Weather alert

We may be facing stormy times at work.

Not that things have taken a downturn or anything. On the contrary, we’ve had an extraordinary year so far, to the extent that we’re all rushed off our feet. So it was a relief to hear that we were recruiting new people and, what’s more, some of our colleagues from abroad were coming over to lend us a hand for a while too.

The first to arrive was Irene from the States. She turned up just as the hurricane called after her was ravaging the east coast of her country. Obviously, it would have been in terribly bad taste to make jokes about whistling up a storm or showing the energy of a whirlwind. I’m well known for my restraint in these matters, so you can be sure I resisted the temptation to make such comments. Or at least to make many of them.

Now Katya from Ukraine is about to come over too – and, blow me down (if you’ll excuse the pun), but tropical storm Katia has just been upgraded to a hurricane too.

Katya's heading for London

What are we to make of all this? Michele Bachmann, worthy successor of Sarah Palin in both intellect and ambition, recently described the earthquake and hurricane that afflicted Virginia as a sign from God of his disapproval of the actions of the Washington administration. It seems that the Lord isn’t happy about Obama’s failure to tackle the debt crisis and found no better way of showing his displeasure than to damage a lot of houses, injure a great number of people and leave 24 of them dead, even though none of them had anything much to do with the US debt crisis as far as I can tell.

Bachmann has since assured us she was just joking, but I’ve never really trusted people who have to tell me they’re joking. I find the wit of people far funnier if I can appreciate it without having it pointed out to me. And, in any case, knowing and loving Michele as we do, does anyone believe her?

Anyway, with Irene and Katya due to storm around our offices next week, I’m sure Michele would have some interesting homilies to share with us. If only we could bring ourselves to listen.


Unrelated postscript: someone came knocking at the door today.

‘I’m not a salesman,’ he assured me, which immediately told me he was, though perhaps not a terribly good one.

‘My colleagues are just going around offering people free quotations on work they could have done on their houses.’

Just the quotation was free, you notice, not the work.

Perhaps he really wasn’t a very good salesman. Certainly if the measure of a good salesman is winning the order. This prospect wasn’t buying.