Charlemagne's Dad

Yesterday I worked (or rather "worked", as it consisted mainly of jelly-nailing) at my company's office in Harlow, Essex, which is a ghastly place. The county of Essex is a desolate windswept wasteland dotted with towns and villages so horrific in appearance that the word "eyesore" was invented specially to describe them and even so almost entirely fails to adequately convey their awfulness. Essex people are without exception ugly, stupid and inclined towards violence to strangers, so that if for some reason you have to travel through the county it's advisable to drive very fast and make sure you've locked the car doors, otherwise they will drag you out and burn you, alerted to your foreign-ness by your opposable thumbs and the lack of dribble on your chin and shirt-front.

Anyway, in my eagerness to get out of the place last night I packed up hurriedly and put everything in my laptop case. Apart from my laptop, of course. I managed to forget that, and left it plugged into the docking station I was using. This morning, still unaware that I had no computer, I drove the forty-six miles from home to my usual office in Maidenhead, where I discovered my error. Exclaiming "My goodness! How foolish of me! Would you believe it!", or words to that effect, I got back in the car and drove another sixty-six miles to Harlow

As a result I found myself in the car and listening to the radio at a time when I'm usually either at my desk (during the week), or still in bed (at weekends), so I got to listen to a discussion programme hosted by pretentious but loveable old Melvyn Bragg and featuring three academics who were so clever that they could barely string a sentence together, so specialised and focussed were their great big brains. One of them had recently discovered the phrase "can of worms", and used it several times during the programme, possibly in the in the belief that it sounded hip and modern.

Thanks to the programme I learnt a lot about Charlemagne, appointed Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day 800 A.D. and conqueror of pretty much the whole of Europe, or at least the fashionable bits. One of the things I learnt was that Charlemagne's dad was called "Pippin". Which I think is hilarious.

In the toilet at the Harlow office there are two signs on the wall. (Permanent signs, that is; somebody occasionally puts up a temporary one which reads "Caution! Wet Floor And Trailing Cables!" which has to be one of the least reassuring signs I've ever come across.) The first permanent sign reads "Please Do Not Stand On TheToilet Seats As They Will Break." I've never had that one satisfactorily explained to me, but it says a lot about Essex.

The other sign reads "Please Leave This Toilet As You Would Wish To Find It." As I'd what I'd really like to find in the toilet is Dr. Gillian McKeith swinging by the neck from a wire noose attached to the hook on the back of the cubicle door I find that particular sign just a little disappointing. Every time