Waiting room

Up at 4 am to catch an early flight to Brussels. I'm not a mornings person and neither, I suspect, are most of the people sharing this waiting area with me at Heathrow airport.

What I thought was going to be a good lunch turned out to be a few tiny filled-baps while I hurriedly put together a presentation for the afternoon. Apparently I had been forewarned in an email which I hadn't read properly. It mentioned something about an "intervention" which is the sort of language they use in the house that Jacques Delors built, the headquarters of the European Economic and Social Committee.

They introduced me as an intellectual (they have to call you something in these gatherings) which I thought quite amusing given that George, our youngest son was calling me a "dick" only the previous evening at the barbecue he and the other brothers hosted as a belated fathers' day do. Not being in charge of the barbecue drove me nuts and this was what led to a little tension between youngest son and self.

The other slightly tragicomic irony is that I'm supposed to be an expert on work yet I don't have very much of it just now. I don't think I've thought all this through properly!