Following LVT fringe on Saturday I want nothing so much as a nice hot cup of tea and a sit down, but instead I slouch along ten minutes’ worth of regenerational dockland to the Crowne Plaza, where I gather with other bloggers to guzzle free wine and get congratulated in public by impressive people until I go all red and gruff and shuffly. My trophy isn’t really big enough to drink wine out of with any conviction but it does look damnably like it would take a large boiled egg just perfectly, and that’s the important thing.

James Graham warns me and the People’s Choice category winner, my very own homebody MP Lynne Featherstone, that our opinions will now forever be measured against our status as award winners. I don’t think this bothers the board-sweeping Hornsey & Wood Green contingent too much. Lynne’s point of view is already public property anyway, and mine is generally so fractal that there are few opinions I will not painstakingly obfuscate with detail and caveat to the point where people inevitably lose track of why they objected to them in the first place.

No, I am far more concerned, this being the Campaign for Gender Balance, about my hair, which I have not brushed properly for the whole of the five hours up to the point where I have to have my picture taken, and my general appearance, which is located somewhere on a given 3D matrix between “hungover”, “beige” and “dead”. It’s not easy hitting the big time without warning. Or a hairbrush. James Graham, of course, is used to all this and has been swept into town in a cloud of stardust (albeit with an hour’s delay at Crewe) to sit on the panel of a fringe-meeting, present an award, and then be whisked off back to celeb-land (or at least Warrington).

It’s a lovely evening, some interesting wimmin’s blogging issues are aired, Mary Reid gives us “How-to” guide for would-be newbie bloggers, which I can’t help but feel ought to be disseminated in some way independent of the awards podcast itself, because fab though it was, it was slightly wasted on a room full of existing bloggers. And all thoughts of tea and bed are forgotten as we charge down to the bar, overfilling the lift in our eagerness and making it cross (“Get that elephant out of here!” it said. Not, no really. I said that. The lift merely said Beeeeeeeeeep.) Downstairs I am bought more drinks than I know what to do with (merely a figure of speech, you collect) and am kindly permitted by everyone (and I mean everyone – special mention to Brian Paddick for forebearance in the line of duty) to talk absolute crap at them ceaselessly for the next four hours. No one is safe! I even catch hold of the Cleggster on a fly-past to congratulate him on Friday’s rally speech – it’s great to have got all that European nonsense out of the way. “Oh yes, bugger that,” he agrees cheerfully. I acquire an “I’m 4 Ros” badge,  discuss dead people with Will H, introduce Liberal Review to Other Liberal Review (despite having shared a cosy blog for several years, they have never actually met) and promise Monica Whyte that I will, oh, leaflet every house in Haringey, join ninety-seven committees, stand for councillor myself, and break into Hornsey Conservatives HQ to change all the cartridges in their photocopiers to yellow ones then machine gun the bird of liberty into the wall before making my escape leaving a small tray of milk chocolates and an insulting note.

Two giggling male bloggers who shall remain nameless* want to know “why there wasn’t a most humourous women’s blog award?” and I am forced to hit them over the head with my handbag and use my ringing tones on them (and talking of ringing tones, at some point during all this excitement I manage to lose my phone). I successfully resist the, er, temptation to go to Glee Club and only regret this mildly the next day when I am told that Nick Clegg did a bit of stand-up, but even so I’m not sure this would have been enough to offset the impromptu Opik-Hemmings harmonica-keyboard jamming session, and as it turns out I needn’t have worried, because the next day Nick does a whole lot more stand-up.

The one thing no-one seems to be reporting about the leader’s speech, other than in the most formulaic mention, is that it was funny. It was really bloody funny. It didn’t just “have jokes” in it. He was fun. He was funny. Do you know what they did? he said from time to time, apropos of various bumblings and mishaps, in a mood varying from outrage to rich amusement, a liberal who didn’t know whether to laugh or weep, but had settled for now on laughing. I particularly liked the call-queue voice (“Yurr cahll is imporrtant to us….”), the Letters from the Opposition (“Dave suggested that he and I gang up on Gordon and Gordon sent me six pages of the most legalistic waffle you’ve ever seen, and all our top legal people are still locked in a committee room trying to understand it”)  and the barnstorming crowd-pleasing anti-coalition passage that every newspaper in the land has interpreted as signifying Clegg’s willingness to do a deal with either party if the terms are right. I can understand that that was essentially the outcome of what he said. But I can tell you homebody, it sure didn’t feel like that.

“Do I want to ally with the Conservatives?”

A few heckles of Nooooo!

“NO!”

Yay! Yaaaaaaay!

“Do I want to ally with Labour?”

Noooooo! No no nooooooo!

“Haaaaang on…”

We all giggle contritely. 

“It’s my speech. I only get to do this twice a year…

…NO!”

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

He got a thoroughly deserved standing ovation going in and out, and of all the coverage of the speech in the press as rounded up on the Freethink Blog, I see that only two newspapers were really negative: the Daily Mail (imagine my surprise) and, er, conference sponsor the Independent. That might have been my fault, as I had earlier indulged in a mild bit of media-sledging, although I could have sworn it was just TV people I was baiting. For the speech, you see, I was sat in the second stalls right behind a few media bods who had notebooks and filming equipment and those special expressions media bods wear that say I have, like, equipment strapped to my head and am busier and more important than you will ever, ever be and if you’re not going to give me the soundbite I want then you can just f**k off, and even if you do I’d still throw you and my grandmother into a pit of scorpions to provide myself with thirty seconds’ slight amusement. Yeah. Now I’m off to play with my great big willy. You know the one I mean.

But this is all in the future, and with speech behind us and media coverage still to come, we bounce out of the auditorium like the happy liberal eggs we are and say our goodbyes. Bye-bye Millennium! Bye-bye, daddies! Bye-bye the Cleggster, Our Vince, Officer Paddick, Extra Bold, Mr Pack, Niles, Will H, Grammar Police, Mary, Bridget, PPC extraordinaire Colin, Richard G, Jon “Facebook whore” Ball (not my words, Jennie’s!), the Liberal Polemicist, Meral, Jo x 2, the London Liberal, the Geo-Mutualist, Lindyloo, Peter “Irresponsible” Black, Grace G and Duncan B and a special bye-bye and thank you to whoever gave me this stinking cold! Bye-bye MatGB, awf’ly sorry I couldn’t answer your text about lunch on Sunday, but you see, my phone was in a drawer behind the reception desk of the Crowne Plaza. Byeee, everybody!

An hour later, I leave the Lib Dem Voice office and walk through the now ghostly conference centre (now they can get on with finishing it) towards the huge glass doors. Which are locked. Hm. Will I ever be allowed out? Let’s hope the party does come back to this venue soon because it looks as if I may not be able to do much leafletting between now and then… Eventually, I find my way out via the tradesman’s entrance, duck out of the precious yellow lanyard, then whirl my cloak around my face with an ineffable Air of Mystery and disappear, anonymous once more, into the watery Merseyside sunlight. My first proper conference. Huzzah!

* Although their blogs are here and here.