First day back on the job (so to speak) and already I'm a day late! Better to put my chips on the table right from the outset, I suppose, and start as I mean to go on. Well here I am again, making another attempt at this blog caper through which I tell you, gentlefolk, about my daily doings and thinkings, and which you, gentlefolk, pretend to read and care about. That's the deal, then: I keep my end, you keep yours, and everybody's wasted a few minutes of their day for no apparent reason other to massage my ego (a little), and perhaps get me one step closer to a book deal. (There is a huge market for books filled with humorous [and not so humorous] anecdotes of middle-class life - where would the BBC get its sitcom material otherwise?) Not that I'm suggesting that the BBC commission me to write a sitcom for them. Or maybe I am; I can see myself as the Scottish Ricky Gervaise, although, since I am the only person in it, my office is a little less interesting. Still, minimalist comedy in a Scottish accent; there may be a market. Then again there may not be. So, since it is unlikely that I will become a comedy genius, I suppose I ought to stop daydreaming and plot a life course for myself. And here's the metaphor (clever, isn't it!). This boat could represent me: past its best, stuck in the middle of the bay far from either shore and at the mercy of the vagaries of weather and tide. Heavy, eh! I'll lighten it up with a joke that I read in yesterday's (today's) Herald:

'A maths teacher was stopped at Glasgow Airport yesterday attempting to board an aircraft with a compass, protractor, set-square and ruler. In a news conference, the Home Secretary, Dr John Reid, stated that the man was a member of the Al-gebra movement, and that he was captured with weapons of maths instruction.'

It made me laugh!