Agency: London Rubber Company Location: Heathrow T4 toilets. Durex Featherlite Durex Ribbed for Extra Sensitivity Durex Extra Safe Durex Gossamer Durex Lager & Lime Durex Chicken Korma Nurofen Obviously two of the above are fictitious but the Nurofen is genuine. A great idea to counter that age old objection - ‘Not tonight dear, I have a splitting headache’. [ This blog is brought to you by Tom Hanks who actually has lived unnoticed in Heathrow Terminal 4 for the past 8 years, sleeping on chairs by night and queuing in various parts of the building by day. ]

People never ask me ‘Just who is this Norman Brightside character ?’ ‘Norman Brightside’ is an alias for a fictitious Oracle Database Administrator based in Solihull, near England. Norman briefly flirted with celebrity, last year, when he had the temerity to criticise Tom Kyte. Norman Brightside is also a bastardisation of Norman Whiteside, a Northern Irish footballer who played for Manchester United in the 80’s and the song ‘Mr. Brightside’ by the popular American beat combo - The Killers.

This morning at some unearthly hour, I found myself standing once again in the queue to clear security at Heathrow Terminal 4. I was almost at the X-ray machine when a member of staff approached me and invited me to ‘volunteer’ for a full body scan. He took me behind some screens and for one moment I feared the BAA queue monitors were going to exact their terrible revenge for my outspoken criticisms last week. However, he explained that the body scanner would take three scans of my body, each of which would pass a small amount of radiation through my body. ...

‘Would you like any cashback today at all, Sir ?’ ‘Oh yeah. That would be handy. £50 - thanks.’ ‘Oh I’m awfully sorry. I haven’t got enough money in the till to give you £50, Sir.’ ‘Oh OK - how about £30 then ?’ [Looks dolefully into depths of till] ‘Hmm - not really. That would leave me a little short of cash.’ ‘Can you manage £20 ?’ ‘Yeah, yeah. £20. I can give you £20.’ ...

Two years ago, my hard disk failed. Completely. This was excellent news as my computer ran a lot faster after a clean installation of Windows XP but bad news because I lost email, names and addresses, documents etc. One thing on my to-do list was to investigate offline storage to backup key data files to avoid a repetition. And, yes, this ‘Next Action’ had been on the to-do list for two years. ...