Sleeping With The NME

Today I woke up at 10.45am. I lounged around in bed for 15 minutes then realised it wasn’t a Saturday as I’d dreamt and remembered I was due to be in the office at 10am. I dived out of bed, scared the cat who was napping alongside me, slipped on the music mag I fell asleep reading the previous night and nearly broke my back. Ouch!

Such tardiness used to be something of a weekly occurrence in the old days of my regular boozing so it came as quite a shock to discover the new me had overslept. It’s true that the missus and the boy are away so I did have a few beers the night before. It wasn’t the earliest of nights either but I have now developed a cut-off point where I head home before things get messy and I awake the next morning feeling like a rat has been gnawing on my cerebral cortex.

I was going to invent some ludicrous excuse for arriving nearly two hours late but then I realised it was pointless so I made my apologies and admitted I simply overslept. It is also pointless making excuses as one of my work colleagues, who is a serial offender on the tardiness front, has cornered this particular market.

I actually admire the chutzpah of this colleague so much that I have kept a list of his best excuses and, should anyone need a good one, please feel free to borrow from any of the following:

1 Someone spiked my drink last night and I was hallucinating all day and thought I was at work
2 I’ve been invaded by ants
3 My toilet exploded
4 My mate locked me in the house and I had to wait for him to come back and let me out
5 I didn’t realise it would take me so long to get ready this morning
6 I had a dodgy prawn sandwich for breakfast and had my stomach pumped
7 I was at the dentist with my wisdom teeth and the dentist collapsed
8 I was in the bank and the security system was triggered and we all got locked in
9 A woman fainted in M&S and I had to resuscitate her
10 I had a violent nightmare and ended up punching myself unconscious in a dream

The man is a genius and should he ever apply this type of imagination in a literary or dramatic field the rest of us wannabe scribes can pack up and go home.

PS. We lost the pool match last night as well. Bugger...