Windows Wide Open

This is a very rare sight. A whole week devoid of meetings, training schedules or some form of corporate networking.
I was quite shocked when I first saw it and immediately panicked that I had forgotten to write down an important date; that as I was driving to work tomorrow, a potential future Chief Exec would be struggling through the role-play part of his interview with only an empty chair to bounce off.

But, hey, I should be embracing this rare gem of a week amongst months of interminably long meetings, killing time on touchlines, trying not to make my (parental) interest in the development of the players' thighs too obvious, making polite conversation and feigning interest in a business contact's hobbies ( the worst was the guy who burst forth about his penchant for colonic irrigation almost as our hands shook for the first time - it didn't help that the starter was Brown Derby Soup)?

It was only once I got home that I realised the true implications of my bonus time. I was going to have to think pretty sharpish if I wanted to legitimately avoid the washing, ironing, cleaning, gardening or other domestic duty that I routinely fail to do with the aid of my usual schedule. I didn't have to think for long. The phone rang and I was out of that door quicker than the fungus spores were reproducing in my Shed.

Later, as I sat on his new sofa ( yet another without arms - how's a girl supposed to loll comfortably?), sipping a bottle of cold beer to wash down the delicious home-cooked curried lamb koftas I'd just eaten, companionably watching "Wife Swap", I felt sufficiently warm towards him to confess that I had blogged about him in my previous post. He reacted much as I'd expected, pleased that I'd used the best pic ever taken of him, and rather flattered to have been likened to a beat poet. Phew! Got out of that one. We continued to watch the telly.

I rarely bother with it now as I don't yet trust the Shed's water-repelling abilities to place large electrical items within it so when I do come across one, I'm hypnotised by the bright, pretty colours. Tonight it was mainly pink thanks to a rather-deluded bint from Bolton. We were united in our dislike of all the major players and loudly exclaimed as much to one another at frequent intervals. " How do you think they met?", Marko was referring to the reclusive couple who'd scuttled up to Lewis to avoid the horrors of modern day life, such as friends, parties, acrylic nails so scary that they actually induced tears or evil crisps. I wagered Church. I was shot down in flames. " No way! They met in a Hide they did!"

See - it never ever takes long. Irritating Bastard!

( Beki - If you've come back, I know you are probably puzzling over how you could possibly have inspired this drivel. I came to a natural full stop, to have gone on to relate the time that I'd waited (im)patiently for weeks for the promised surprise mail-order gift to arrive after he'd flown off to some fabulously exotic location that all the other wives and girlfriends got to visit, anticipating ( not without the occasional shudder) an adult battery-operated implement in a brown paperbag, only to receive a years' subscription to Competitor's Frigging Companion Magazine, would have made my post as unpleasantly long and cumbersome as this sentence).