Tuesday 24 May 2011

The Best Laid Plans.....

Today has been a nightmare. Take a moment to pause and think about the things that really irritate the life out of you and multiply that by a factor of, say, lets be generous, a hundred. That would not even come close to capturing the essence of how today has gone. To begin with, a lady of, shall we say, larger than average size parked herself rather unceremoniously next to me on the train this morning and spent the entire journey in a rather animated conversation on her mobile phone whilst simultaneously applying her make up and fidgeting profusely. I was rather stoically trying to read Defeat in Detail - The Ottoman Army in the Balkan Wars but it was rather difficult concentrating on the organisation of the Turkish Redif (reserve) formations whilst being jiggled about like some form of cocktail shaker....

Work was even worse as one of the team was off sick and so yours truly had to step into the breach as an inter-departmental roving resource i.e. I had to pick up everybodies slack and so spent the day running around in a state of aimlessness that would have any self respecting headless chicken reaching for the valium.

I also have a cold sore appearing on my top lip the size of which would warrant its own post code (Zip code to our US readers).

I also managed to have a row with the Inland Revenue (the IRS I think it is called in the US) after having waited 18 minutes for an answer on their 'help' line!

As if that lot was not enough to ruin anybodies day I had just sat down to start on the tidying up of the City class ironclads, Essex and Benton when I managed to knock the tray with the result that one of the City class now has a funnel missing! I managed to fix it but decided against tempting fate any further and so will sit down and watch a DVD.

Things can only get better....

Actually, to an extent they did as Mango, one of our new cats, who has been AWOL for four days, reappeared, ate a bowl of food and with not so much as a by your leave, promptly went back out again, presumably to ensure that the small animal population of the immediate area is kept suitably under control....;-)

8 comments:

The Angry Lurker said...

What can you do, shit happens, the bit that would annoy me most was dropping my models, hope your day got better.

Paul O'G said...

Mate- deep breath, look at your family and enjoy an ale. The additional perspective will make you smile!

David Crook said...

Hi Angry,

Very true - the dropped and broken model was the icing on what had been a miserable day! Repairs have been undertaken and she looks back to her pre flight condition!

The fact that the missing cat put in an appearance was the only compensation for the day but most welcome all the same!

All the best,

DC

David Crook said...

Hi Paul,

As ever, very sage advice and with regards to the ale - a bottle of Sheperd Neame's 'Spitfire' and an hour of 'The Battle of Britain'sounds helped to store some mental equilibrium....;-)

"You can teach monkeys to fly better than that.....!"

All the best,

DC

Robert (Bob) Cordery said...

David,

I thought that I had had a bad day ... but mine pales into insignifiance in comparison!

I hope today goes better.

All the best,

Bob

Chris said...

Try this the next time some blabbermounth is disturbing everyone with a loud conversation on a cellphone: lean over and boom out, "You'd better listen to what he's saying--he knows what he's talking about!" This will almost surely evoke a comment along the lines of, "Do you mind? I'm having a private conversation!" To which you can reply, "Then conduct it privately."

Best regards,

Chris

David Crook said...

Hi Bob,

It was a succession of irritations that just seemed to get worse as the day went on!

All the best,

DC

David Crook said...

Hi Chris,

That is genius of the highest order - the only trouble in this particular case is I think I would have come off second best in any altercation going by the size of her!

All the best,

DC