I’m feeling a bit out of touch today. The phone line at the lab, together with the phone lines of several other businesses nearby, was chopped through by a digger in an unfortunate telecommunication-wire-severage-during-some-roadworks incident and we were left wholly incommunicado for the entire day. Stuff could have happened and I wouldn’t have known about it. (Although, looking back, it appears that stuff didn’t actually happen.)
Lab work and filing could only fill up some of the hours and so I headed home early to sort out my emails. It seems unlikely that the problem will be fixed before Monday which gave me an idea as to how to generate more long weekends in the future.
Now all I need is a digger.
The emailing is now done and the world is saved – temporarily, at least. Someone else will have to save it in future, because once I’ve got my digger, I’m going to be too busy digging stuff up and severing phone lines to be saving the world.
And now – errands. Because, as I learned today, when one leaves work early, one should never mention that to one’s wife. She will give you errands to do. But of course, if you don’t mention it to your wife, then it looks a bit suspicious. Perhaps the best way out of this difficult devil and a hard place dilemma is not to have a wife. At least, not mine. Not that you could have her anyway.
And so, Pick n Pay here I come.
Who said the life of a internationally-recognised blogger and part-time microbiologist isn’t glamorous?
Actually, I think that was me. Fairly regularly.
Brian’s Alicante Flight Pee Hell
Up early because of the little humans that reside with us – and today celebrating the sixth anniversary of my arrival in South Africa – I find myself catching up on reading other people’s blogs while the boy watches Handy Manny.
Brian Micklethwait.com - which has been a little quiet of late - returns with a couple of posts about Brian’s recent trip to Spain; and the description of his journey had me in stitches.
I’m reproducing part of it here because I think it’s one of those posts that will be taken down and gone forever when it’s actually re-read by the author. All bloggers will recognise the “Oh my Deity! Did I really write that?” moment. We’ve all been there and done that.
Equally, I think we can all agree that there are few worse feelings than not being about to pee when you need to. My story involves a night drinking in London, an underground rush to the bus back to Oxford – omitting any toilet stops because there’s one on the Oxford Tube coach – a last minute dash from Victoria Station to the bus stop, leaping on as the doors close and bus sets off and only then discovering that the on-board toilet is out of order.
At 1am, 1½ bladder-damagingly bumpy hours up the M40 later, the dry-stone wall at AC Nielsen at Thornhill Park and Ride was no longer dry. It was a urination event so lengthy, so wonderful and so memorable that the feelings of relief are still palpable today.
I hope you’re reading this now.
As soon as I get chance to review it, I’ll probably delete it.