Over the last few weeks our excuses for failing to carry out head office demands have ranged from food poisoning to scorpion stings. We came up with a doozie a few Fridays ago though – our radio mast was struck by lightning, frying our internet machine and plunging us all into e-silence.
The lightning strike came out of nowhere – no thunder storm, no wind, no rain. Our friends at Oxfam and Solidarites, 200 yards north and south of us, all reported an explosion of terrifying loudness, with the most seasoned field operatives jumping out of their skins. Most of us in the office assumed the war was getting going again – imagine tossing a hand grenade out of the window and you have some idea. Embarrassingly, my reaction was to throw myself on to my desk, as if to protect my laptop; our education advisor was reported to be crawling under her desk when news came that there was no bomb.
Everybody in the office who was touching their computer received an electric shock, and some were reporting headaches and backache hours later. I am slightly embarrassed to report that none of my team were affected, which suggests that while other departments were all hunched over their computers mine had other pursuits to occupy their time.
So no one has email at the moment, prompting thoughts of what the hell did anyone do before email was invented. Presumably they got on with their programmes without constant monitoring from head office, which was probably quite a good way of operating. Field operatives desperate to update their fantasy football teams before the weekend had a different view.
