Great Expectations

At work we continue the job of filleting old job bags, scanning the contents if necessary. It's a living, and gives us a great opportunity to learn how they did things in the old days. Lorraine happened upon a reference to 'recruitment bags'. What were they used for?, we wondered. 'Perhaps they put them over people's heads', I suggested. In those dark days (2005-6), the only model they had for blood marketing was the press gang.

Alternatively, maybe the recruitment bags were a lot bigger than I had initially suspected, and could accommodate several entire donors, who would then be dragged off for (as it was then known) 'squeezing'.

Someone in the department is 'stepping down', so there has been quite a lot of excitement as to who will replace them. Working on the theory that it is always the last person you suspect, I eventually settled on the spider plant on the filing cabinet next to my desk. You may think this silly, but there is such a thing as diversity, you know. The real question is not: 'Why would a pot plant be offered this managerial post?' but: 'Why would it NOT?'

But in the end it went to the person who I initially expected would, all things considered, get it. Which was unexpected.

Not as unexpected as the snow though. This was so massively over-hyped that I never thought it would actually arrive. Then I looked out on Sunday morning and white stuff had been dumped all over the landscape, as though by the authorities themselves as a way of saying: 'So there!' We said it would happen and now - behold! But the night before there had seemed something a little desperate about all the pre-snow coverage of 'amber alerts' and already-cancelled flights at Heathrow. I was particularly struck by the Channel 4 News reporter standing next to a gritter and rather wildly advising viewers to 'wrap pensioners in blankets'. She didn't actually say 'whether they like it or not', but the implication was there, I think. Well, it should keep them quiet until the thaw.