Helen should keep her big mouth shut

So, we've been having an interesting week. Things have been going wrong. Technology has been failing. People have been slicing themselves open in freak accidents. Other people have been experiencing, shall we say, "slight technical difficulties" with their home lives. Things like that.

I personally blame Helen, who has been spending the last week saying "What else could possibly go wrong?" a lot. Like that isn't daring the universe.

Take yesterday's training session, for example. Somewhere between 200 and 300 people turn out on a Saturday morning (having paid for the privilege) to hear us tell them all about writing essays and doing research.

To begin with, the room is locked and we have to track down security to let us in (surely, if you book a room, someone should be on hand to unlock it). Then we discovered the presentation equipment was frozen and the projectors wouldn't work. Since all of our sessions were running off slide shows, that was a bit of a problem. About an hour into the session, just after we finally managed to get our "Plan B" to work, the projectors came back on... only the have the Internet cut out half and hour later (and a lot of what we were to show the students was on the 'net).

We spent the entire morning trying to teach without tools and fix the tools at the same time. There was a point when I was speaking to the crowd and I noticed people were taking notes. My brain was somewhere else entirely, trying to work out what to do next. I kid you not, I actually had the thought: "Hey, people are taking notes based on what I'm saying. I wonder what I'm saying..."

And, through it all, Helen keeps saying "Seriously, what else could possibly go wrong?"

Stop asking the question, Helen. We don't want to know the answers.