Today was the first morning I’ve come to work and not found that any of the fish have died in the night, although out of our original fish we only have Fergal Sharkie, two of the Anthill Mob and Seamus left. We even lost a couple of the new fish we brought last week; we’ve now got a Yin and no Yang. I’d gone home last night and Himself had told me to go and buy one, if it was upsetting me that much then it would be worth every penny just to put it right again, my dad also offered to pay half. So I was all set to go into town at dinner time today and purchase one.

But just occasionally nice things do happen and people surprise you. My work colleagues rallied around yesterday and had a collection; raising between them half the cost of a new pump and my manager has said the company will pay the other half. Which made me cry, soppy cow that I am. They said they knew how upset I was; especially after I lost Gill on Saturday and that the fish were a part of our Company. They’d all got used to them being there and didn’t like the idea of anything happening to them, we were a team and we always pulled together when the chips were down. What good were chips without fish? Trust me, you don’t want to hear the rest of the jokes – it was like a comedian’s convension, they just knock off each other – but I was very touched by their gesture and the fact that they care enough to do something about it, not just for the sake of the fish but because it was upsetting me.

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One of our managers went to a meeting yesterday – very up market venue it was too. Being a charity our building and equipment leaves a lot to be desired I’m afraid, and although we’ve come on a long way from the days where we were operating from a shed in the back garden of a respite home, a lot of our equipment is still old and second hand.

This company that was chairing the meeting had a large, well lit meeting room with individual desks that fitted together to make one large meeting room table. Simon was most impressed but noticed that the desks themselves had the outline of a square cut out of them, which being Simon he pushed. The square gave a bit but nothing really happened until be sat at the desk.

As he pulled his chair in, his leg brushed against a hidden button underneath.
At this the square in the desk flipped up and a flat screen and keyboard rose up out of the depths, the computer was hidden underneath. He was most impressed – all that was really missing was the sound track to Thunderbirds; it was very FAB. Simon commented on this fact the gentleman sat next to him.

This gentleman said he’d have been more impressed if they’d bothered to tell visitors about it before hand. Apparently a few weeks before he’d attended another meeting in the same room and had placed his cup on the desk before sitting down. Like Simon, he had touched the hidden button by accident as he sat down.

He had watched in horror as his very hot cup of coffee had catapulted across the room; dispersing its contents across several of the desk and narrowly missing the person sat opposite. Utter pandemonium had then ensured as staff had desperately tried to mop it up before it damaged the hidden computers.