The Clangers...

Although my official Job Title is 'Travelling Mouse', the 'travelling' bit doesn't just refer to the hopping on and off of planes, trans and roller skates.  What I mean is that I have t be flexible.  

I don't mean attending yoga classes three times a weeks.  I have the technology (when it works) to work from just about anywhere.

Of course this has it's advantages, especially during the recent hot weather, when I have worked many a morning from my garden with a pot of fresh coffee at my paw.  This does mean that I have to remember to press the 'mute' button when attending conference calls before someone asks where the bird noises are coming from.

At the moment however I have limited technology.  I usually access my e-mail and applications using a device that looks like a USB stick (or a kind of red cockroach with a metal bit at the end, for the non technically savvy among you) that plugs into my laptop and connects via smoke, mirrors and my portable wifi to the world of Cheese orders.  Last week I was in the middle of a conference call when a message flashed up on the screen: 'Connection Lost', and the fascinating presentation on Cheese Production I had been engaged in disappeared from my screen. A quick investigation (me looking at the USB port at the back of my laptop) revealed that the USB (metal bit) part was still firmly intact in the port. However the 'stick' (cockroach) bit was on the desk.  Two years worth of travelling and transporting of the device in various bags, suitcases and pockets had taken it's toll.  The device was broken beyond repair.

So, while I wait for a new device, which of course had to be ordered by a many stepped and laborious application and approval process, I am limited in my flexibility.  I can still do a perfect back bend but actually connecting to anything useful via my laptop is a distant memory, so I have to be creative.

This morning, for example, I had an appointment and a one hundred  and fifty nine page document detailing the various responsibilities of the Cheese Producers, the Wrapping and Packaging Suppliers, the Cheese Integrators and the Farmers themselves to review.  My appointment was far from the office and close to a well known coffee shop and, well, I hadn't had any breakfast, so I went in, ordered a strong coffee and a muffin (for brain power) and settled into a nice quiet corner seat to review the massive manuscript.

Thirty eight pages in (it is very complicated and I have to read it very slowly) and two gentlemen appear nearby.  They are speaking in a language that my mouse ears do not understand but they are carrying a very large box.  My whiskers twitch in uncomfortable anticipation.

The gentlemen go over to two large, comfortable looking chairs in the opposite corner and I breath a sigh of relief and return to the complexities of the Cheese outsourcing manual.  Two minutes later they reappear, carrying the two large chairs between them. I nearly fall off mine.  What are they doing?

The large box is opened.  It contains a hammer and a drill.  They proceed to tip the comfortable looking chairs upside down, drill out the bolts holding them together and hammer every metal part of them.  Hard. Two feet away from my sensitive mouse ears. Clang. Clang. Clang.  All the time they work, they jabber away in the strange language.  Well, flexible I may be, but there is a limit.  If I want constant noise, interruption and incomprehensible chit chat I can work from the office.  I glance at my plate - the muffin is a distant memory and the coffee now cold, so I pack up my documents and the office is exactly where I head.

My ears are still ringing.

Mouse xx

Everything is blurry...

Hoorah!  I can go travelling again and a-travelling I will go.  In fact I did go.  This week.  

So, Monday morning found me at Birmingham Airport, at my usual table, in my usual coffee shop, tapping away at my keyboard and setting up the business meetings and notes I would need for my latest visit to Sweden.  Tap, tap, tap, actions all done, paperwork all read and understood, presentation material all ship-shape.  I looked up at the flight information board - flight delayed by one hour.  Sigh.  Tap, tap, tap, rearrange all the meetings I had set up for that afternoon. 

On the plane I like nothing more than to settle down with a good book.  If the plane is empty and I have a whole row to myself (hooray!) I like to do some work but if you are literally paw-to-elbow with your commuting neighbour I don't like to work because:-

• They might elbow me and spill coffee on my keyboard
• I might elbow them (and they will probably be bigger than me)
• They might read what I am writing and sell the information to a rival Cheese company
• It is a nuisance having to say 'excuse me please' every five minutes in order to get out / put away the laptop

Anyway, on this occasion the flight was full.  I pulled out my book (Of Mice and Men - it's not what I expected it to be about - there aren't that many mice in it) and reached into my flight bag for my reading / working glasses.

They were not there.

I rummaged around a bit further.  No.  Definitely not there.  I put the book away and had a think. Maybe the glasses were playing that game. You know the one, where you search for something, it's not there, you check again and again, not there, and then you check later and there it is and was all along. I decided to check again at the hotel and settled down to the business of a small sleep.

I like the hotel I stay in. I stay in the same place regularly as they have a nice breakfast, and in the evening they put on 'a light buffet'.  Well, it's light if you are an elephant maybe, but to a small Mouse it's a feast! They also have pots of coffee out all day and all night, and very often cakes too!  This time, however, I think they mistook my request for a room, for a request for a small cupboard.  The bed was comfy but it nearly touched the wall on all sides.  There was a small desk, that could easily double up as a shelf, a small wardrobe and a bathroom.

I set the laptop up on the shelf desk and proceeded to empty the contents of my flight back onto the bed: three international power adapters, several pens, copies of Cheese orders, sunglasses (good - I like to look stylish), a USB plug, several USB charger cables (see how efficient that is? one plug and many cables that fit? Perfect until I need to charge two things at the same time), tissues (new), tissues (used - ugh), screwed up tickets and boarding cards and a small pack of emergency snacks.  No reading / working glasses.

For that afternoon I had calls to make - not so much of a problem.  I sat on the chair (did I forget to mention that there was a chair rammed into the minute space between the bed and the shelf desk?) and peered at the screen to find the numbers to call. 

The screen was covered in a number of fuzzy squiggles. I pushed the laptop forward. I pushed the chair back. I leaned back and squinted, putting my paw over each digit in the telephone number as I squinted and reading them out like a child. 7,7,3,4,8,no,0,no,8,no,3.  It was no use. I dialled a few numbers, apologized to a few people for disturbing their afternoon and listened to a few 'not listed' tones until I finally had a brainwave! I used the cut and past facility to copy the number and paste it into a Word document, then increased the font size to large. Much better.  I was able to do the calls!

For the remainder of the trip, improvisation was the key word.  During presentations I was able to read the large text on the projector screen, but writing notes in my diary was more of a challenge.  I found myself listening double hard, to make up for being visually challenged and it made me realise what a visual Mouse I am, relying on pictures, expressions and body language to make sense of at least half of the stories my customers tell me. I also stopped glancing at e-mail during meetings, a bad habit and also rude to the person I am speaking to, but something I notice we all do.

In the evenings I was not able to pass the time reading, or playing games on my iPad and so I went to bed early, or went for a walk. Many, many times I went to reach for my glasses as I picked up my mobile phone, or I would go to switch on my laptop in the evening and 'just catch up on e-mails', both very bad habits really.  The loss of my specs forced me to be just a Mouse and not a Cheese-ordering-problem-solving-requirements-gathering-expectations-managing Mouse for once.

The visit was over far too soon and there were several of my favourite Miss Mooses on my catch up list who I never got to see (this time), and it was time to set off and claim my glasses from Birmingham Airport Lost Property.  I got up at the unearthly hour of 5.30am Swedish time, in order to get home for mid-day UK time so that I could attend some more calls.  However, luck was not on my side.  As I printed my boarding pass I squinted at the blurry lines.  Two blurry lines and two blurry seat numbers.  I could just about make out the word 'Frankfurt'.  I ran over to the SAS desk as fast as my paws would carry me.  There were rather a lot of people there, complaining that they had been diverted.  The red face man behind the glass looked flustered and uncomfortable. The flight to Birmingham had been cancelled and we were all being ferried home by various double hop routes.

Oh well. I like airports and I don't mind delays too much.  A few calls and my meetings were rescheduled. At least I could settle down and read a magazine. Oh - hang on, no, I can't do that either.

So I did what a Mouse does best.  Breakfast in Sweden. Second breakfast in Denmark. Lunch in Germany.  Dinner back home in the UK.  With a few snacks in between thrown in for good measure.

When I finally arrived back at Birmingham, I made my way up to Lost Property and there were my glasses, waiting safely and soundly for me.  I put them on and the world became a clearer, sharper place. I checked my mobile phone, my texts, my e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, the news sites and the gossip sites.  I was up to speed, informed and with a head full of useless facts and time wasting information that I had managed to live without for the past three days, which leads me to think that although it's great to be informed, to have information at our paw tips and able to communicate with friends, family and colleagues all over the world in an instant, sometimes a blurry world is the healthier option.

Fuzzily yours,

Mouse xx