More Exciting than 24:

08:45. So I manage to get myself out of bed a bit earlier than normal this morning and make it into work for quarter to nine - "well done" I think to myself. And then my boss points out to me that I was supposed to be in a big meeting quarter of an hour earlier which I had utterly forgotten about - what sort of evil mastermind would plan a meeting for half eight on a Monday Morning?!! I attempt to print off the agenda, and realise I'm stuck in the printer queue behind someone printing a mammoth document, 100 pages or so. Eventually that clears and my single page pops out, and I'm sure it would have taken half the time if I'd just sat and copied the words from the computer screen with a pen. I love the modern technology.

08:55. I'm now at least 25 mins late, but it's an hour and a half long, so I can probably still get away with it. The meeting is not in the building I work in, it's over the road. I have no idea whereabouts inside, but it's on the Upper Ground Floor - how hard can that be to find? I get in the lift, as that makes it easy to just press the UG button - problem solved. But there is no UG Button, just a G and a 1. UG must be somewhere between those (thoughts of Being John Malkovich start to enter my head). And as I realise this, the doors close and I'm off up to the fifth floor. Or I would be if the lift I'm in wasn't psychotic (or maybe just a bit broken). Every time someone gets out, the doors just stay open. The only way to get them to close seems to be to push them very hard , which the large man left in the lift with me seems to be enjoying doing slightly too much. If you hit them enough times they close. Some time later I'm at the fifth floor and can start to go down again. I make it down one floor and then someone else gets in, and that's it, the lift ain't going anywhere. So I do what I should have done ages before and move to a different lift. Which at least works and gets me back to where I started. 09:05, tick, tick, tick.

I ask the guy at reception where the room is (why didn't I think of that earlier? Genius!). It's over behind reception up some stairs through a door that looks more like a cupboard. Down a little corridor and finally I find the room. I wouldn't have been surprised at this point if there had been a sign on the door saying Beware Of The Leopard. The room's empty. Should be about 15 people in there, but there is not a single one. I head back to my desk and make some phone calls. Apparently the meeting moved to a room on the floor above my desk. Thanks for telling me guys! It must be getting on 9:15 by now. Never mind.

I get there make my excuses and sit down and have a rather dull time. But I got a cup of tea and a very nice biscuit (09:25), silver lining and all that. And someone else turned up even later which made me feel better. Tick, tick - another catastrophe avoided.