Well this really deserves a blog all to its own. Yet again it was a truly amazing weekend, and as jampacked as ever. My body clock is still not back to being 100% with it, but I think it's finally getting there. I have no idea what day it is, what meal I'm on, what time it is etc haha but it's all good fun.

So Friday morning came and my alarm buzzed at half 6 telling me to get up, which was all well and good until I found out that the boiler had gone on one of its funny turns and decided to switch itself off during the night, so I had to have a freezing shower, which wasn't fun at all. I went and got the bus into town as mum was working. Bumped into a mate of mine on the way to the station and it was good to catch up with him. Then as I continued walking to the station I bumped into another friend who was walking to the his office next to the station so walked with him. The journey up to Nottingham was okay, nothing special, had to get the train to Waterloo, then underground to Warren Street, then to St. Pancras - which by the way is the most amazingly stunning station!! Then from there the train to Nottingham.

Arrived with plenty of time, and went to the youth briefing. This is a talk for all the youth delegates to get a chance to meet the other youth delegates, and to run through how the AGM works etc. Ciarnan was doing a lot of the talk, and was great to see him, bless the nutter :P. The briefing went well, and then it was off to dinner (considering I'm a fussy eater I think I must lose a lot of weight at these events haha but oh well). After that was the New Delegates Talk which I was running with Katie Boothby. Considering it was a reasonably obscure place I didn't think we would get many people. In the end the room was full to bursting with people standing along the corridor trying to listen - most bizarre! The talk went well though I think, we finished early which was good. The only unfortunate bit was the last two slides are some rather complicated tree diagrams going through the governance structures, and as the room was so full most people couldn't see them, which made my life a bit more difficult.

Then there were workshops, and as I had been to them before, and the fact my head was in a funny place I just wanted to sit quietly on my own for a couple of hours. So I found somewhere quiet (or so I thought) to sit down. Within seconds the Standing Orders Committee (people who make sure the rules of the AGM are upheld) walked past and saw me, so came and sat next to me. In hindsight this was probably a good thing, but deary me they are all trade unionists, so all drink rather heavily, and were all moaning that the bar wouldn't open till 9, bless them!. They were good fun, and mad, we ran through some of the motions that were in my working party and any problems we could foresee.

After that was the youth and student fringe meeting, a bit like the youth briefing but for all youth and students at the AGM to meet each other and get to know each other. Was good fun as per normal, with a wacky map icebreaker where we all had to run to our part of England.

Then was the evening reception, which is basically drinks. It's a chance for you to meet up with people you haven't seen for basically a year. It was amazing walking round and seeing people I hadn't seen in ages and wanted to catch up with. It was good seeing Ruth again and catching up with her (more on that later). Great seeing Caroline, the other AMSC members, Anastasia, Chris, and the list could go on and on.

At eleven I though I should really head off to bed as I knew I was running the working party on the Saturday, as the halls of residence wasn't too close I had told Sheila (member of standing orders) that I would come find her and walk her home, aww bless. So went and found her, she was still finishing off her wine, which was fine, sat down and had a good conversation with Alan (one of the other working party chairmen). She then said did I mind if she got another round in, I was shattered but being me couldn't say no, so she did. A little later on she then asked if she could get another so I pointed out I really was tired, she looked at her watch and was like "it's only 10:20", until I pointed out it was "11:55" and that her watch had stopped. So we did indeed leave, and hobbled our way back to the halls.

Slept well, and got up at 7, completely exhausted, and went to jump into the shower which is my normal way of waking up, until I found out that the dial wouldn't budge either way. So instead I had to water board myself into the sink. Went down to breakfast which was nice, and then walked over to the main opening and plenary with Caroline. The opening ceremony was good, and Tom Hedley (chair of the board), Kate Allan (Director), and the treasurer all gave their reports which were very good.

Then there was break, closely followed by... drum roll... the working parties! Due to the number of resolutions the AGM has to go through we split them into working parties. This just makes the debate much easier and quicker (in theory) as instead of 600 delegates all debating and amending each motion you have about 100. I was given working party B which was the campaigns motions. Arrived and sat down with the working party secretary Ruth, and the Standing Orders Member John. The number of people in the working party turned out to 250-300 delegates. The order of debate is quite strict and it was my job to ensure that it was stuck to. The way it goes is:

• Proposer speaks for 5 minutes
• Board has a right of reply for 3 minutes
• Initial show of hands
• Amendments taken
• General debate
• Vote on Amendments
• Right of reply of proposer
• Overall vote

It's a bit more complicated than that, but for the blog I'll keep it at that. So the first motion was on Burma, the proposer spoke, as did the board. The initial show of hands showed that all were in favour except 3 people, so I thought hey this will be a quick motion - WRONG - the proposer then amended his own motion, then the country co-ordinator for Burma stood up and wanted an amendment but didn't know the wording (not good form in a working party), so I ended up calling for the second motion and we would go back to it. The second motion went okay, although still a lot of amendments but in the end was passed unopposed. I then went back to Burma which with more delay, and more amendments was eventually amended and passed overwhelmingly. Then was the third motion which went smoothly. The fourth motion was proposed by the Guildford group on China, I called for amendments and about 10 hands shot up, my heart sank. There were a ridiculous number of amendments, each one putting points in which Amnesty was already doing, so in the end I called on the board member to come and put the record straight, which quickly saw the end of any more amendments. By the time we came to the end of that motion the time for lunch had already come and we were still one more motion to go.

Due to the way the working parties work, lunch or no lunch we still had to continue. The only trouble was this final motion appeared like it was going to be the most controversial as it was on prostitution and asking for Amnesty to support its legalisation, something amnesty has no expertise in at all. So the proposer came up and started talking, his talk started with "I'm a sex worker and have been for ten years", very brave in my opinion to admit that. There were a few amendments, and the board put one forward that completely changed his whole motion, when I said to him I assume that's unfriendly, he said "no friendly", so I waited till Ruth put it up on the board, asked him again, and he said "ohh no unfriendly" haha. In the end it was defeated.

Considering I'm the youngest person ever to chair a working party it was very much a baptism of fire, but one I thoroughly enjoyed the nonetheless. Ruth and John were both fantastic. We then had to go to a special room over the remainder of lunch to run through all the motions and how they had gone etc.

After that it was back to plenary session where Sam Roddick was the keynote speaker. I had heard her talk before at her mum's memorial, and she's a very good public speaker, even if she does have some very... radical views.

After this was the motions in plenary. Basically all the motions done in working party have to be done again in plenary for the formal vote. Due to the working parties this runs a lot quicker and all is over with quite quickly thank goodness.

(I told you it was an exhausting event when I've written so much and only about half way through)

We then had our campaign action, this is basically our demonstration, to show we are in solidarity with people, and this year we were showing our support for the mothers who had children die in the Tianamen Square massacre. To do this every delegate was given a red rose and we went and laid it on a patch of grass in the centre of a pond that was linked by a bridge. Meanwhile a chinese singer was singing in the background and a film crew was recording it so that it can be sent off to the mothers to show our support, as ever it was incredibly moving and very powerful.

Then it was dinner to be followed by a panel discussion on the changing face of activism using the internet as a resource, which was interesting.

After that was the evening entertainment, this year was a disco and some professional dancers. The professional dancers turned up late, and the DJ was like 50 with a flat cap but it was still great. When the dancers did arrive they were fantastic, very quick, and very good, even if we all saw perhaps a tad too much of the female dancer. They then called any body up onto the dance floor who wanted to and taught us a basic salsa, which was great. For the rest of the evening it was just catching up and chatting to people, until finally going to bed at 1am. Having said my shower wasn't working, the guy then went and "fixed" it, to the point it spent the whole night dripping, so I went from water boarding myself to a form of water torture, yay!

Up the next morning as bright as possible, and went down to breakfast where I sat with the director, which was fine, we know each other, she asked how I was so I answer in a really croaky voice "good thank" evidently shouting over the disco the night before had not done my voice any good haha. The final day was good, there was a panel discussion with members of amnesty from other countries, including Hong Kong which was really interesting. We also went through the abortion motions and any motions we hadn't done the day before. It was a nice end to the conference. Got the train home again which was a complete and utter nightmare but I won't go into that as this blog is long enough. All in all it was an amazing weekend, inspiring, shattering, and well worth going!