A Listing Problem

I found it difficult to sleep last night as I constantly kept thinking it must be time to get up. I needed to be up early in order to pack my things for the overnight stay in Exeter tonight. I woke at 5.30 a.m. and hoisted the Canadian flag to commemorate the 150^th anniversary of Blondin’s crossing of Niagara Falls from the USA into Canada on a tightrope 150 feet above the water and in readiness for Wednesday which is Dominion Day. I made tea for myself and Sara, taking hers up to her and taking a shower. After a breakfast of a bacon sandwich and strawberries I drove into Salisbury to pick up Vicki who was travelling with me to Exeter. The traffic coming into the city was awful and I arrived at our offices 15 minutes late. By contrast the journey down to Exeter on the A303 was excellent and we stopped off for coffee at Ilminster arriving at our Exeter office at around 10.20 a.m. I spent the day until around 6.30 p.m. preparing for the Employment Tribunal tomorrow with Sara Bra, Vicki, Belinda, David and Sharon – the last two being my witnesses. During the course of the afternoon I received a phone call from the Tribunal Office informing me that our case tomorrow was a “floater” – that is a case which has not been definitely fixed for hearing tomorrow – and that it might not go ahead unless another case settled. Apparently it seemed unlikely that the other case would settle and that, in all probability, we would not get on tomorrow. The case was originally set down for two days – tomorrow and Thursday - and although the case was now listed for only one day there was no certainty that it would be heard on Thursday. We are now left with the situation that we can’t really check out of our hotel tomorrow until we know what the situation at the tribunal offices is likely to be. We checked into the hotel at around 7 p.m. and I had an hour before we were due to meet in the lobby of the hotel to go out for dinner. I rang home and also received a telephone call from Tricia, Sara’s old boss who left our company some months ago. She rang to say that she would be attending Sara’s farewell do in Salisbury on 17 July. We had dinner this evening in a good Itlaian restaurant on Queens Street called Bella Italia. I had butterfly king prawns in garlic, seafood risotto and coffee. During the meal, Mary phoned me to say goodnight. It was lovely and made me miss home. Tonight returning to my hotel room I discovered that I had left my tribunal bundle in the Exeter office. Fortunately I was able to get a spare bundle from Sara Bra. My room is incredibly hot despite putting on the fan. I hate hot hotels and this is one of the reasons I hate being away from home – missing Sara and the children. How I envy Sara – leaving the company with a redundancy package in two and a half weeks time. I will need to get up early tomorrow morning to read through the bundle in further preparation of the case.