Did you ever go to one of those events where the main topic of conversation among the important guests was the really really exciting event just the other day.
That being the one that you weren't invited to? The China Britain Business Council Conference last week was a bit like that.
The 'really, really' exciting event of course was the Prime Minister's visit to China last month, masterminded by the CBBC and - as they mentioned regularly - comprising the largest business delegation ever to leave these shores.
(It was something on the scale of D-day apparently).
Those of us not invited to join such delegations, condemned to make our forays into China in economy class and without the PM as chief navigator, were left glumly in our places. Leaving aside the sour grapes, though, what else was forthcoming?
The essential message of CCBC, and of the conference itself, is that the UK is the most open economy in the world - its openness to China in particular was, of course, stressed.
There's openness and there's openness, though.
One example of that openness was only too apparent from a glance at the logos adorning the platform.
Taking pride of place was the lead sponsor, the telecommunications giant, Huawei. This is a company that announced recently that it was to downscale its telecommunications operations in the United States - no doubt in response to a Congressional investigation a year ago suggesting that Huawei's presence in the US was a threat to national security.
The European Commission takes its own dim view of Huawei - though from a different perspective - suggesting that it is effectively dumping product in Europe and winning its growing share of the EU market through excessive subsidies back home.
The general tenor of the event was upbeat and focused on opportunity which is fine and dandy. It did seem to be in a little danger of toppling over into an avoidance of giving any possible offence to China.
There have been suggestions that this is beginning to characterise aspects of UK China governmental relations - most particularly David Cameron's mission (largest trade delegation ever in case you had forgotten) and the two headed sally by Messrs Osborne and Johnson which just preceded it.
A conference session chaired by our own Liam Byrne couldn't avoid letting some air out of the unremitting optimism.
Observations about the continuing threat of some type of banking crisis in China and an acknowledgement of the difficult and ever more complicated relations between China and Japan were forthcoming.
The unambiguous views of where the fault lay in this regard from the one Chinese member of Byrne's panel on this last topic were striking - particularly as she is a partner in one of London's largest legal practices and not - one would have thought - a natural mouthpiece for the Party or Government.
Notwithstanding this, it was difficult to avoid the general impression that the CBBC view is that the UK will do well out of the relentless rise of China.
Our unrivalled skills and reputation in finance, in design and in the mysterious and magical rites of brand manipulation and marketing were being held up as our bedrocks of comparative advantage.
Underpinning all of this is the belief - maybe even anxious hope - that the next phase of China's development will be very like the last twenty years. This would see the wealthy middle class there expanding remorselessly and seek to slake its ever growing appetite for prestige goods through importing them from us.
This isn't the intention however of the Chinese government which has already made much of its intention to concentrate as much on the wider distribution - to all of the Chinese people - of the benefits of growth as opposed to growth itself over the next ten years.
In tune with this there was - for me - quite the most shrinking presentation of the event compellingly echoing this theme from James Kynge of the FT's China Confidential.
He flagged up the fact that China's real consumer boom may be just about to begin and that could be driven by the spending decisions of newly empowered migrant workers in the cities and by a new monetization of land transfers in rural China.
This, possibly allied to a focus for China's outbound investment in nearby low cost economies in central Asia (which is already underway) to meet the market demands of this new consuming class.
A China driven by the values and aspirations of a brand new lower (rather than upper) middle class might be rather different proposition from the one we seem to be anticipating.
This might in turn shape the composition of future delegations prime ministers find themselves taking there.
(By the way did you know that the delegation last December was the largest ....oh, you had heard already that?)
