CAN I BORROW YOU?

Can I borrow you?

I hear this a lot, though nobody seems particularly bothered about borrowing me for five minutes. Other people get borrowed all the time though. Managers mostly. They get borrowed to meeting rooms.

It's a funny world when people ask you if they can borrow you from you. It's odd because you are the one thing you have to take with you - unlike a pen or a stapler, you're sort of attached ... to you.

Yes, you can borrow me, but jolly well make sure you bring me back, I'll say hilariously one day. The borrower will look puzzled at my lame and inappropriate sense of humour. I'm fed up of people borrowing me and not returning me, I'll continue, so I've had my initials tattooed onto myself. In fact, if you hold me under ultraviolet light, you'll see where I've had myself imprinted with my postcode in invisible ink.

The other thing with borrowing people is that you really should try to put them back where you found them. It's really annoying when you can't find yourself because someone borrowed you and left you lying around somewhere else. Crumbs, anyone could pick you up and use you - perhaps even walk off with you and keep hold of you until they forget that you belong to you and not to them. Nothing worse than a quibble about who belongs to whom.

Actually, that really does happen sometimes doesn't it? This is turning out deeper than planned.

Hey have you seen me? Yeah, you borrowed me a while ago - I mean it's fine, it's not like you didn't ask me if you could borrow me, it's just that I kind of need me back today; there's something I've got to do.

What it's code for of course, is time. Can I borrow some of your time? This is also attached to you though - and actually, if you think about it, is not really borrowing either. That is, unless the borrower has found a way to create time and give it back to you. No, when you get borrowed, you lose those minutes forever and so do they and so do you again, when you borrow them back.

So, if you do get borrowed, make the most of it. Oh and by the way, watch out if someone comes up to you and asks you if they can 'have a word'. It rarely means they want to increase their vocabulary.