Bertie Bassett's Barmy Army! Bertie Bassett's Barmy Army! Bertie Bassett's Barmy Army!

In the interests of maintaining the delegates' focus on the matters in hand, through sensory deprivation, there were no windows. The lighting was erratically spaced and curiously specific: here a glare like that of nuclear fission from which people emerged permanently sightless, there a murky gloom in which nothing could be deciphered. Also, some dire framed reproductions of countryside scenes, fuzzy and with the colours printed out of register, lit as if they were works of art.

There was also a poor attempt at a chandelier, whose plastic crystals gently tinkled whenever a certain piece of apparatus in the gym upstairs was used. The pattern of exercise was generally one of slow but steady application escalating to a climactic frenzy. Even in the context of a hotel, this wasn't nearly as amusing as it should have been.

In addition to the usual false leather blotter, wide-bore ballpoint pen that clicks and unclicks with an unpleasantly loose rattly action, paper with widely spaced lines and the hotel chain logo squatting ugly at the top, blank nameplate toblerone, and a map of the building showing escape routes, each place at the table had been provided with a pack of Refreshers.

To my immediate neighbours I remarked: 'Refreshers. I didn't realise they were still doing them.' There was a pause and then from left and right a rush of Refresher reminiscences, to which I quickly contributed.

Later we introduced ourselves, later still we exchanged business cards. It wasn't much, but in difficult circumstances it was all we had.