Passing Ships

Chris and I have been like passing ships this week.

Our week has gone something like this:

Chris Laura

Saturday helping my mum and dad out at their new place in Crewe
Sunday NEC Dive show Work for 5 hours
Monday College - home 10.30 Catching up with a friend - home 10.00
Tuesday Dive club - home 12.00 Work - home 10.00
Wednesday Committee mtg - home 11.20 Work - home 11.00
Thursday Scotland away overnight Work - home 9.00

So tomorrow night is supposed to be date night so we can catch up as Chris is working on Saturday and diving on Sunday. Hopefully Chris will get back early enough.

I have been working in two transactions both of which seemed to fall apart atleast once today!

Deal 1 - The deal collapsed after a week and a half of working hard on it (including my 5 hour stint on Sunday).

Deal 2 - The deal collapsed because some crazy Israeli's refuse to take english legal advice and so don't understand the contract. I have discovered that you cannot negotiate with the ignorant because they are unable to see where you come from. I was then pretty much bad-mouthed by a corporate financier who lied by saying (a) I hadn't returned his messages (which he must have imagined leaving me because no messages were received) and (b) that I was being "uncommercial" by refusing to allow my client to be left open to an unacceptable degree of risk. Grr. I hate that when people are doing a poor job they see fit to blame some other innocent party. Luckily the client on this job knows me well and will not have believed the contents of this email!

Anyway, who wants to read about my boring work!

The other interesting thing from my day/week is toilet related which is a bit bizarre! Let me start by explaining that my offices are on the 2nd floor of a building. The ladies toilets are often left in, shall we say, an unacceptable state by some so called "ladies". To the extent that there are signs on the back of the doors which state "These toilets are communal facilities and as such, please consider other users by checking you have left the toilet in an acceptable state before leaving. A moment's check can save embarassment." People obviously totally ignore this wise advice! So. For the last year or so, I keep spotting a very well groomed leggy blonde dashing from the toilets to the door to the stairwell. She does not work for my firm and through a network of spies we worked out that she was from the ground floor. Why would someone come up 4 flights of stairs to use a toilet? Exactly. We figured out she was coming because she did not want to be embarassed by her bowel movements in front of her colleagues (but was apparently happy for us on the 2nd floor to be more than familiar with her movements!). So today I saw her whilst brushing my brace at the sinks, so decided to challenge her. I started by playing dumb "Sorry, I don't think I know you. Do you work on this floor?" "No." she sates, looking a bit embarassed and desperate to wash her hands as quickly as possible. "How come you are using these toilets then?" I ask. "I would use the 4th floor but its a bit far" she responds (as if that now makes perfect sense!). "Are your toilets broken?" I ask. "No, but they are always dirty so I prefer to use these ones and I use it to get some exercise." She quickly rushes out the door. Is it just me or is this lady a bit weird? She was clearly embarassed to be challenged but why should we have to put up with her toilet habits???