Alarm Bells

[liadnan]

As I was waiting on the platform at Chalk Farm this morning the alarm went off, a typical old-fashioned fire-alarm/alarm clock type din. This happens about once a week when the lift cocks up, and normally no one bats an eyelid.

There was a definite moment when almost everyone on the fairly crowded platform (yes, those few days of guaranteed free seats on the Northern line seem lost) turned towards the end, where the way out is, a moment of collective dissonance as everyone thought "is that calling Time for me?"

.. and a collective shrug, as we turned back to look at the board, which had been swearing blind there was a Charing X train in a minute for some five minutes. That caused no one any surprise or concern at all, of course.

The bell was still ringing as the train pulled out of the platform.

***

Once again, that pre-holiday realisation of approaching litigation and completion deadlines is making a glorious July my busiest month of the year. What I really want to be doing is sprawling on a bench outside a Primrose Hill pub with a gin and tonic in my hand, or, still better, sitting in a beach bar on Syros drinking a frappé with nothing more onerous to decide than which book to take to the beach today. Instead I have to write three opinions in two days. Heigh ho.

Comments

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

I think you've expressed three opinions on my journal already this morning. But I guess they don't really count.

[liadnan]

Are you planning to pay me for them? Thought not. Yes, that fits with the normal course of things in my professional life.

[nikandra.livejournal.com]

but this will make vacation time seem even better. July will finish before you know it.

[blonde222.livejournal.com]

Stop moaning, you could be cleaning out toilets, or vats of gravy in a school canteen for a living, or emptying dustbins, or giving bedbaths to people who've just had a stomach stapling operation. Or you could be unemployable altogether.

Instead you get well paid to sit on your ass and opine. I feel no pity.

[liadnan]

Who asked for pity?
The fact I could be worse off, or better off, has no bearing on the fact I wish I wasn't having to work.