Planning

Today I was going to talk about planning. I’ve just sold an article on it, the basic premise being that we can avoid all sorts of problems with a little planning.

How about a live example? Book wise I was planning to write 3000 words today, put the finishing touches to a feature on shopping in Bangkok (don’t), and slip in a Blog entry.

Then, last night I got a phone call from my Libyan paymasters asking me to bring forward a training day originally planned for tomorrow, to today. So today has been a frustrating training day (frustrating because it has been more disjointed than a magicians assistant).

In fact, its been so bad that I still have to do the training tomorrow. I’m meeting my drunken sot of an editor on Friday and therefore, despite extensive planning, I won’t get anything I’ve planned done. Unless I think laterally.

Which is why you're getting an excerpt from my book. It will probably be nothing like this in the finished format, but it does mean I can tick “Blog entry” off my list of things to do:

Peeking inside the cabin I find a woman divesting herself of a very large purple rucksack. She is tall and gangly with a cropped haircut so short it looks prickly. When she turns I notice her small piggish eyes that are dark brown, almost black. She has the sort of expression you’d find on a Llama that’s just realised what a vet has to do to check for a breached birth. Her mauve leggings look thicker than chain mail. I immediately assume she prefers the company of her own sex and is a vegan.

‘Hello,’ I say placing my bag on the seat opposite her.

‘Women don’t share with men,’ she says without looking at me directly, which is difficult in such a small space. She’s either English or very good at impressions. I apologise and go back to check with the carriage attendant, or Provodnitsa as I must get used to calling her.

‘Excuse me, there is a vegan in berth twenty two, she says they don’t share,’ I say.

She looks me up and down in the same way a coffin maker might and shoos me away, rattling off some Russian that sounds to my untrained ear like ‘fuck off you soft westerner, can’t you see I’m busy standing here doing nothing.’ I thank her with all my heart for her unstinting dedication to customer service, which may have sounded to her untrained ear as ‘fuck off yourself you cabbage eating dwarf.’ I traipse back to my cabin sharer. Perhaps if I promise to castrate myself she might trust me not to find her irresistible.

When I get back I find my bags outside the door, which is now shut. I’m just about to tell her, through the gap at the bottom of the door, that I’d find an alligator in suspenders more sexually alluring when I realise the cabin houses berths twenty and twenty one. Twenty two is next door. I pick up my bags and shuffle along to it.

 

Oh yes, that’s the other thing about planning – making it up as you go along is sometimes the only option…