunch.  And whilst four sausage rolls might be considered unusual for lunch, it's not absolutely ridiculous.

Except my son has now paused the consumption of his biscuit to have a go at the remaining sausage rolls.

I trained him well.

Lunches at Conferences

Photo courtesy of tpsdave via Pixabay - CC 0 Public Domain license

Today I'm talking about conferences.  And in particular, my favourite bit of conferences, lunches.

Now, when you're organising a conference, there is a pecking order that you can't help but put the speakers in.  You'll have one of your best speakers right at the start as a keynote speaker, to set the tone and invigorate the crowd for the day.  You may well have your second best speaker at the end, although this is always a risk as people may start vanishing at the end as they realise the benefits of leaving 20-30 minutes early (i.e. reduced traffic and an earlier return to home)

Generally people in the "graveyard slot" (the one right after lunch) aren't the most exciting in the world, they're the people that you need to include on the agenda but it isn't the end of the world if someone takes a nap during their talk.  Sometimes people mix it up by putting an exciting speaker after lunch to keep people awake, but this only messes with peoples digestive practices as their brain attempts to keep awake a body headed into sloth after consuming three triangular sandwiches, a chicken drumstick, and an onion bhaji.

But I think one slot overlooked by event organisers is the one before lunch.

This slot is clearly for your controversial speakers, the ones that you're pleased to have but that might just say something that you're a bit nervous about people hearing.

The reason why this is the ideal slot is that about halfway into their talk, a door in the conference room will open and all the attendees will catch the little rattle of the kitchen trolley bringing in the lunch.

And from that point the speaker has lost any hope of holding their audience.  Instead, everything person is glancing at the lunch and at the clock, only gazing at the speaker perfunctorily, and they'll be thinking the following things:

• Lunch is here.
• When is this guy going to stop?  Surely they can see lunch is here too.
• Look how small that trolley is.  I don't think there's enough food there for all of us. Better make sure I'm at the front of the queue.
• How much plastic wrap do they need to put round those sandwiches? It'll take forever to open better. Better make sure I'm second to the front of the queue so I don't have to open them.
• I can see little pork pies cut in half! Screw the diet, I'm having one.
• Ooh, look at the gluten-free diet wrapped up by itself.  What is gluten anyway?  I think Collegehumor had a video about it.
• Lunch lunch lunch lunch lunch. I want lunch, please stop talking, because I want to eat lunch.

And the longer the speaker keeps going, the more the crowd starts to hate them for delaying their lunch.

If you enjoyed this, here's a post about a particular conference I went to a while back which featured some unexpected guests...

I'm going to be setting up some guest posts to run over the next few weeks as I'm getting married and hopefully going on honeymoon - I'll do my best to intersperse the guest posts with my own, but I've been very pleased with all the support the blogging community has made in sending me posts!  If you'd like to get involved, let me know.