Sleeping through Meetings

In many ways, the meeting is to modern life what the Ague was to 19th Century Fenland. Nobody likes it. It sucks the life out of you. Yet sometimes you can't avoid it.

A typical middle manager in business now spends more time in meetings than their nominal working hours. Through the power of Exchange scheduling, you end up with invitations to meetings squeezed into every spare minute of every spare day. You realise that the only time you can actually do any actual work, is out of work hours. But then people realise you're one of the keen ones that work late, and start inviting you to meetings at 5.30 in the evening or half past seven in the morning. So you work even later, to fit some real work around the meetings.

You may think that, tired of your workaday life of middle management or web content management, you can escape the wall-to-wall meetings of secular life by finding a call to the ministry. But even there you will find that between PCCs or their equivalents, Circuit Stewards' meetings, Elders' meetings, Sunday School planning meetings, Deanery Synod (which always sounds like a gathering of the fairy-folk in a woodland grove, but is actually rather grimmer), School Governors' meetings, supervising trainees/lay ministers/people with loneliness problems, you are actually still spending the best part of your life in rooms full of people who apparently have nothing better to do. But are all actually thinking the same thing about you.

There is a way to recognise those people who actually do go to meetings because it's their idea of a social life. They have volunteered for mid-level ecumenical meetings. Not the ones at ground level, where people from actual churches in the same town get together. Nor the ones at high-up level, where bishops and superintendent ministers presumably try to discuss strategic stuff - or else moan at each other for sheep-stealing. No - the ones in the middle, where you're neither doing important stuff nor real stuff. If you're on a county-level ecumenical meeting, the chances are that, if you ever had the time to have kids, they've left home.

But I digress. My real agenda (hem hem) today is to share with you tactics for getting through meetings. I will take it for granted that if you are not the chair/chairman/chairperson/chairwoman (for we welcome meeting facilitators of all genders and some) then you will adopt the simple tactic of just going to sleep. Unless you are meant to be taking the minutes. In which you should go to sleep, then afterwards get a vague impression from the chair about what happened, then make the minutes up - giving important actions to yourself and dull, unimportant ones to people you don't like.

So these are really tips for the chairperson, on days when you'd rather be asleep than be at the meeting. If you feel offended by my hierarchical assumption here, then don't be. I suggest you have a kip and forget about it.

Very long prayers: This doesn't actually shorten the meeting, but at least gives you the chance for a power nap. Pick the most verbose wannabe-preacher, and explain to them that it's very important that the whole agenda - including Any Other Business - is "covered in prayer". You should be able to get a good half-hour of sleep in.

The pain principle: Get the person sitting next to you to stab you in the thigh with a knitting needle at regular intervals. Given that's probably going to be a churchwarden, chief steward, Assistant Archdruid or similar, they'll normally be only too pleased to help.

Fake eyeballs: This technique, as long as you are blessed with people who ramble on, can enable you to sleep right through. Paint fake eyeballs on your eyelids - then when you close your eyes, you still look as though you're awake. And in certain more fundamental circles, the unwavering, unblinking stare can easily be taken for honest, God-fearing fanaticism. Drayton could adopt this trick no questions asked, if he wasn't so full of zeal that he doesn't need it. In some circles that pride themselves on having "dudes" for clergy you may get away with dark glasses on the same principle - and with the added advantage that you won't terrify your partner when you get home.

Chin Rest: If you're the sort of person whose head sways around when you're dozing off, you need a little stand (available in the Beaker Bazaar, World of Woad at Woburn and Euro-Beaker-World in Paris) that clamps to the desk, with the other end finishing in a gentle, padded cup that your chin can rest in. Keeps you steady as a rock.

Pre-emptive Grace: Turn the thermostats up high. Given the temperature in the average church hall, about 15C (60F) should feel like the balmy outskirts of the Thai forests. Put a few lavender oil burners on, and stick Enya or the collected speeches of John Major on in the background. Everybody else should be asleep in fairly short order. Then put the clock forward a couple of hours, and very loudly declare the Grace or appropriate closing blessing. In their sleep-befuddled state, everyone will blunder off outside and be half way home before realising they've been had. The chances are they'll be sufficiently grateful that they won't come back - and even if they do, you'll have made sure that you've locked up, got home, drawn the blackout curtains and are watching the telly with headphones on before anyone gets back to tell you your "mistake".

Wear a balaclava:  That way if you're the sort of person who dribbles when you fall asleep, nobody's going to notice.

Caffeine drinks: You probably don't want to drink too many at the sort of time most church meetings occur, as you're not going to be wanting the "buzz" in an hour's time when, soothed by your camomile tea, you're trying to get to sleep. But I recommend taking a case of caffeine drinks with you anyway. Then if anyone bangs on too long, you can throw the cans at them.

Controlling the minutes: Above all, as noted above, control of the minutes is the most important thing - even in meetings where you actually manage to stay awake. Ensure that the secretary emails the "draft" minutes to you - it'll give you an idea what you missed, and you'll be able to decide what really happened.

Sleep talking: This requires planning and dedication. Every night when you go to bed, play yourself a loop containing the words "That's one for the archdeacon", "It didn't happen like that in Archdruid Ernest's/Fr Patrick's/Revd Lucy's Day","We'll have to refer that to the Property Committee" and "That would be an ecumenical matter" ( ©  Father Ted). Then when you doze off you can be quietly assured that you will have a word of wisdom for any eventuality. If, on the other hand, you have a habit when asleep of screaming that you are being chased by Andy Gray armed with a  haddock, you're probably better off staying awake.

Any other Business: Finally, this can cause despair in the heart of the most doughty meeting-goers. You've got through an hour and a half of tedium, and you can see the light of the closing prayers and a cup of something that resembles coffee. When AOB comes up, and twelve people bring their personal hobby-horses out of the cupboard.
I deal with AOB in a simple way. I insist that all AOB be notified to me in person by 5pm on the previous day - and then I take the day off and go to London.