I have no idea what is happening in this photograph:

That is not strictly true – I know that it was taken at IQPC in Munich last week just as I was about to moderate a panel on data protection with Senior Master Whitaker and Denise Backhouse of Morgan Lewis. I know too that everything was prepared – slides in order, confident of my subject, panel present and correct, audience in its seats, right country, trousers on, all the standard things to run through as a panel is about to begin. I had slept well, drunk little and felt fine. So why am I clutching my head?

Perhaps I had subliminal premonitions of things which awaited me – of the next day’s take-off in blinding snow, of the urgent demands by conference organisers for next year’s session topics which would hit me before I had written up this year’s, of the e-mail which observed in a non-specific way how interesting it is that my web site looks different in every browser when I thought I had fixed all that, or the letter from my accountant demanding last year’s figures which I would find on my return.

I was probably in fact just pushing my glasses up as we were about to begin. The session seemed to go well, and the conference as a whole was useful and interesting. A report follows shortly.

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