I missed the ‘elbow bump’ memo at a work lunch
Idon’t know if it’s the fact I’m approaching 40 this year, my manic work schedule, or that when I went to the dentist this week I was confronted by the fact I have gum disease – but it really has felt like a lot this week. It probably didn’t help that I went to London this week for a work lunch, which was the first time I had set foot in the Big Smoke since a week before giving birth to our daughter Harley.
However, this week has been challenging.
It was great going to London, dressing up for once and meeting people in the three-dimensional world, but in the attempt to look good I didn’t dress appropriately.
I was so cold that when I got to my meeting and shook the director’s hand, I momentarily forgot about how unsocial the act of touching someone was. I immediately scrubbed my hands to the ‘Happy Birthday song’.
The director, concerned on feeling how freezing my hands were, said to me: ‘Oh my Cheryl, are you okay?’
He proceeded to ask if I’d like a drink, which was lovely of him, but it wasn’t the impression I wanted to give.
We had a wonderful lunch at a posh restaurant in Soho before I made my way back to Waterloo – only to see the dreaded screen of train departures flash to tell me my train had been ‘cancelled’.
The fast train back to Petersfield had been cancelled.
I legged it to platform 14 to jump on the slow train, which, while not ideal, would at least get me home.
Wrong.
We only made it a couple of stops before the announcer told a packed-full train that the relief driver hadn’t turned up and we should wait.
What felt like an eternity later, the announcer said we needed to leg it to another platform to catch the train to Haslemere, where the train would stop. That was a minor problem, my car was in Petersfield.
I had to get a taxi from Haslemere to Petersfield at a cost I’d rather not remember. When I finally got home it was three hours after I had left our lunch. I will not be prioritising face-to-face meetings in the city any time soon.