WET TRAINERS

"Did you get stuck in the hail?" asked Louise. I did. Thankfully I had had my umbrella with me when the giant hail stones had started pummelling the Earth.

Wasn't it one of the plagues of Egypt? I guess I should be thankful it wasn't frogs pelting Theale High Street at lunchtime.

Not to mention the angel of death. Anyway, enough of this - it hailed: massive chunky lumps of ice ricocheting off my umbrella like frozen ball-bearings. I took shelter in a doorway and watched them hurtling into the pavement.

This is the reason I had to do my performance appraisal in my socks. By the time I got back to the office, my trainers were sopping and my feet were swimming inside my socks. I detest that feeling - I mean I really hate it. It's the soggy, swampy, misery of wet toes, of water splurging and squelching around your soles with every step. It was all I could do to unpick my laces and prize my trainers off as soon as I got back to my desk.

The appraisal went OK. I kept my stocking feet squarely under the desk, hoping that I could avoid accidentally poking a damp toe into one of the floor ports. Electrocuting yourself during your performance review is perhaps not wholly conducive to your career progression.

In fact it was all going OK until I had to make an unscheduled trip to the Gateway to Hades. I don't like going in there at the best of times, as you know. The three cubicles remind me of a disturbing game of the Monty Hall Problem. Plus (and I'm putting this delicately) some people have very different ideas about what you might win when you open the door. There was no way I was going to brave the portal to the underworld in my socks.

So on went the wet trainers. There's only one thing more unpleasant than wet trainers and that's taking them off and having to put them on again. The cold clammy fabric sticks to your dampened socks and your feet squirm into the shoe with a squelch.

I've just looked it up. It was hail and fire in Egypt. I can't complain, that would have been much worse than wet trainers.