give this girl a break, please!

It's been another week of madness. On Wednesday night, I was at Manchester Art Gallery for the launch of the b.tween conference. Wandering through the beautiful pre-Raphaelite and Victorian galleries with my glass of wine whilst we waited for things to kick off made for an interesting contrast with the main event - pitches from five creatives for the exploding narratives project, which uses cutting-edge technology.

On Thursday, I headed over to Liverpool for the Design Show at the Contemporary Urban Centre. I am quite impressed that I managed not to spend any money (except for buying a quite disgusting tuna panini - though that, as they say, is really another story). I did take quite a fancy to Rachel Eardley's pretty dove earrings, but sadly they were rather out of my price range. The dangerous Tatty Devine stand was also quite difficult to resist. Oh the gorgeousness of the black cat bangle! Oh how covetable is the petite antler pendant! I think the Tatty Devine people could see me drooling because they kindly gave me a rather fabulous heart-shaped lolly and and this most excellent badge which I love. (Secretly, I am still only about 5 years old.)

Today, I was back in Manchester for day two of the b.tween conference at MoSI. I felt like a total wally when I arrived this morning because I was (literally) the only one there without a laptop (specifically, a shiny new mac book), a blackberry or an iphone. Instead, I had a pen. A pen. My god, I like pre-Raphaelite oil paintings and I use a pen. I am practically analogue. I am surprised some kind of digital police force didn’t come and forcibly eject me from the auditorium because I wasn’t Web 2.0 enough to make the grade. However, I did start to feel better when someone made a cheezburger joke on the webchat screen and I actually understood it. (Is that a good thing?)

It was an interesting day - I enjoyed listening to this guy whilst watching my neighbour's rather impressive doodling. I got another free badge! And then there was Bill Tidy - the highlight of the day. His slightly nonsensical but entertaining talk, which took in everything from coathangers to Lady Godiva, was illustrated not by boring old powerpoint slides, but by his own rapid-fire illustrations. The audience loved it: the glossy meeja type sitting next to me was audibly snorting with laughter at one point and on the webchat screen a whole “bill tidy rocks, death to powerpoint” movement was rapidly gaining momentum. I felt a lot better after that: clearly analogue has still got it after all.

... And now the week is over! It's Friday night and my plan for the weekend is for sunshine, artlessness, and sleep!