Caucus Race

Attended the most hilarious meeting the other nite..it was work related, we were going to meet the 'Friends of the Balmain Townhall', a group of women with an interest in the developement of the Townhall..all of them over 60 for sure. and carrying on in that naffy old woman sort of way. They had convened a general meeting in which to discuss the carpet selection. We had turned up especially as a courtesy to allow them some creative input into what carpet would be chosen, mind you we didn't have to and they weren't the clients but because its a public space, the community gets rather sensitive about these things so its good to make them feel involved.

If this was a real business meeting we would have turned up and gotten right into it, as professionals, time is money, but we had to sit thru an hour of rather trivial general commitee stuff. 15 minutes of wrangling wheter the group should meet half and hour earlier, the monthly budget report, the treasurer reports they had received $4.50 in interest this month. A collection of monthly membership fees, I reckon looked to be two dollars and the silliest was vacating all commitee positions ( it was actually thier AGM) all annouced and done rather formally only to have everyone re-elected 5 minutes later in the same roles (there were only 8 of them you see). I felt like Alice in Wonderland running in that riduculous caucus race. It was pretty difficult not to laugh at the absurdity of it all. How they tried to keep the air of formality and structure in the preceedings, but it didn't have the decorum of a usual business meeting. All the women talked at once and didn't listen to each other. They complained and nitpicked about the smallest things...and when finally we got to selecting the carpets, the process was a hoot..they tried to table a vote but everyone was speaking at once and the chairperson just said "Alright! Everyone go and stand on the carpet they like best" and it was like that game 'islands and crocodiles', four ladies stading on a 500mm square carpet sample. They picked a colour that was pratically identical to the current carpet..which was hideous by the way but thats democracy for you. Afterwards they got to the real reason of the meeting..a party! Even I had to laugh because it was all quite quaint really. Old ladies are funny creatures