After extensive consultations with our lawyers we at last feel able to bring you a report on our first Annual Meeting 
(Please sign the Confidentiality Agreement before reading on.)

Confidential Notes taken at the First Annual Meeting of Passive Complicity at the premises of Mr J.C Watson esq.

Preamble

The august offerings and sagacious wit evident in Passive Complicity have led many amongst our avid readership to speculate on the form of our meetings – general, annual and editorial.  I can assure you (through what could aptly be described as ‘the fog of war’), one can only remember the incidental and the accidental.  As a postscript, fragments come to mind and the conversation, both during the official and unofficial is varied and (according to eminent phrenologist Dr Waldemar Schtenkentopf, late of Utrecht) ‘describes in perfect detail the topographic peaks and defiles of the human condition’.

I make one keen observation, the standard format for a meeting is to draft an agenda, elect a chairperson, and proceed till all items are dispensed with, accounted for, played-out.  Then once canvassed, forget all about it, walk away and determine not to do it again for some time unless of course you belong to a public department or a corrotted private organisation.  Guaranteed there’ll always be some sub species of humanity whose sole existence depends upon creating agendas for myriad dull and self serving meetings.  Perhaps it’s all about relevance deprivation and the ‘something’ that may have happened to them as a child.  It instills in them a desire to talk and talk about nothing other than to draw a pallid half light upon their pathetic little egos.  I can assure you (dear reader) that C&P meetings are quite different, bereft of ego, and enshrine irrelevance as an art form.

Notes first annual meeting held at J.C Watson’s. May 19th 2013

An interesting man, wearing a country road type shirt, and perhaps a vest, and sat to one side reading a book.  We read the large bold type adorning the cover, ‘Mussolini and Fascism’. This was too delicious to let pass.  We enquired as to the book, and in a shot he joined us at table.  He was once in the army, had an amusing anecdote about our former GG Sir William, Slim, assisted us with an enquiry into the correct pronunciation of Poilou, (french soldier,) and in the ensuing fifteen minutes described emphatically his loathing of fascism, croneyism, and Naplan.  (Will the un-named secretary of the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation, ( ASIO) please contact us at the above address, and we shall return his neck brace, calipers, and truss.)  The conversation was detailed, discursive and distracting, shared between the other patrons, Mr Watson, and passers by.  We displayed inordinate decorum, drinking only in moderation, speaking in hushed tones, always through the chair, and keeping to topic.  Clearly our table was peopled with gentlemen of class, yet occasionally, we were cautioned against speaking too loudly.  The hours went by and that afternoon, as we made our departure, the proprietor, the kindly and revered Mr Alan Watson suggested it would look poorly for his business should we depart by the front door.  He conducted us towards the rear of the premises, to a private room where we enjoyed some of Mr Watson’s especial fortified wine.  We pirouetted out into the late autumn sunshine, awash with a ‘winey’ afterglow.

Note; nomination of Alan Watson as honorary member of P& C passed unanimously.

Determining on a course of action, Mr Cockburn, and brother Paddio, made their way to the Rose Hotel in Napier Street Fitzroy and awaited Messrs Poole, Maine and Dumpster.  A further hour or two ensued in good company.  Once again, the patrons, the passerby’s and the bar staff were engaged for lucid opinion, substantive anecdotes, and witty aphorisms.  Bidding farewell to Quantam and Paddio, we boarded the Smith Street Tram. Ira regaled the passengers with ditties, quaint and profound, and walking the short distance to Cockburn and Pool Melbourne office we retired for a light meal. Herewith is a formal acquittal of the substance of the meeting.

Item I   Do not engage the waitresses in conversation solely to admire their beauty, it’s a sham and they can see through it.

Item 2   Do not separate the committee in transit to a pub, you may never reconvene

Item 3  Do not sing lusty ballads and share witty observations with the public, (some grim faced) on the Smith Street Tram

Item 4   Remember to retrieve you hat

Item 5   Write down anything of relevance….

Item 6   Appoint a “ scribe’ to undertake  Item 5

Item 7   Determine next meeting*

* we invite our valued readership to the next meeting at J.C Watson’s in the private dining room, the Trocadero Room. Thursday 32nd August 2013