Concrete Pencil: A day in the life

Check you bank balance to see if you could afford a fold-up bike. You can't.

Do some work. Get quite into it. Notice your desktop is untidy. Delete things from it.

Someone I work with told someone else I work with that they are banning trivial internet searches.

Had an email. Reply.

Do some different work. Go back to the original work. Text home.

Feel bad about way Reply might have gone across.

Once I emailed the following message to a Wharf columnist's wife who'd cried off sick for her husband: "You don't want to do it, do you?"

Meaning: you're his wife and you work in the same field and if you could see your way clear to writing the column this week it would get us out of a hole. It would fill the hole in the paper.

Check email. No reply to my Reply. Other mail though. Trivial. Don't click on the links.

Do some work. Delete it. Start again.

Go to bbc.co.uk. Read Mark Lawrenson's predictions for forthcoming football games. Moustache.

Check gmail. Group email about stag party. Decide to reply tomorrow.

The columnist himself phoned me later on in a rage. How dare I say such a thing and think such a thing. There was him at death's door.

I was on the DLR platform about to catch a train home or into town. I came back to the office to see if I could work out why he was so offended.

Home has texted back. Is there a sense of annoyance in the text. The subtext message says what?

Gmail. Maps. Email. Googlesearch Kinky Friedman. Standing as a Democrat. Try Google Caffeine. Faster. Or the ad-free fake google - scroogle. (.org, not .com.. .com will get you sacked.)

Twitter. Why am I surprised there is nothing of interest? Write that in the box. Add to the general meaninglessness.

I discovered Wikipedia no more than five years ago, searchgoogling my hometown. I handwrote essays in university 11 years ago. Our spellcheck hasn't heard of internet.

Reply comes to my Reply. No offence taken.

Back in the past, I re-read the columnist's wife's email and my reply. "You don't want to do it, do you?"

He must have thought I meant: "You are crying off because you can't be bothered to write the copy, isn't that the case?"

Our wires were crossed. Do some work.

Although why was he reading his wife's emails?

Also see blogs.mirror.co.uk/ opposite-of-work.