Several weeks ago I was invited to a meeting to discuss the development of Shoebox. There’s been quite a few of us working flat out on this. Quite an important meeting with a senior manager to discuss progress and moving this forward.

At 8.45am on Thursday, the day of the meeting, I arranged to meet someone else at Liverpool Street as part of a different project, believing that my *very important* meeting started at 11.00am, which is what I’d written in the paper diary.

At 9.38am - I remember the time really well - I was idlying with my laptop during a pause in the other meeting and thought I would just check who was coming to the meeting at 11.00am which I read and thought, hang on a minute 10.00am - 11.00am. I swept up the entire contents of the table - laptop, dongle modem, wires, mouse, pen, notebook and shoved them in my bag and legged it out of the coffee place thinking I was about to be sick and that this wasn’t really happening. Jumped in a cab that immediately got stuck in traffic. That cost me five quid to go nowhere. Jumped in Aldgate tube station - I can’t even remember which one - but it’s the one that the District Line DOES NOT go through. Stood there and then realised this and ran down the road to the other Aldgate tube station…where I just missed the tube…and missed the meeting.

I don’t remember ever getting the time of a meeting wrong before; I don’t remember ever missing a meeting before even though I do a lot of travelling and go to different place.

I still feel pretty damn stupid and wretched about the whole thing.

Not even sure what the answer is…but maybe, just maybe I might now get a Blackberry or something that makes a really loud noise a good hour or two before I’m supposed to be where I’m supposed to be. I do like paper; but it’s inert and silent. Marvellous qualities when reading in bed; but not for organising a hectic business schedule.

By the most luck imaginable, the meeting has been re-scheduled; but running any sort of business shouldn’t be dependent on too much luck, and it certainly should avoid this sort of risk.