A modern-day Greek Tragedy in one very long Act...

Had Sophocles and Euripides still been plying their trade today, I have no doubt that their concept of tragedy would have been dramatically altered after sitting in on one of my company's world famous mailout meetings.

The fact that my venerable employer has been sending catalogues of its new collection twice a year for the past 36 years would lead the rational mind to deduce that a mailout meeting (feel my shivering spine as I write these mere words) would be a smooth and rapid decision-making process. Not so. Truly not so.

Today's biannual festival of dullness saw me achieve a lifetime PB, or Personal Best for those of you not acquainted with strenuous fitness regimes. I managed to record three R.D. and one D.O., or in layman's terms three Rumbled Daydreams (the eyes are open and staring in approximately the right area, but you miss a simple question aimed in your direction, a situation salvageable only by BAFTA-winning amateur dramatics recovery skills) and one actual Doze-Off, the pinnacle of office meeting embarrassments that all wannabe Dilberts strive to attain.

The conditions were perfect. Eight people in one small windowless meeting room immediately after lunch; fragrant body odour mingling intimately with prawn cocktail crisp and ham & cheese breath; the cash and carry checkout promotion clock on the wall taunting the room on a Friday afternoon by ticking back one second for every seven forward. I knew I was doomed the moment I walked into the room. Most non-hibernating mammals would have succumbed within half an hour but I lasted forty-five minutes of herculean proportions before making the fatal mistake of allowing my eyelids a short rest. The four centuries of sleep that I so richly deserved were brutally taken away by a poke between my third and fourth ribs by my UK Sales counterpart, fortunately sparing me from total humiliation in front of three of the company's six directors.

For the record, the meeting lasted one hour and twenty-seven minutes and concluded with the revolutionary concept of repeating the previous year's procedure. Such is the fulfilling and stimulating life that I lead. Had Archimedes been taking a bath in the meeting room, he would have drowned long before the seeds of Eureka had even germinated in his head.