I know this guy who flew to Bucharest today for a conference. He really wanted it to be DraculAir but it was plain old KLM.

The lucky bastard's gone behind the Iron Curtain. Don't tell me that the Iron Curtain is no more. I won't let you take that evil communist overlord Nadia Comaneci Perfect 10 polyester tracksuit romance away from me.

I've never had a job that required me to go to conferences. One-day seminars run by software companies don't count. They're just for product-flogging and clamouring over Adobe hats and yo-yo's or Macromedia Flash t-shirts that have no hope of stretching across the bellies of the clamour-ers.

Proper conferences are the stuff of telemovies and poorly-written erotic stories on the internet. There's a guy in the hotel bar who's slamming down a bourbon glass and loosening his tie. He looks up and finally notices the lonely brunette in the beige pantyhose, playing with the ice cubes in her drink, briefcase at her feet.

-- So I bet you're here for Air-Con Con '97 too?

-- Oh yes! I can't wait for the climate control workshop tomorrow. How about a drink?

Fifteen to twenty sprawling paragraphs later, they're afterglowing in his suite in fluffy bathrobes. They crack open the mini-bar Schweppes Tonic Water and divvy up the Toblerone and wonder if they'll get away with it