Well I did it. I made my maiden speech to Health Conference. I managed it without falling over the rostrum, forgetting all my words or any other real disasters. Pictured below is the stage for my speech.
It was one of those rare conference days, that was full of tension and excitement. Often at Health Conference everyone is in agreement throughout. Motions are like Turkeys voting against Christmas! or I could imagine "Motion 1 - Conference believes cake is great" and we all vote Yes. However today we had an emergency debate on a three year pay offer. It was a passionate and highly charged debate, with some fantastic speeches. In the end it went to a card vote which was won by 12,000 votes out of nearly 500,000, which is about 2.5 %, in favour of balloting our membership. Anyway after all this excitement, it was the turn of the motion I was due to speak on. I prepared thoroughly by only finishing my speech at 4 am. videoing a run through on my digital camera, and then going to pieces at lunchtime, with me as usual perched in the loos trying desperately not to let tears spread my mascara all over my face.
Sitting in my room now I'm not totally sure what I was in such a tiz about. It wasn't the speaking to such a huge number of people, but I think it was about how would appear on the big screen and how my bloody voice would sound. I imagined that when I heard my voice boom over the mic that I would fall apart. It was the usual gender insecurity stuff! Thing is it went really well, and now I can't wait to speak again! My motion was about Violence and Aggression in the NHS (by the way we are against it!!). I tried to include a joke, but I guess violence just isn't funny. The devil in me wanted to say something outrageous, just to test if anyone was listening. I thought about suggesting that to combat the assaults, we start to arm our nurses! Thankfully sense got the better of me.
Anyway tomorrow is the last day and then back to reality. Whatever that is.
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5 comments:
Hmm difficult I've got to talk to the petrochemical industry about functional safety. It's just not a topic where jokes are really appropriate. How can you laugh after a slide about 186 people dying on Piper Alpha
Is there such a thing as Unfunctional Safety?
I am sure you can manage to think up some Brent Crude humour
Well done Jenny, I'm full of admiration! Standing up in front of a crowd is hard enough at the best of times, but to cope with 'gender insecurity' too...
Cheers Penny xxx
As usual the reality wasn't half as scarey as my imagination
You know what to do, it's just a matter of doing it, and apparently you do it well.
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