Shalom Shabbat

Back in Blighty!

Overheard at HQ:

Colleague: "I want to get this order into the system today."

Chairman: "Naturally, it's Friday."

Colleague: "No it's not, it's Thursday."

Chairman: "Yes, but it's the equivalent of our Friday - you're weekend starts tonight."

Colleague: "Ah, yes."

I simply can't understand why the Israelis have the working week they have - Sunday to Thursday - which is shared by the countries that surround them, but with which they conduct no business to speak of. Their major trading partners are the US and Europe, and most of them originally hail from these areas and their ancestors adapted to our working week with little problem. It would make infinite sense for them to adopt our working week, even if Friday is a half day - they must lose so much business by having Sunday to Thursday (which is the reason they have to employ me and my staff to run the European operation from the UK).

You always see lots of Hassidim on the El Al flights to and from Israel, with their black suits, black overcoats, black homburg hats and open collar white shirts, but the one thing that stands out in my mind (beyond the obvious fashion faux-pas of an open necked white shirt with a black overcoat - makes the shirt look incredibly grubby somehow) is that they all seem to wear hideously bad shoes.

Was doing my usual sport of browsing the in-flight duty free catalogue and noticed a space pen, which can purportedly write in zero gravity. Just the thing to dash off your will when hurtling to the ground in the plane at terminal velocity. I mean - whenever is the average plane travelling person ever going to get the chance to even experience zero gravity (besides the fun fair, where you're too busy keeping your breakfast down to care about writing).

Inadvertently bought a Gilera DNA 50cc moped for No.1 son while flying to Israel. Left a snipe on it and thought I'd cancelled it, but lack of network connectivity meant the cancellation never took place. Arrived in Tel Aviv to find I won it for £200 (a non-runner needing a modicum for work). The problem is that it was in Houndslow, so I decided to pick it up after landing at Heathrow (it's in the locale), rather than pay some bugger a small fortune to collect it for me. Had no idea whether it would fit into the back of the Golf, but luckily it did and I hurtled down the M4 toward Bristol at 10 o'clock last night with fuel leaking out from the moped into the rear of the Golf and the tailgate tied part-closed with string. Managed to anchor the moped to the passenger seat with a LAN cable I;d filched from HQ to stop it coming out.