Sometimes you have to laugh

"Avast ye worm-eaten wastrels! Man the buckets or it's Davy Jones jocks for the lot o' ya!"

My office is in a temporary extension of a large warehouse-with-false-ceiling building. The temporary extension has been extending its temporal existence for about twenty-five years now. It's been deserving of demolition for the last ten of those but until we've got an alternate space nobody has the heart to evict its dozen denizens. Any decade now the corporation will approve the capital for the promised new building. For sure.

The worst part of the Terrapin (a long-standing affectionate description of this accommodation distension) is only apparent when one looks up to its ceiling. Given the current mood, more people note the carpet and its race between decomposition and fossilisation. However, the carpet still has the benefit of gravity to hold it in place. The same cannot be said of the ceiling, nor the flat metal roof above it.

At about 4pm, a few of the crew pondered the possibility of observing a total eclipse of the sun. It was dark outside. There was, of course, no alignment of heavenly bodies. We had not been eclipsed but quite thoroughly nimbused in a very literal sense. Rumbling, brooding threats echoed. Random guilty memories queued up in the back of my mind to ask which deity I had most recently offended.

Then came the storm.

With it came the guests. Such was the ferocity of the downpour that five plastic rubbish bins were required - one for each of the unexpected visitors: Mr. Drippy, Mr. Splashy, Mr. Piddles, Mr. Flow and the ever ebullient Mr. Gush. As I stared up at the water-stained ceiling I could picture the expanse of flat roof sagging slightly as it turned into a catchment area.

There is something infectiously amusing about darkness in daytime, thundering rain on a steel roof, water going everywhere, software engineers scrambling for more rubbish bins and an unresolved building maintenance problem that has been promoted to the status of standing joke.

Sometimes you have to laugh.