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Okay, it's just taken me two hours to find internet access. Probably not the best use of my time - but I did get to see the sea.

Man, it must be something to do with political conferences - disorganised, fractious, chummy and very, very useful all at the same time. Green Party hacks may look slightly more organic than their union or left wing counterparts but they have the same steel like determination to get amendment two part b through that I would recognise anywhere. I also think there may be a 'hack walk' - I think this deserves more study. I digress.

The day did not start well, standing in an almost motionless queue as a disoriented volunteer with "rabbit caught in the headlights" eyes tried to register the ever increasing line. I swear he sat shaking with money in one hand, filled in form in the other and asked a woman three times (!) what her name was again. She took it like a saint as I dreamed up new ways I could reek my revenge on him.

This is absolutely unfair of course because it was actually the TEAM of hacks who sat round watching him for a quarter of an hour before volunteering to give him a hand that were the real villains of the piece - but I was in a sweat. I'd made the special effort to get to Brighton for the start of conference for the day's only crucial vote and it looked set for me to miss it by a whisker standing in some kind of Bretchian interpretation of a queue.

Don't get me wrong most conferences of this kind have an air of incompetence about them - possibly due to being staffed by volunteers for the day, always new to the job, but it does grate don't you know.