There are three of us in the room cursed with too many chairs and not enough network points.

We’ve all come into the office today to work together. Trying to force what seems like weeks of work into a few hours and to work with the benefit of a whiteboard which seems reluctant to give up the last thing written on it before we cover it in the scrawl which doubles for my handwriting.

As we try to make sense of the task at hand I alt and tab my way through the forest of open window on my laptop. Email, Word, Firefox, a terminal Window connected to a Linux server miles away on the corporate LAN, Visio, Freemind - all open and being useful but also making it harder to find the right one to deal with the agreement we have just reached.

I refresh the Window attached to the Wiki and wonder how my single word of text, right justified has now appeared in the middle of the line. It’s an error I will need to resolve and the fix in at least fifteen places.

We break for lunch and go to the Chinese over the road, sitting as we always do and asking for Coke before we help ourselves at the buffet. After a second helping we stagger back to work into the evening and then, at last, I’m home.

Sitting out I read until the last of the light. The weather has turned and darkness comes early now. Reluctantly I huddle into my fleece trying to get to the end of the chapter of The Kite Runner and not wanting to be back inside…