The last few days before you go on holiday are always filled with the little jobs you didn’t remember having to do, like invoicing and writing 50-word snippets to squeeze into the corners of pages. I arrived in the office this morning convinced I had a fairly empty day ahead, but by lunchtime I already had a list of jobs I had no chance of completing before six. Even so, the weather was so nice it would have been a sin to have stayed in, so I sat in the Soho Square (which the Sohoites seem to call ‘the park’), feeling rather unfit among a sea of tanned and toned topless men, with deep-creased abs and rock hard pecs.

I didn’t even have the aches and pains of an excessive gym workout to make me feel better about it, either, as yesterday’s pain avoidance tactic of following the Complete Physique class with a jacussi, steam and scalding shower seemed to have done the trick.

The consistently excellent Sydney Morning Herald ran a story this morning about a call centre worker who was disciplined for having four personal items on her desk rather than the permitted three. It cost her $3,000. It certainly puts other clean desk policies into perspective:

Australia Post today defended cutting a call centre worker’s pay by $3000 and demoting her for having four instead of three personal items on her desk - a picture of her with friends.

The Community and Public Sector Union secretary Stephen Jones said the company demoted Cori Girondoudas for refusing to remove a photograph of herself with friends from her desk.

I bought The Colour of Magic on the way home, breaking my vow never to touch his work again in an effort to understand more of the next Pratchett production meeting. That said, I quite got into it on the train home, so I’m glad I did. I guess Reaper Man was just a bad one to start on. I was somewhere around page thirty when Chris the Midnight Weatherman dropped into the seat opposite and told him about the rain in Iceland. He has promised to look up the next week of Icelandic weather charts for me when I’m at ITN tomorrow lunchtime.

I hope he brings good news.

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