Friday Five

It was one of those days yesterday.

Despite very creatively steering my afternoon meeting to the point where, 45 minutes in, we had only one agenda item left, and thinking therefore, perfectly reasonably in my view, that with an hour to go we could realistically hope to get away at 3pm, rather than 4pm as the room booking and original scheduled meeting time would suppose, I had reckoned without the determination of my fellow attendees. Determined, they were, to spin the meeting out to its allotted time. Indeed even that was not sufficient as we hung back at the end of the meeting continuing a debate that I'd been trying to shut down for half an hour.

The end result was that I had to catch the 5.05 and arrived in Manchester mere minutes too late to put up the posters on my way home, before the play started. I had to wait an hour until the interval and then make a special trip over there. Pah!

That wasn't the worst though. On the train journey home I sat across the aisle from an older guy (looked to be in his early sixties) and a younger woman (mid thirties?) who’d clearly been on a business trip for the day. For the first hour and a half of the journey, while he was regaling her with tales of family holidays and whatnot she sat turned towards him in rapt attention going “yeah…yeah…yeah” constantly (I mean at the rate of one yeah every 5-10 seconds), interspersed with nervous forced giggles. I tell you, it did my head in. What he was telling her sounded about as funny as boils, so God knows what the hell she was laughing at, and why she found it necessary to keep up the constant stream of “yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah” after literally every fourth or fifth word the guy spoke. Did someone tell her it’s what good listeners do? Does she realise it makes her sound like some kind of vacuous bovine moron? God.


And so to the business at hand...

1. What makes you feel exposed?
Being asked a question that I'm "supposed" to know the answer to, or to provide an explanation for something I should understand, but which I haven't been keeping tabs on and therefore don't know/understand. Years ago the threat of being in that situation would have spurred me on to read more, learn more, do more. But it's a growing problem as my increasing lack of enthusiasm for my job and it's massively expanded scope and complexity have conspired to rob me of any chance of keeping up.

2. What do you have to force yourself to do?
Get up on a cold morning. Do the household budgeting. Tidy up. Gardening (although I usually enjoy that once I get started).

3. Where do you like to spend your time outdoors?
Anywhere by the sea, or where there are trees.

4. What surprises you?
How stupid people can be.
How wonderful people can be.

5. Friday fill-in:
Late at night I'm ____.
Assembling Chorlton Players photographs into posters! (This week only lol)