Today began with my usual stroll down the hill to work. Up until now it's always been dark, but this morning was bright and sunny. Didn't expect that! It was, in retrospect, the day starting as it meant to continue...

The Great Stocktake has begun. Hordes of very important looking auditors have descended on us and today was the day the laughter died. KS and I have been exiled to a area out the back, a sort of dusty and disused chamber of rubbish, looking extraordinarily like a castle dungeon. Here we were chained up and tiold to do the work everyone else usually does in unpacking our daily delivery of stock.

This ritual involves going down the lift to the loading bay, stacking boxes in wheeled cages, then going back up in the lift to the top floor stockroom, unpacking the boxes, then taking the stock down to the sales floor in the lift. All very simple. Or it would have been but for some idiot who had bumped into the lift door and broke it. One half of our goods lift was broken. Oh brill.

The remaining lift was being used by everyone, and for a ten minute period of sheer confusion, the lift refused to obey our button presses and went to every floor it could think of, leaving us standing there like lemons whilst a confused boss looks on. We were confused on the loading bay when a ghostly female voice asked who we were. Strange things happen in my surreal world.

And Yes, The Weather...

If anyone doubts the vagaries of our British climate, check this out. I left work this afternoon in bright sunshine. Okay, it was cold, very cold, but hey, everyone was smiling and happy as they went about their daily shopping. I took a short cut through another department store, the arcade, and into the supermarket to buy my weekly food and stuff.

As usual, it was 'Obstruct Caldrail' day again, and having negotiated the various old people and childrens buggies, I made it to the check-out. The young lady there is a cheerful soul, much friendlier than some of those crabby women who look at me in the same way you might a serial fluffy puppy eater. So I began our usual repartee only to be interrupted by a gasp as she stared out the window in disbelief.

It was a blizzard. What the...? Where did all the sunshine go? Thick torrents of coarse powdery snow belted down and began to coat the workmen laying a new pavement outside. Oh brill.

This Weeks Happy Ending

Yep. The sun is out again. At least for those few short hours before it goes all dark.