"It must be Thursday..."

Went to work on Tuesday, and was so unenthralled with the process that I asked if I could work from home for the rest of the week. I gave my aching leg plus cold mornings as justification, which is at least partially true. I'm also ill, and in a foul mood, the latter being my main reason for wanting to stay indoors and have nothing to do with anyone until I'm feeling a touch more well-adjusted.

To aid me in regaining my warm and fluffy feelings towards the world in general, here's how this morning went:

06:30 : woken by nightmare.
08:00 : back to sleep.
08:15 : awake again. No reason, very tired, but awake anyway.
08:45 : concede defeat, get up.
09:00 : email work to let them know I'm not only conscious, but logged in and working at this unprecedented hour.
09:15 : distracted by loud noises in road outside. It appears to be rubbish collection day (usually Friday).
09:16 : carry bin bags to end of path, place over fence. Turn around in time to see front door fall closed and latch with a gentle yet surprisingly well-carrying 'click'. Key is indoors - in back of door in fact, from unlocking it to take out bin bags.
09:25 : concede that it's not possible to break into my flat with the resources available (a few twigs from a small bush near the front door, and my skinny arms). The letterbox is really very small, and the door handle/lock system unusually well designed.
09:26 : start walking to work (in one of my rare but useful bursts of excessive sanity, I stashed a spare key in the office during my first week in London).
09:28 : realise that I'm going to be very cold by the time I get to work, clad as I am in jeans and a t-shirt.
10:00 : arrive at work. Garble probably non-helpful 'explanation' of my presence, mostly a running string of curses aimed at fate in general and the weather in particular, whilst rooting around on my desk for key.
10:02 : find key.
10:03 : lift back to flat offered by helpful colleague who understood basic gist of stream of consciousness ranting.
10:10 : key doesn't appear to fit the door. Resigned to fate now, I don't even curse. Manage to flag down departing colleague and start searching boot of (her dad's) car for 'useful things' which may aid my housebreaking career.
10:12 : find bungee cord. Mood lifts considerably.
10:16 : enter house. Remove bungee cord from sturdy twig which it had ended up tied to in elaborate Heath Robinson housebreaking tool stylee. Give bungee cord back to colleague.
10:17 : remove key from inside of door. Discover that spare key from work now operates door lock. Apparently you can't put a key in one side of the lock while there is a key in the other side.
10:18 : briefly ponder whether this is in fact a design feature and Good Thing, or a technical flaw in the design, but find it difficult to reason from a detached point of view.
10:20 : resume work.


PS: you're allowed to laugh.

Return of Son of the TV Licensing Harassment Agency II: This Time They're Confused!

"We have warned you previously that your address is scheduled for a visit by one of my Enforcement Officers, however we have still had no reply."

I'm tempted to reply to this one with "Please decide whether you are an individual or an organisation (and correct the pronouns in your extortion letters accordingly) before continuing your campaign of persecution, harassment, and thinly veiled threats against anyone in the country who does not watch television."

Really, these letters should be illegal. The tone is completely unacceptable... if it was a non-governmental company you could probably report them to someone for shoddy business practises. The first thing that springs to mind whenever I read them is "Very flammable looking place this, probably go up like a torch, know what I mean?"