Cloudy with a chance of palm fall

When one is stuck in a residence, albeit a quite comfy one, waiting for the house to materialise or a job to appear a sort of pattern emerges. The old routine of waking up early and getting to work, then surviving it by trying to avoid executing your colleagues or customers and then returning home to prepare dinner and wash clothes while on one side seems rather boring, on the other it gives a purpose and a direction in life.

Clearly while the waking at 6am remains the rest is a hit and miss job so it is essential to create a new routine that makes sense to you.

So when Max leaves for work my first job of the day is to get the laundry sorted for the maids, read 10 pages from my latest thriller about a female assassin, work 2 hours on the PC checking out job ads, get dressed and take a walk in a new area for another 2 hours, come home exhausted and sweaty, a quick swim, skype with Mom, work another 2 hours on the PC, read a few pages more, go to the gym and feel virtuous and not fat at all, meet Max for dinner ending up feeling less virtuous and with the first signs of blubber.

In all of this it is essential that nothing disrupt the routine and ruffle feathers so it is with a light sense of unease that, upon returning to my flat after a walk along Orchard Road, I find a card informing me that the tree surgeons will be working in the garden.

The vegetation is so luxurious and green that it does not seem necessary to do any work but as with one's hair, you do not realise how ratty you look until you get your bum to the hairdresser.

So I calm down and decide that maybe it is not such a daft idea after all. Tree grooming starts while I am at the poolside working on my CV. Helmeted men climb the palm trees and with a saw start cutting away the dry, worn out fronds. Up on the trees the fronds seem light and feathery but when they fall to the ground the heavy thud clearly indicates that they are not.

All is done is a safe way, with areas cordoned off to avoid incidents to customers but even the best laid plans do not always go according......to plan.

So when a palm frond hits the water instead of the ground lots of "oh my goodness!" resound from the bathing public, children are hoisted to safety though they were on the opposite side of the pool and the sun-lotioned ladies who are just frying up gently under the sun get their heads together and comment about the incident while vigorously rubbing their little angels dry and reassuring them that all is well. This causes the little dears to enter a state of panic-cum-tantrum that might just justify a visit to the ice cream parlour.

While the drama unfolds I sit happily under a canopy, well away from the excitement but hoping that such disruption to my well oiled routine is the last one today.