Gordon was not a happy chappy. He'd awakened that morning, smiling. The smile had lasted all of thirty seconds, which was when he'd noticed that he'd slept through the alarm.
By skipping breakfast and doing a very fast final hundred yards he'd got to the station barely in time to catch his train. But he'd caught it. No seat, but he'd made the train.
Then came the announcement. A passenger had had a heart attack and the train would be held up until an ambulance arrived to remove him. In Gordon's opinion, the passenger could have done everyone a favour by dropping dead. They could have tossed the body off the train and kept going.
Arriving (late) at work, the first thing Gordon did was switch on his computer. Fat lot of good it did him. An unrecognised device error message flashed up and the computer would not start. An urgent call to the IT department resulted in a guru coming up to tell him his computer was bust. He'd already worked that much out, himself, thank you very much.
It turned out that the hard drive had died. Totally.
"No worries," said the guru. "We have some hard drives available and everything was backed up. You'll be up and running in an hour or so with all your files restored."
That was the way the day went. Murphy ruled supreme, with anything that could go wrong, going wrong. The only time something went right was when Murphy was setting him up for a bigger fall.
Gordon arrived home from work (late) to find he was supposed to be at a barbecue one of the neighbours was throwing. Would he please change into casual clothes and haul his arse down to where it was supposed to be.
Thinking nasty thoughts about parents who make appointments for you and forget to tell you about them, Gordon changed into cooler clothes and wandered down to the neighbour's place.
What with one thing and another, Gordon had missed breakfast, morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea. He was ready to eat. All you had to do was wave the cow gently in front of the fire and then stand back. He'd do the rest.
Unfortunately, it turned out that the cook had found a tough old bull to barbecue, one that had obviously died from a combination of old age and starvation. To make matter worse, Gordon was convinced that the idiot had used napalm on the barbecue. Nothing else could account for the charred mess he called a steak.
As the sun vanished Michael, the idiot ruining the meat, had flicked on his new solar powered spotlights. This resulted in the immediate barbecue area being floodlit with the rest of the backyard deep in shadow. Grabbing a bottle of beer, Gordon faded into the shadows to sit out the rest of the barbecue.
Wandering down the yard, Gordon came to a rest under an apple tree, leaning against the trunk and looking towards the highlighted barbecue. How long, he wondered, before he could make his excuses and get the hell out of there?
"Not enjoying our barbecue, Gordon," queried a soft voice.
Gordon looked towards where the voice was coming from. He could make out a figure silhouetted against the lit area and, while not able to see her clearly, he knew who it was; Alison, Michael's wife.
"Not particularly, Alison," he said apologetically. "Not your fault. It's just that I've had a hell of a day and your husband's cooking hasn't exactly improved it."
