1737: Some Days You Just Can’t Get Rid of a Bomb

I had the worst morning today. I say worst; at the time it was happening, it was already apparent to me that the unfortunate combination of mishaps that befell me were the stuff of farce, and looking back now it’s just faintly amusing. But at the time it was spectacularly irritating, and put me in a rather grouchy mood for much of the day.

Things started badly when I woke up at the ungodly hour I need to wake up to go to work and I had a horrible pain in my back that made it difficult to bend over (to put my socks on, pervert) or indeed to operate in a normal manner. After downing a couple of painkillers, the pain subsided a bit, so after a quick breakfast I took to the road, carefully avoiding the bin lorry that had decided the time I was leaving the house was the optimum time to park almost across our driveway.

Five minutes down the road — thankfully no further — I realised that I’d left my work ID badge at home, and I need that to get in and out of the building. Now, I know full well that a little grovelling at the security office would have probably secured me a temporary visitor’s badge to use for the day, but I’m still in that phase where I want to be seen to be doing things “right”, and so back I went to pick up my badge (the lanyard for which also had the key to my desk drawers on it, plus a nice pen). By the time I got out the door again, it was getting on for half an hour later than I’d normally leave for work, and I just knew that this meant I was probably going to hit the pointless, meaningless, seemingly causeless traffic jams that are on the motorway every single day of the working week.

Sure enough, the dear old M27 didn’t disappoint. Much of my journey was capped at about 40mph, often dipping below that, and I wasn’t able to get up any sort of decent speed until the stretch of the motorway where I was almost at work. Time was ticking on by now, however; fortunately, I have fairly flexible hours, so the concept of being “late” is a little more fluid than in many other places, but I was still rather later than I intended to be.

I pulled up at the lorry park where I typically park my car at the start of each working day and prepared to hand over my cash for the week’s parking — though I had noticed several huge containers blocking the small patch of concrete out the front where cars arriving a little later were typically shepherded. I had a sinking feeling.

“We’re full, buddy,” said Lorry Park Man — yes, there are people who really do say “buddy” out loud — and I knew there was no point arguing. Those who pay for weekly tickets were typically given priority over those paying on a daily basis, but I could see from a cursory glance around that there really wasn’t any room to put any more cars — not without putting them at risk from the lorries that the park was actually built for, anyway. I nodded, and Lorry Park Man shrugged apologetically at me, so it was time to go on a small adventure to find somewhere to park.

I eventually found somewhere about a mile up the road from where I work — the lorry park is already about 15 minutes walk, and this was quite a way further — but there was nothing for it; my only other option was to park right in the town centre and have an even longer walk to contend with. No thank you.

I eventually made it to work — still before 9am, pleasingly — and tried to get in my usual door with my ID card. The door was, of course, broken, and I wasn’t even surprised by this by this point, so I simply wandered down to the next one along and went in. Then I sat down at my desk, turned on my computer, fired up Outlook to check my email and was helpfully informed that the server was not responding.

The perfect start to a perfect day, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Thankfully things picked up a little from that point onwards — though I did nearly forget to retrieve my desk keys and had to come back and get them — but man. That was one hell of a lot of bad luck in one go. Hopefully that’ll be it for a little while now; let’s have the rest of the week go a little more smoothly, hmm?