Saturday 14 June 2008

The puzzlingly elusive fat Chinaman

14st 1lb for f***’s sake, which can only be down to that Chinese takeaway last night; so how come one so rarely sees an obese Chinese? 6.5 units of alcohol; 1,330 days left; Panic Stations.

I actually did some work this morning; it came as quite a shock to the system. A Sunday journalist rang me with a negative story about one of my clients, which I duly checked out for him. The normal form is to say “no comment” to everything, adding an “off the record” hint that the story is correct or mistaken. But in this instance I was able to go back with not only a categorical on the record denial of the bad news, but also a striking quote about how swimmingly well everything was going. Unfortunately he elected not to use any of this, as it did not fit in with the bad news story that he was determined to write. Still, at least I tried.

I drove my other car to Alnwick this afternoon to do a little strategic shopping, and joined an even longer queue than yesterday’s at the Co-op garage to fill it up with petrol. These panic buyers are quite incorrigible. Then I returned home and devoted myself to tedious tasks in the house and garden in anticipation of being away for a week from tomorrow. So at least the place will be nice and tidy if one of those low-flying RAF jets crashes into it. And that sort of thing is important to me, as it was to my mother when she enjoined me to wear clean underpants each day in case I got run over.

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