Once again, and thanks in no small part to President Staffan Nilsson’s adroit chairmanship, the plenary session got through its complete agenda literally with minutes to spare. Getting the timing right is so important because provision of a full team of interpreters is, understandably, very expensive. In the good old bad old days, the Committee would have booked the team for the day, thereby giving itself flexibility if the plenary’s agenda ran over into the afternoon. But in order to enhance efficiency we now plan things much more tightly. Today, we had no alternative but to finish at 13.00. Of course, we have some tricks up our sleeves to help us (which I shan’t reveal), but the President’s sense of humour is a considerable advantage. Today, for example, there was a misunderstanding over whether an amendment had been adopted or not. The President, quite rightly, believed that it had been adopted but to ease the plenary forward and defuse the situation he said, on mike, ‘Have I made a mistake? Please don’t tell anyone.’  By the time we had stopped laughing he had moved smoothly on to the next amendment…