Things can only get better

Apologies if I don't do the Blog rounds for a day or two - just trying to get myself straight over here.

Hmmm… where shall I start? Okay, Saturday then…

Well, a few of you guessed right, in that I was intending to visit a friend who had asked if I might fancy, errr… ahem…. Well, we’ve known each other a long time, and we’re both single at the moment. So, to cut a shortish story even shorter, I said yes. In the event, she decided it was easier to come over to me, and so I went shopping in the afternoon for some dinner, and then stepped out of the shower even as she was parking on my drive.

I think it may be best if I spare you the details of the evenings activities, but suffice it to say that I didn’t start cooking until gone 11 o’clock, and by the time we’d finished eating it was getting on for 1am. I suppose we fell asleep at around 3, and as I forgot to turn off the bloody alarm clock I was awake pretty early and dying for a cup of coffee. I slipped out of the bedroom, went downstairs, and nearly tripped over what had been the contents of a kind of side-table shelf in the corner of the lounge. I immediately wondered what was going on, because I knew I hadn’t left them there, and in any event an antique carved wooden box – which I paid an absolute fortune for on a trip to Prague last year – was nowhere in sight.

I could see into the kitchen, and most of the cupboards and drawers were open, with the contents strewn over the work surfaces. As I looked, I realised with a feeling of complete dread that someone had been in the house. And as I turned towards the door to my office - which is an extension at the back of the house - I could barely bring myself to check if my worst fears had been realised. But check I did, and sure enough my laptop and case had gone. And my laptop had every piece of data I could possibly need to get the business up and running… models of contracts, specifications, systems, processes, graphics, databases… you name it, and it was on there, as well as three month’s worth of work setting the company itself up prior to January. All gone, and all irrecoverable. (No, I hadn't backed it up yet - I'm a prat! Ed)

As if that wasn’t bad enough, I had two large box files with pretty much every important piece of paper that I’ve ever kept, along with passports, letters, stuff from Mum and Dad, old pictures and paintings from when the children were babies, birth certificates, bank and credit card statements, title deeds… I don’t even think I want to go on with the list. The laptop and the box-files were quite simply the two most important things in my house, and (barring the children, of course) probably in my life.

Of course, I called the police, but I’m really just going through the motions, and I’m just going to have to get over it. I have literally months of work to get back to as close to the position I was in as I can, and even then it won’t be remotely close. It’s just a complete and utter disaster. Oh, and on top of everything else, my insurers are already causing me as many problems as they can, and I’m going to have to fight just to recover anything from them. Bastards.

It’s almost funny, in a vaguely hysterical way, that moments after I was being told on the telephone this morning that "things can only get better", I received a call to tell me I didn’t get the job I’ve been pitching for. Now, I know I need to put it all in perspective, but I think that – just for a little while – I’m going to just stay as I am. REALLY PISSED OFF.

Which pillock was it who said “what doesn’t kill you...”??