I had a flying visit into Brighton, I didn't have the funds nor the holiday entitlement to stay all week so I went for a long weekend instead. I went down with Kevin on the train and we were very pleased with our lovely B&B in the village - called The Kelvin Guest House (I recommend it, very highly).
We met up with the early arrived Merseyside contingency and had a drink and a meal on the Friday night in a Greek Taverna next door to the Metropole. On Saturday we had a lazy day, visiting the Pavillion and having a look round an excellent museum and art gallery in the grounds. We popped into an internet cafe at lunchtime to update our FBs and I got bitten by some horrible insects. By Saturday night when we went into the Labour LGBT party in the village, I was covered in bites and blisters, it was not pretty!
On Sunday we went to a session with John Prescot about using social networking, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter for campaigning purposes. He came over for a chat and I engaged him in a dicussion about Kensington, given that he has been up four times in the last 6 months or so, mainly filming for his various TV programmes.
I also had the chance to sit in the conference hall and watch as my dear old friend Viv Nicholson from Sheffield was given the Merit Award for her many years of service to the party. She was the rock upon which we built the Sheffield victories in 2000/1, I could not have done anything without her support.
And I cheered from the balcony as the Labour LGBT group won a best practice award for all their campaigning work - some of which you will recall they carried out in Liverpool in the run up to the European Elections. They marched on to the stage in their red "Never Kissed a Tory, Never Will" t-shirts and were front-page news the following day, brilliant.
I did love being back at conference, and when you are a visitor you can stay in bed as long as you like and nobody expects any great speeches from you or the rigours of chairing conference debates, it was a blast!
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