Not a good day yesterday, not by a long shot. No, yesterday was one of those white-knuckle rides on the porcelain express, where it’s not so much a case of ‘anything goes’ as ‘EVERYTHING goes’. Which means I had to take a day off work on the sick and couldn’t go to what will probably be my last ever jolly with the company before I go away to be a write-ist. And it was a good jolly too, from what I’ve been told: loads of tea and sticky buns, mars bars and party – sorry, ‘teambuilding’ – games. This included one where they had to imagine they were in a plane crash in Canada, it’s below freezing outside and both the pilot and co-pilot have snuffed it. I wasn’t there, so my esteemed colleagues decided I’d be first on the menu (after they’d whetted their appetites on Biggles and his mate up front, and eaten all the mars bars… Actually, now I come to think of it, I’m willing to bet at least three of them would have saved their damn mars bars for dessert.). Bastards.
They didn’t consider the much more democratic and ethical approach, where everyone loses a limb to the cooking pot in turn. Sort of like a beetle-drive in reverse, but the goal would still be to have the largest number of legs by the end of the game.
And what was the cause of this great malaise? Haven’t the foggiest. I can only hope it was the chicken I had for lunch on Wednesday and not some dreaded lurgie (though I have been having those ‘get up too fast and the world goes wheeeeeee…’ moments on and off all day. Not to mention an alcohol-free hangover. I really can’t afford to take to my sickbed at the moment! Not only do I have to do the whole damn ‘shopping for clothes’ thing this weekend (now with the extra burden of having to get a new pair of boots or shoes – and if there’s one thing I hate more than shopping for clothes it’s shopping for shoes: all the horror and boredom of schlepping round the shops with the added bonus of knowing the thing you’re out to spend your hard-earned cash on is going to bloody cripple you for months to come) and then there’s trip to Oslo! I can’t exactly turn up dripping with mucus, and other less palatable substances. They’ll never speak to me again.
But, as an aside, I wonder how much mucus Scotland generates in a year... Think anyone’s done a study?
I feel a Google coming on...