The day I nearly wet myself... (Thursday, Apr. 07, 2005)

So today was a new experience for me. For the first time ever in my working life, I nearly wet myself in a meeting. Honest. I'm on my way to the loo when my boss grabs me to say 'really important meeting, sorry forgot to tell you' so on route to the loo I find myself in a meeting room with 15 other people. 'Shouldn't take long' says the boss.

Half an hour passes and I'm in considerable discomfort. I'd had 3 cups of tea already that morning and a good 2 cups had made the arduous journey to my bladder. The 3rd certainly wasn't far behind. 'Just another half hour' I tell myself.

The hour's up and the meeting is still going strong. Now I'm concentrating on not moving at all in danger of losing control. See what I forgot to mention is that sitting to my right, and in the way of the door is the chief executive of the company - his legs are crossed so if I go to the loo I'm going to have to ask him to move - not the impression I want to be making so early in my career.

An hour and a half passes and now I'm not listening to a single word that's being said, if I was asked a question I would probably have wet myself there and then. All I can concentrate on is my bladder, which is most definately 3 cups full now.

The two hour mark is reached and it really is panic time - people in the room start to look at me strangely, maybe I'd actually started to sweat urine at this stage. Or maybe I've started grunting in discomfort, I'm not sure.

After two and a half hours I decide it's now or never. I am now disregarding everything in the room apart from the chief execs leg. 'He's got to move it' I'm thinking, 'and then I'll run'. At last! He moves his leg and I make my move, I say move, it was more of a dash. This is when things go badly wrong.

Asking the chief executive to move out of the way so I could take a pee seemed pretty timid to what actually happened. He was uncrossing his legs so that he could bend down to do up a shoe lace, his head goes down just as my knee comes across him mid 'dash'. The crack of bone on bone was audible in the room. 'I'm really sorry' I said as I left the room, as regardless of having concussed the chief exec, pissing all over him would not have helped things.

So all in all, a good day. Really hoping I didn't burn any bridges with the old company.

When I finally got to the toilet, I couldn't actually go as my bladder had forgotten how to pee and had shut down - man that hurt. Finally after a few minutes, my relief began and I could start to think about what I was going to say to the big boss chap. I'll just keep out of his way, I'm sure he'll forget.

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