Best laid plans

Once my boss returned from his holiday in the Sunshine State last week, and I had completed the Condor report, I had little else to do. No other projects on the workstack had my name against them, and a speedy approval for any of the Condor work to start in earnest was a pretty forlorn hope. Business doesn't work that way, to misquote a loathsome local TV advert.

So I decided to take some time off, starting on Wednesday (two days ago).

As it happens, I have a PRINCE2 course scheduled next week. Much like taking driving lessons teaches you to pass the driving test, this course teaches you to pass the Foundation and Practitioner exams. Another nice item to put on my CV.

Taking some time off work would also allow me to put in the required 20 hours or so of preparatory reading required to familiarise myself with the material.

However, as is always the case with great-sounding plans, they gang aft awry. Wednesday was also the time my sister-in-law decided to get severe abdominal pains. This was not the first time, but fearing the worst, she chose this occasion to go to the hospital, leaving Mrs Q and I to look after her four kids - two of them year-old twins! And she's still there.

My course-preparation time is limited to an hour in bed in the mornings, the manual propped up against my raised legs, an hour in the study while the kids are being taken to school, and perhaps some time in the early afternoon.

The house is in a complete state of chaos. Clothes, toys, bedding and babies bottles litter the floor. The kitchen constantly looks like the aftermath of a party. Very few things are where they should be - the kids even lost the Sky remote yesterday - and I am sorely tempted to take my books and the CD-ROM down to the library and leave the wife to it. But that wouldn't be fair would it. Never mind. I'll get by.

Next week I will be at the mercy of (shudder) public transport again, but after that I plan to have two blissful weeks of coffee mornings at Starbucks with Mrs Q, matinees at the cinema, and perhaps a short trip somewhere nice if the weather holds out.

Hopefully, that will be just enough time for something juicy to appear on the workstack spreadsheet with a vacant cell in the PM column, where my name would go.