Poster Boy

9.20pm. Left my room at about 7, to find most of our group congregating just outside Swanborough. I wasn't sure what they were all doing there at first. One of the group then produced a 'thank you' card that we have bought for David Bard, our tutor. We have also bought him a bottle of wine, which we intend to give him tomorrow. When I asked, I was told that the wine was a rosé. Yuck! I know it's the thought that counts, but rosé? I happen to know that David likes his real ales, so a bottle of rosé is unlikely to impress but he can always quietly drop it or give it to someone when we're safely away.

We walked down to Pevensey en masse, and chatted. Steven didn't go for his power nap, he apparently lay in the sun instead. I'm not convinced that a lie in the sun when you are dehydrated because of a hangover is a bright idea, but hey, he's the chemistry graduate, not me, WTF would I know? :)

We started off the session with an analysis of the other posters produced by the yellow rectangles. Some were quite good, others were less good. I wasn't especially impressed to hear Little Miss Labcoat point to a word in the conclusion of our poster and sneer, saying "Oh dear, you never put that in a conclusion." Lots of feelings of wanting to push her out of the window but I resisted. Damn perfect straight hair of hers.

There then followed a short session where we went next door to examine the posters produced by the yellow spots. We were extremely contructive in our criticism of theirs. The poster was about aluminium, and I felt educated at the end of it. There were a couple of spelling mistakes which I mentioned but didn't mark them down for, it would have been petty.

Back in our own group room we then had revealed to us what the yellow spot group had written about our poster. Their criticisms seemed awfully petty and rather contradictory, for instance they gave us a not achieved on the criteria about whether the poster had a clear title, on the grounds that it (the title) was not a question. Well, since our brief was to produce a poster about an energy debate, that isn't actually a question. David Bard agreed, and whilst he can't amend other people's criticism it was nice to know that he thought the poster was good.

Kirsten seemed to take the criticism pretty personally. On the grounds that she had done a fair bit of organising of our Gang of Four to get it done, I felt that she had a certain amount of justification, so I just let her go on for a while.

As the session broke up, David Bard reminded us that we have to be out of our rooms by 9am. We can leave suitcases with the porter's office, however Kirsten has kindly offered to take me into Brighton tomorrow afternoon. David has deferred the start of tomorrow's session to 9.30am, so Kirsten and I are going to meet for coffee tomorrow morning at 9am, so that I can put my cases into her Land Rover. Did that sound like a euphemism? It wasn't mean to be.

As people walked off, I was asked whether I am going to the disco tonight. No, I don't think I will. A room full of people with slightly wounded feelings about poster criticisms, plus alcohol? I'm not convinced it's a winning combination!

I will head along to the East Slope Bar in a little while, once I've dragged myself back to doing the packing. I will give Alan a ring in a moment, we are exchanging some messages on Facebook at the moment but you can't do better at a distance than the sound of someone's voice.