CHRISTMAS FAYRE

And, well, faster than you can pack away a bilge pump, I'm back to my old self and I've bounced back into the office.

The sun was shining at a weird angle this morning, shearing in through the window and sparkling over the lake. For a while I was side-lit, as though Nature wanted to show off my flaky skin. Thanks a lot, Nature.

In other news, I made a greasy fingerprint on my laptop where I tried to open Microsoft Outlook with my finger. Also, it looks like I missed a couple of ding-dongs, which is always a bonus, not least for avoiding the feeling that I might have created a few of them.

Apart from that, everyone here is suddenly in the Christmas Spirit this week. The Engineering Tree is up again, complete with compact discs, ether-net cables, ripped-out motherboards and a retired mouse, dangling from one of the branches. Meanwhile, support have re-created the whole of Narnia.

Ever eager to please, the people who run the business park (remember the wheelbarrow olympics in the summer) have put on a Christmas Fayre today. I wandered over to see what it was all about.

What it was 'all about' was a tinsellated car-boot sale. A thin looking Santa sat patiently in an inflatable igloo while hundreds of people milled around the fudge and nik-nak stalls. Perfume, wooden jewellery, old-fashioned postcards, make-up, and gifts you'd find every day on the market were displayed between the ropey Christmas trees.

Not that they hadn't gone to a lot of trouble to make it Christmassy! Outside, where the queue for the fish'n'chip van snaked round the path, there were two animal pens made out of picket fences, attracting their own crowds. I poked my nose between the onlookers.

In the first one, three reindeer (antlers, females) were slumped unhappily on a thin layer of straw. A gaggle of sales-types were enthusiastically snapping selfies over the fencing.

In the other pen, some penguins were wobbling about in their natural habitat of... plastic grass and miniature pop-up tents, you know the kind of plastic grass and miniature tents you find all over Antarctica. I walked back deciding I don't really know how to feel about that. Not quite as Christmassy as the organisers were hoping for, I'd wager.

In fact, I'm not really sure how to feel about any of it. Various people are disappearing this week and going on their Christmas holidays, tomorrow is our work's Christmas do, and then beyond that we'll be here working in a gradually decelerating office, counting down the straggling hours until next Friday when the whole thing grinds to a halt and we can all go home and have a glass or two of vino. Well, those of us who aren't on sleeping pills, I suppose.

"I like to think those reindeer are set free in the summer," said Debbie thoughtfully approaching the office, "You know, as though they only have to suffer just a little bit of pain, being cooped-up for the benefit of people in suits."

I raised my eyebrows and smiled pointedly as I held the door open for her and we shuffled back to our respective desks.