It's a staycation, yah?

I am not very good at planning holidays, which means I am not very good at taking holidays, which means I realised in March that I had lots of time to take off work that would disappear at the end of April. Boo to that, so for the next two weeks I am Oval's stay-at-home blogger in residence.

It's now 9am on the first day where I'm not working and everyone else is (ie the best kind of day off). I've been awake since 6.40am as the missus showed a queenly disdain for the notion of setting her own alarm and letting me sleep. Phone alarms are too complicated for girls, apparently. No matter - the pleasure I got from forcefully ejecting her to start her deranged morning ritual, safe in the knowledge that I had nothing more stressful than a bath to get through, was better than a lie in.

Now I'm up and ready to P.A.R.T.Y. There is but one pleasure-destroyer lurking in the flat, ready to consume me at any moment. It may have a cheery name and wink its little red eye at me all the time, but it only brings misery. If you dare, look upon the flat, uncaring face of evil:

Oh hellish implement of eternal work, why dost thou torment me? Every new message is a potential day-ruiner. I could accidentally on purpose destroy it, but then the terror of the not-knowing may prove worse than the dull thumping reality of the knowing. I should ignore it, but I can't. Instead I will sit here, scanning the messages pretty much in real time. I may as well go to the office dressed as a ghost and sit at my desk watching my inbox fill up.

Enough of that defeatist talk. I'm not wasting my holiday. No, I'm going to drink a bottle of champagne clean the flat and then sample the seediest delights that Soho has to offer go to John Lewis to buy some lightbulbs.

If you can bare it, I will blog more than usual too.

Ahead of my time

I was standing at a level crossing this evening, waiting for the lights to change. The song I was listening to needed changing (it must have gone past the first chorus - I now have the attention span of a goldfish with a head injury). While I was thoughtfully thumbing my iPod wheel I felt my Blackberry vibrating in my jacket. My company needed me. So I fished it out and checked the message with my non-iPod hand.

"Your mailbox has exceeded memory capacity". Important to know. As I was manipulating the two separate pieces of technology, one eye on each like an early adopting lizard, I heard a noise over the music along the lines of "WOCCCHAFINKOOUKUKIKE YOU WANKER!". I looked up at the gurning face of a chimpanzee behind an open window at the wheel of a white van. I glanced at the girl waiting to my right to check I hadn't imagined it. She was laughing. Not smirking, actually guffawing.

The lights changed, the monkeymobile pulled away and laughing girl pulled herself together. I crossed the road and started deleting the larger messages from my inbox.

What humiliation will happen on the walk home tomorrow, I wonder? Will my trousers fall down as I walk past the all-girl sixth form college netball court?