In a previous life I sat on many committees, but now I live in committeeless bliss. I remember them though — vividly. Which is not difficult because, in many ways, all committees are the same committee.
At the head of the table sits the chairperson who, despite the non-sexist title, is almost always a bloke. At his right hand sits the executive secretary who, despite the non-gender specific nomenclature, is almost always a woman. The chair will kick off with, 'Perhaps we should make a start', knowing that there are still five members to come — the same five members who are always to come. Nevertheless, he has a go.
'Any apologies?' The executive secretary reports that the representative from Global Financial Crisis Watch has disappeared along with all of GFCW's operating funds and that Victoria Dark, secretary to the Minister for Daylight Saving, will miss several meetings because she has gone into labour.
'Gone over to Labor?' This shocked ejaculation comes from what looks like a dehydrated boxthorn hedge wrapped in swathes of faded green corduroy, but is in fact Professor Evan Garble, Head of the Department of Fine Arts and Emissions Gambling at the Canberra Institute for the Arts and Emissions Gambling (CIAEG).
He is fighting a doomed battle to revive the old-style professoriate, which means invariably bringing the wrong agenda, being in any case always two items behind, glimpsing the world intermittently through an astonishing eruption of anarchic hair, moving five points of order but mislaying the last three, and dressing like a city tramp up on his luck.
'Minutes of the last meeting,' says the chairman, soldiering on. 'May I sign these?' But the latecomers arrive as he speaks with just enough interval between each to make any further business impossible till they settle.
One puffs and heaves, muttering something that sounds like 'F*****g stairs' but may have been 'Not enough chairs'. Another trips as he enters and distributes his papers, folders, glasses and pens along the length of the room, as if laying a trail to ensure a safe escape.
When it comes to dress and style, all committees are not quite the same committee. Here for example is the Committee on Institutional and Educational Guidelines (CIAEG), bringing to its current discussion a mix of sexy short skirts, terrible beards, a variety of suits and ties, several of them mute testimony to what blokes were getting married in