If there’s one thing I can take away from this conference, one thing I’ve learned and one thing I will remember from my experiences here, it is this:

I can sleep ANYWHERE.

Seriously. I have slept in a chair at the entrance to the Spouses’ Hall, the back of the Big Top, the common room, the coach on the way to London, on a table outside a discussion room and on a bench in the foyer of Keynes College. And then, in the early hours of this morning, the two passenger seats in a van. See, Dave has realised that I’m quite good at organising things, so when we were doing the 2am coach loading I ended up in the van coordinating where on earth we were meant to be going next. Except I only lasted a couple of hours. I suppose that it didn’t really help when it shut my foot between the van door and the internal step so I couldn’t walk anymore, but I had been up for far too long with far too little food and couldn’t really function anymore… We had taxis turning up with lists of people who were nowhere to be seen, coaches for Gatwick turning up half an hour late, and a bishop who didn’t know where he was going but turned up at the bus stop anyway. For all of this I had my radio earpiece in, so heard all the commotion and Elizabeth threatening to set Ngira on the lost bishop as well as Nick finally sighting the Gatwick bus and the bus marshall who never noticed when people were called him on the radio. And Olivia asking me if I had fallen asleep on my radio button because my messages were so unintelligable… I had to succumb to tiredness in the end, and curled up on the front seat, coming round occasionally to cries of “who’s that asleep? awwww…” Of course, I still had my radio earpiece in, so kept hearing ends of conversations until Dave had the thoughtfulness to turn down my radio and leave me in peace. Bless. I managed to get to sleep at 8ish, and apart from a half hour at noon to say goodbye to the medics I slept until half six. Genius.

We may have had a few mishaps, a few bishops seperated from their luggage, but in the end every single suitcase got to its owner (albeit on seperate buses) except for one left completely unlabelled in Tyler Court. I’m well impressed. And very tired. Currently I’m in our common room, looking after a steward who’s a little bit worse for the goodbye party we just had for Dave, and I can’t wait to spend a whole night in my bed instead of day times in bed and evenings on sofas and car seats. it’s been worth it, but completely knackering.

Tomorrow we start our retreat/youth conference with the Archbishop. it’s very exciting, and I just hope I’ll be in a fit state to appreciate it!

This is how exciting I found the Spouses' Conference.

(sorry, just for clarification, Ngira is our lovely steward from New Zealand. He’s ordained and turned 21 during the Conference, which is pretty good going!)