Me and Mrs Jones....

"We've got a thing going on...."

If someone said to you, "give me £50 and I'll give you a great day out, let you see and hear many expert, inspirational people in the flesh, feed you gorgeous fodder and then ply you with Prosecco at the end" would you cough up?

Well I did.  And it was one of the best £50 I've ever spent.  Mumsnet Blogfest happened on Saturday and kicked off with the refreshingly normal (and irritatingly beautiful) Miriam Gonzalez Durantez or - for the politically illiterate - Mrs Nick Clegg.  She spoke at length in her endearing Spanish lilt about being a mother - the trials and tribulations and admitted that she often used Mumsnet for some "teeps" for staying sane.  

courtesy of Mumsnet

Breakout sessions with the likes of Tanya Byron (full of good sense, obviously brilliantly clever but I wouldn't want to meet her down a dark alley), Cath Elliott, journalists Eleanor Mills, Suzanne Moore and Liz Fraser tackled the issue of trolls.  Other sessions covered 'Finding your Voice' with the unexpectedly hilarious Zoe Williams amongst others, SEO techniques, Social Media, Photography and more.

Zoes Strimpel and Williams courtesy of Mumsnet

Eleanor Mills, Prof Tanya Byron & Liz Fraser courtesy of Mumsnet

Then came a Keynote Panel featuring the much-anticipated Liz Jones of the Daily Mail.  To say she was a damp squib would be a massive understatement.  She is deaf on one side but chose not to sit on the correct side of the Chair so she couldn't hear anything.  This is the woman who reacted to the news of her husband's infidelity by thinking "oh good, I can get a couple of columns out of this" although, on Saturday, she claimed to regret ever having spilled the beans on friends and family because now she has "no relationships".  She followed up her unsmiling appearance (she might have tried once or twice but I think her face was too tight) with a typically snarky article in the Mail on Sunday the following day, littered with inaccuracies and fallacies. There was something familiar about her appearance too - the heavy eye makeup, the orange tan....

Liz Jones

Tutankhamun

Ironically, the closing keynote speaker was the delightful Caitlin Moran who was hilarious to listen to and forecast that the future of journalism would see the end of snarkiness, so maybe someone should tell Liz.  She responded to one star-struck questioner (who came over all giggly like a 10 year old girl) with "would you like to have sex with me?  I accept!"  She was the perfect choice to end the day.

Courtesy of Mumsnet

Then it was upstairs for a few buckets of Prosecco before staggering off in search of a taxi, weighed down by a very generous goody bag.  Well done Mumsnet.  Sign me up for next year, but maybe we could avoid that thing  with Mrs Jones...?

Mumsnet Blogfest

I have been a member of Mumsnet for a couple of years but, in all that time, I've probably been on it on only a handful of occasions.  I joined up in search of some moral support when the children were younger and being vile and I felt I really couldn't bore my friends with my traumas any longer.  I'm happy to say that support was there in abundance and it was reassuring to realise that most people seemed to think the kids were being normal and that it would all pass (it did).  

After that, my activity lapsed for lots of reasons.  Firstly, I have a full time job and am knackered by the end of most days.  Also, I have a family I quite like spending time with and 'having a couple of hours to ourselves once the kids are in bed'  is in the distant past.  Nowadays, they go to bed much later than us.  I felt that perhaps Mumsnet is aimed at a different generation from mine....there seems to be lots of talk about breastfeeding and nappies and I am (very happily) way past that era now.  Finally, I was quite bemused by all the acronyms that the Mumsnetters employ and kept having to refer back to their helpfully-provided list which was slow and quite irritating but probably something you get used to if you are a regular.  Finally, did I really need to be a member of a website which uses the acronym EWCM (Egg White cervical mucus)?  Yes, really.  Bleurgh.

But last week, someone at work mentioned Mumsnet and I decided to pay my annual visit :-)  The first thing I saw was the ad for their upcoming Blogfest - 10th November - a Saturday!  Whoo hoo - workers can go too!  And an early bird booking price of £50 (rising to £75 on 30th September).  I also realised that Mumsnet has a blogging section which either I didn't notice before or (whisper it) I haven't visited the site since I started this pathetic excuse for a malnourished, pox pitted, scurvy-ridden blog.

The line-up of speakers looks amazing and, frankly, a bargain at fifty smackers but then I can get to London in half an hour and I realise others have to add enormous sums for hotel accommodation and/or ludicrous train fares levied by profiteering bastards train companies.

How about this lot:-

Caitlin Moran (whose star is really in the ascendant at the mo), Jeanette Winterson, Liz Jones (for whom I have a morbid fascination - is she for real?), Professor Tanya Byron and many other freelance writers, journalists, social commentators etc.  It looks brilliant and I am sorely tempted.  If any of you lot out there decide to go, it would be great to meet up and put faces to names.

Somehow remembering my sign-in and password, I updated my profile and applied to join their blogging forum.  Once I pressed 'submit' I got a friendly message, thanking me and saying that they would be in touch once they had had a gander at my blog.

Then I realised what my last post said.  

Oh well.  Some you win...