Minutes

Have you ever tried taking minutes in a meeting where you are a) new, b) very junior and c) have no idea what the business is about? I have. And people make no allowances for this when they are talking. They speak at normal speed, using all the acronyms of a large corporation (it seems that banking is worse than the civil service for this trait) and the shorthand of people familiar with each other and the subject and expect you to have something coherent at the end of it. Madness. What on earth do I write when they say stuff like, ‘oh, and you remember all that business about the RGBs on the IHT? It’s resolved now.’ One dutifully records in one’s best squiggle-hand (an older and much less legible version of shorthand), ‘RGBs IHT res’. When it comes to writing it out does one put that the RGBs IN the IHT, AT the IHT or round, under, through, from, or over the bloody IHT are resolved? Who knows. Certainly not anybody who’s been reading MY minutes recently.