Being a high powered executive type I have the ability to work from home when I feel like I need a break from the hustle and bustle of my cut-throat corporate career (I am a busy typist in the industrial wastelands of county Dublin). When at home one must work the same hours and attend to all the same duties as when in the office; do the same phone calls; fill in the same mind-numbing spreadsheets. So it’s not like you can doss off completely. You can however do a daytime wash-load in the machine; or use your lunchbreak to have a little trip to the opticians. Or get major dental work in Poland over the course of a week, but not consume those days entirely as holidays.

So a trip to Limerick to help celebrate the birthday of a sibling whose shiny, new age has a zero as the 2^nd digit should have been easy. I could wear my portable shoulder pads in my mother’s house, just to let my family know that during office hours I was a tycoon (in my mind at least) , and that the usual tirade of torment needed to be paused while I arranged hostile take-overs and mergers.

I rose like the spring sunshine at 8am and logged on to the Wi-Fi in the homestead. Email and internet was accessible. So far so good. I needed to log on to my work network, so carried out the steps I do on a routine basis when working from my Dublin home. Computer said no. Repeatedly. Being technologically very savvy I tried the usual trick of turning everything off and then back on again. No can do. I de-installed, then reinstalled the Virtual log on app on my phone. To no avail. I de-installed the software on my laptop. It was only when this was complete that I realised without this software (which is only free while on the work network) I had absolutely no chance of logging on.

There was nothing else for it. I trudged, miserably to the bus stop, boarded, and headed to Shannon. My company has an office here. A small office. That was not expecting me. Nothing else for it though. With twenty-six minutes of annual leave left for 2018, a holiday wasn’t possible. I breezed into the office as if I had important meetings to attend. I don’t think anyone was convinced. Too bad. They can hardly ask me to leave.

I sit now in the industrial wastelands of County Clare. If it is possible this place is even grimmer than my Dublin place of employment.

Bah humbug.