a most blogworthy day at the office

dear readers, today's photo has nothing whatsoever to do with my post, save for it being a collection of incongruous things. the thing that would have made a fabulous photo was unfortunately not captured on camera, due to a certain urgency about the proceedings which will become clear in due course.

on thursday herself had a rather tricky start to the day, having got stuck in traffic between my boy's college and her office. she was late for work and on the way into the building she got chewed by the lift doors. due to the lateness she had to cancel a meeting about hovercrafts in order to prepare for the afternoon's court hearing. no sooner had herself done this than her young colleague, whose office has a connecting door, came rushing in, all of a fluster.

"that is positively the last time i take the dog for a walk before work!" she fumed.

"what happened?" said herself, mindful of when the young colleague's dog had eaten a pigeon for breakfast and caused all sorts of cafuffle.

"come and look!" said the young colleague. herself went into the next door office. sitting under the young colleague's desk was a very sweet, very small, brown and white dog. herself works in a large, imposing town hall where people are not even allowed to bring their children to work, never mind their pets.

"i got locked out of my house when i took her out!" explained the young colleague. once herself and the very small brown and white dog had become acquainted herself went to fetch a drink of water for her from the watercooler. she had the presence of mind to put the water in a plastic cup rather than a bowl, to avoid giving the impression that the office had a canine visitor.

the very small brown and white dog settled down and, with a few near misses when colleagues came into the office, remained undiscovered until lunchtime. the young colleague then faced the problem of how to smuggle the very small brown and white dog out of the office. herself, ever the inventor, hatched a plan. or in fact several. the first one did not work. this was that the young colleague would wear herself's baggy coat and secrete the very small brown and white dog under it. this would have worked had the very small brown and white dog not wanted to peer out of the top. and had the young colleague not been rather more generously endowed in the chest department than herself, leaving considerably less room in the baggy coat.

plan b was slightly more sensible. the young colleague's room-mate has a rucksack. this was emptied out and the very small brown and white dog was placed inside. yet again her curiosity was a problem. the head sticking out of the top gave the game away. but herself came up with an idea. she smeared the inside of the plastic cup from the water cooler with peanut butter and placed it in the bottom of the bag. the small brown and white dog was occupied trying to lick it out and kept her head tucked in, thus being removed from the building without discovery.

the rest of the day was less eventful, save for herself getting into an argument with the security guard at the court when he insisted on keeping hold of her camera while she was in court. herself was reduced to spluttering in a pompous fashion about how she had been going to court for 20 years and had never had to hand over her camera, and about how everyone has cameras on their phones anyway.

luckily she had the sense not to berate him about how he had failed to discover her swiss army knife...