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One of the things it would do me well to remember is that life is full of surprises. Not always good ones, true, but thems the breaks.

This past week has been particularly rubbish on the surprises front as various things I’d subconsciously pinned a few hopes on, unexpectedly slipped through the net. Or, to put it another way, the great bar-stool of life, the one reserved only for me, has suddenly acquired three wobbly legs. And a questionable spot near the toilets.

I was contemplating this clumsy metaphor on the bus home the other day. There I sat, right at the front (because that just doesn’t get old), feeling sorry for myself as the wind and rain rocked the top deck. Fittingly, winter had decided to make an unwelcome comeback further indulging the general melancholy when I noticed a boardroom, directly across from me, hovering above the snarling traffic, with its lights still on.

A late meeting was in full flow. I was glad not to be in their shoes (though my situation was hardly inspiring, stuck at the T-junction opposite, wondering if we’d ever get to join the stagnant flow of traffic creeping towards the Elephant and Castle) but I enjoyed my vantage point and studied the room in all its fluorescent detail.

A man in a pink shirt, washed out beneath the strip lighting, stood in front of a whiteboard. Twenty or so suited men, sat around the table, even from this angle, they were upright and attentive to the speaker's every word. Pink-shirted man waved his arms about, animated and Evita-like. I wondered what he was talking about with such enthusiasm: theglobaleconomicmeltdown? a management buy-out or worse, the dos and don'ts at a healthy & safety seminar? And then, just as the bus began to shudder slowly forwards, all the attendees, in that small boardroom, a stone’s throw from the Elephant, produced a variety of brass instruments which, up until now, had been completely hidden from view. I smiled as they began to play. Pink shirt man happily conducting at the front. I wasn’t expecting that at all.

One of the things it would do me well to remember is that life is full of surprises.