Blonde's Eye View: Killing time

Or, your washing machine has exploded and you need to wait in for 12 hours to get it, and your mountain of laundry, fixed.

The best reason of all? It's a Friday and you don't want the boss to see you sneak off to the seaside at 2pm. Just be careful not to get sand in your Crackberry.

Sadly for me it's been the first one. An overload of work that I want, with no diversions, to complete on schedule and make it to the pub for 5pm.

Except when left to my own devices outside the work environment, without the beady eyes of my colleagues, the ticking clock, I am ineffectual.

Well, that's not true; my flat is beautifully clean. I'm behaving as if I'm back at school. I'd rather tidy my room than do my homework.

Once I've finished hoovering, dusting, and de-scaling the kettle (it's been needing doing for ages), then I deserve a break.

Six hundred channels of utter rubbish still doesn't send me to my desk.

I can watch re-runs of Murder She Wrote all afternoon.

Did you ever notice they all have exactly the same plot?

Some 27 minutes in someone dies, Jessica's friend is falsely accused of the murder, Jessica sees something random that triggers her memory, she stages a trap with fake evidence, the killer confesses, case closed, they all laugh, credits roll.

The TV series ran for 12 years on that basis.

Then five o'clock arrives; my cleaner has nothing left to clean, I've outlined a screenplay for a new Murder She Wrote set in a glass tower block, I haven't done a shred of work. I'm dead. Credits roll.