Off to a barristers’ chambers for a party for Inquest, a fantastic campaigning charity which works with the families of those who have died in custody. The event was a bitter-sweet affair: a party to launch a book written by Inquest’s co-Directors, Helen Shaw and Deb Coles and, more poigniantly, to remember Gilly Munday, the charity’s long-standing senior caseworker, who died unexpectedly some months ago.

For me, once I’d got the inevitable anxiety of speechmaking out of the way (I am acting Chair while we recruit a permanent one – any takers out there?), it was a chance to catch up with old mates. The room was full of the cream of the penal reform world: Vivian Stern and Andrew Coyle from Penal Reform International, Harry Fletcher from NAPO, Juliet Lyon and Geoff Dobson from Prison Reform Trust, Simon Creighton and Hamish Arnott from human rights solicitors Bhatt Murphy, and so on and so forth.

OK – a list of names you may or may not have heard of. But each of them hugely knowledgeable and each hugely committed: not one has been working in the field less than 15 years. Add to them individuals like Deb and Helen and you have something like two centuries-worth of passion and experience. Looking round the room last night, I marvelled at their ability to keep working away and keep themselves fresh, still rising to the challenges and still making a difference.

It was another evening when I felt humbled, and served as a stark reminder of how important their work is, and especially that of Gilly and other caseworkers.

… on the way back from Bournemouth.  Dirty, knackered, washed out.  If I say that party conferences are hard work, I don’t really expect sympathy.  Spending four days hob-nobbing with the big nobs, networking late into the night and pontificating from platforms can’t really be repackaged as suffering, but when, as yesterday, you pack eight meetings into seven hours and fill the remaining time with one speech and three receptions, you end up more than a tad jaded.

For many, conference is the highlight of the year.  I, on the other hand, always end up vaguely uneasy about the experience.  It’s not that things are going badly.  Quite the reverse: everyone I talk to is now interested in housing, wants to know what we think, is positive about the role we have managed to play in getting the issue back on the agenda.  One of the reasons I am quite so drained is because of the heightened level of interest.
 
But what tells on me is the very consequence of that openness and acceptance from those we are here to influence.  I can’t deny that it is nice to walk into a reception and be greeted by a Minister or huddle in a corner chatting to a No 10 adviser.  The political community is a small and tight-knit one and to be treated as an insider rather than an outsider is flattering indeed.  But Shelter is different and so therefore is my role.  If we lose the sense that we are here to represent a constituency who rarely if ever gets a voice, we fail in our mission.  We will only be listened to if we maintain our edge.
 
This question of insider vs outsider positioning is at the heart of Shelter’s campaigning dilemma.  In response to earlier blogs, some people have argued that we have gone too far down the road of co-option.  Knowing from bitter experience how devastating the consequences of being frozen out completely are for the cause you represent, I can tell you that endless and finger-jabbing outrage doesn’t actually often do your end users any favours.  But spending four days trying to find the right balance is a difficult – and tiring - experience.

Febrile atmosphere and Bournemouth are not words that commonly go together.  And, in the recent past, if Labour conferences had the air of excitement about them, it was not exactly a healthy one, with the playing out of the Blair and Brown rivalry dominating proceedings.
 
But if this year’s conference lacks the – to an outsider – fascinating vibrancy of last year’s Cherie-inspired punch-ups, this year’s one is exhibiting its own, more subtle tension.  Election fever is in the air.  Will he?  Won’t he?  And if he does, will he win?  If he doesn’t go now, how long will he wait?
 
And, for Shelter, those questions matter just as much as for MPs who are fearing unemployment (or candidates dreaming of employment) in six weeks time.  A few minutes ago, the Prime Minister repeated his pledge to build three million homes by 2020 and invest £8 billion in affordable housing (citing the need to combat overcrowding as one of his key motivators, an unexpected and welcome bow to one of Shelter’s key campaigning themes of the past few years).  The idea that, having successfully brought the Government to that point, it may all be gambled on a dash to the electorate is bitter-sweet indeed.
 
Which is why I will be even more interested in events next week as in this week’s.   Not only could next week be the time when Brown announces his decision – it would be typical of his hard-nose political manoeuvring to do so in the middle of the Tory conference.  But it will also be vitally important for us to understand where the Conservatives are now positioning themselves on the whole issue of housing.

Two events down and one thing is already clear.  The Lib Dems are taking housing seriously again, very seriously, seeing it as one of their signature issues and an opportunity to outflank the Labour party on the left.  There seems to be little chance of a repetition of their decision at the last election to omit any reference to housing in their party manifesto; indeed, there is clearly some hurry to refine their policy just in case the Prime Minister decides to go to the country this autumn.
 
But how close are they to a coherent policy?  Certainly they have some serious ambitions.  Yesterday, Andrew Stunnell launched a discussion document committing them to increasing housing supply to 260,000 a year, a massive hike of 100,000.  Not only that, they are also promising that no fewer than half of those additional houses will be affordable, with 25% of them socially rented.  Many of the new houses, they say, will be built by local authorities, competing equally with housing associations.
 
Behind this, however, there is a significant lack of detail about how these aims will be achieved.  Yes, we can expect some commitment on the part of the Liberal Democrat Treasury team that direct funding for social housing should be increased when they make their formal response to the Comprehensive Spending Review announcement later this year.  Yes, there are ideas about the use of Community Land Trusts to enable affordable housing supply.  Yes, there are other bits and bats which will contribute to meeting their aspirations.
 
But they, like the Government, have yet to crack the central dilemmas.  Given that the vast majority of this new housing must be built by private sector developers, how can you work with the industry to incentivise them to increase supply to that degree?  How do you free up land?  How do you persuade local communities to accept new housing?  How do you guarantee improved design, improved environmental sustainability, improved infrastructure?
 
Ambitious targets are welcome, indeed necessary.  But it is time now to start spelling out the detail of how these targets are to be met.
 

Yesterday was idyllic.  The weather in London was fantastic, the family were happy and all was right with the world.  My 7 year-old and I cycled off down the towpath from Islington to Little Venice, enjoying the silence of a canal which in five years time will be teeming with affluent life as the Kings Cross redevelopment takes hold.  One of those rare and cherishable moments when parenthood completely lives up to the promises in the brochure.
 
And from there to this.  Sitting in a grotty hotel room in Brighton contemplating three weeks of tramping round party conference meeting rooms.  At the last count, a dozen speeches in two dozen days, interspersed with meetings and political one-to-ones and boozing and schmoozing at indifferent receptions.
 
But that is what lobbying means.  Nobody likes it; nobody enjoys it.  But it is important.  Now is our chance to get to everybody who matters, to meet them unguarded by hangers-on and officials, to chat over a drink or a curling sandwich.  A conversation here and a quiet word there, a challenge laid down and a promise made – these three weeks matter almost as much as the remaining 49 weeks put together.
 
And this year things are different.  For the past four years I have been desperately trying to persuade our political lords and masters/ladies and mistresses that housing matters.  In the week when pictures of customers besieging branches of Northern Rock have dominated our newspapers, I no longer have to struggle to convince.  The problem is accepted; it is the solution which is now at issue.

Which on the one level is great.  We can now move on and I no longer have to trot out variations on the old tired speech.  Trouble is: I now have to write a new one.  Damn, damn, damn.