Thank God for Jack

On Friday I realised that a project likley to dominate the next three months of my working life is going to be so fraught with tension and difficulty that I may have significant trouble with maintaining my professional equilibrium. I spent most of the week-end in a state of dread only leavened by faint hopes that I might drop dead of in an (arguably) increasing order of likelihood:
a) toxic shock syndrome
b) newfound allergy to cats
c) inhaling spores from potting mix while watering plants
d) heart attack while at the gym
e) inhaling gas from the stovetop burners going out before I noticed it
f) train crash
g) avian flu caught from other passengers on the train or
h) sheer boredom.

Mercifully, after exhausting all other forms of entertainment (friends, the feline, television, the telephone, four DVDs and a movie in a cinema) Desolation Island by Patrick O'Brian containing the continuing adventures of Jack Aubrey and his loyal companion, ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin, kept me entertained for several hours.

Hours in which I should have been sleeping. But if I'd been asleep, I would only have had bad dreams.

Thank you Jack.