13th October - Good day? Bad Day?

13th October 2005, a memorable day as it is my birthday. I cannot help who I share this birthday with but I didn't have a great birthday bash to which the Queen and the Prime minister were invited umlike a certain person who shall remain nameless! Instead I went to work! A nice straightforward day was planned. Visit the cleaners at a site we are due to take over next week, revisit a house that had a carpet clean a week ago to investigate some stains that had appeared on the carpets subsequently and lastly visit a large house that was being sold whose owners wanted it cleaned before selling it on. All of these places were between 30 and 40 miles away from us and roughly within easy proximity of each other so the days visits had been carefully co-ordinated. Plenty of time had been allocated to eack visit so that a long leasurely lunch could be included by the banks of the River Hamble. A very pretty spot near the Hampshire coast. All went well initially despite the fact that we were about three quarters of an hour later in leaving than that originally planned. However that time difference prooved to be quite critical as we arrived to see the cleaners to find they had finished 15 minutes ahead of schedule and just departed the site. Never mind on to the next call, albeit earlier than anticipated. 5 minutes into our journey and we receive a call from the letting agents that unfortunately they would not be able to get there to let us in so could we rearrange the appointment! Not to worry we can see if we can reaarange the third appointment and shift it to the morning from the afternoon. However we were unable to contact the owner so we decided to return to base have lunch and keep that appointment as arranged. Lunch needless to say was very pleasant and at two pm we set off for this appointment at three. Now the bad part! Both of us had made an assumption that we actually knew where we were going so neither of us had actually checked on the map! We duely arrived at 3pm in a place which was totally incorrect! Asking some poor unsuspecting passers-by where our correct destination was we where informed that we were about 40 miles away from it! We did manage to find it in the end despite road closure signs requiring us to make a considerable detour. However on arrival we were met not by the owner as arranged, they coukdn't make it, but by a New Yorker who had just arrived from Heathrow airport! He could show us around the property but had no idea what the owners wanted doing with it with regards cleaning arrangements. However a simple telephone call sorted that one. I managed to arrive home at about 6, settled down to enjoy a nice cup of coffee with the evening news and wole up four and a half hours later! The end to a not so perfect day.