Victoria Hawkin's Week: Oops!

The old brain must be going - only in the past couple of days I have become a bit of an old dodderer. Firstly I was driving home on Tuesday, unusually via the far side of town, due to a mercy dash to pick up some new suit trews from a shop for an old friend and neighbour - one Mr S - who needed them to go to a funeral the next day.

He said though he looked fab in the jacket he rather felt he needed the trousers as well and they were being altered.

Don't know if it was because I was thinking of this but I certainly wasn't concentrating on driving because the next thing I knew the lights on the pedestrian crossing in front of me switched from green to orange to red all of a sudden and I hadn't quite stopped yet.

The brakes, hit hard, worked a treat, my trunk-sized handbag crashed to the floor and the only near thing was that I engendered some serious pedestrian rage from two blokes while simultaneously causing much amusement to a couple of work colleagues who were also gaily sauntering across the crossing at the same time.

About the only thing I can say in my defence, which isn't much, was the guy in the left hand lane obviously had the same problem with these lights but he didn't bother to stop at all. Instead he'd zoomed straight through them, and they were now definitely red ­- which almost exactly matched the shade of my also red face.

Next day at work, all was going fairly well until lunchtime when I trotted off to the canteen to get a sarnie. Only I didn't quite make it to the top of the stairs because I walked straight into the corner of an office on the way (which has been there for the 18 years I've been here too) - again much to the amusement of a different (thank goodness) work colleague, who quipped that they must have moved the wall, ha, ha.

Red-faced yet again I'm now swearing off all late nights and booze and taking a crash course in concentrating.