used to be somebody

IT's one of those jolly office jokes that, for some of us, never quite manages to be funny: yelling 'part-timer!' at anyone leaving before midnight/taking a holiday/nipping out of the office for five minutes. Ho ho, very droll. Unless, of course, you...

I HOPE it isn't true, I really do.
And there are reasons to suspect it might not be entirely true - or not irreversibly true - that, as this story today claims, nearly half of young women would rather have big breasts than a high IQ (and 40% would rather be thin than clever). The caveats...

"I felt they were both drowning, but I could only save one."
That line is from a rather haunting piece last weekend by the Times writer Janice Turner, describing her feelings about coping with both her increasingly frail father and a mother worn out by looking after him....

HIGHLIGHTER pens! Architects' fees! Room service dinners on overnight trips! (Bear with me: this gets more interesting). Bank overdraft charges! Fax running costs! (But not, strictly not, fax machines).
Yup: these are just a few of the thrilling things that as a self-employed person I can, in the unlikely event that I haven't lost the receipts, legally offset against tax. These are the things considered so essential to my work (mailshots and free samples...