He said, she said

Yesterday I was in the UK for the day. Just for the day. Seven hours, in fact.

I managed to fit in three meetings and lunch with my Mother. How's that for productivity?

I'd travelled over with Debbie - as usual - and by the time we came to take the flight home we were mildly hysterical from the travelling as well as the busy-ness and business of the day.

Normally I'm very organised and have something to read in my bag. This time it turned out to be the last 20 pages of a Tom Perrotta novel - 20 pages that lasted ten minutes. Not so good. Debbie, being Debbie, had brought along her 'beginners sudoku' and was frustrated with it being so difficult. Lord.

So we're sat on the plane with nothing to do. I want to sleep. Debbie doesn't.

"Let's play 'he said, she said' - it'll be funny" she suggests.

Now, this isn't something I've done since I was, like, ten years old. But, given the wave of hysteria that was now washing over me, I acquiesced. Out came 2 sheets of paper.

Now for those of you unfamiliar with the game, each person starts by writing a boy's name on a piece of paper, then folding it so that the name is hidden. The paper is passed to the other person who writes 'met...' and then a girl's name. The papers get swapped again and 'at...' is written, followed by a location. The process then goes 'he said...', 'she said...', 'and then they...'. Each time the papers getting swapped between the players.

At the end of the process, you end up with a random tale about random people. It's very funny. Especially if you are a twelve-year-old girl.

I guess that I forgot to mention the libation of which we'd partaken at the airport. This possibly explains why we decided we'd play using the names of our colleagues. This also possibly explains why we found the whole process hilariously funny.

As we sat on the plane, passing papers to and from and laughing like drains, I realised that other passengers had started to stare.

Now, I'm happy for people to stare. I'm more than used it in fact - looking this good, you either live with it or hide away, ha ha. But staring with eyes wide open as me and Debbie found ourselves increasingly hilarious while playing a kids' game? That's kind of uncomfortable.

As we boarded the bus from the aircraft to the terminal at CDG, a very straight-laced looking French businessman turned to me and smiled.

"Looks like you found a way to pass the time on board!" he said.

"Erm, yeah. I hope we didn't distrub you," I replied, trying to act as if this was totally normal.

"It made my day," he said. "I've been stuck in the most miserable meetings and to hear some laughter has done me some good. Shame you didn't ask me to join in."

"Next time maybe" I said, as we got off the bus and headed to the exits.

"Definitely," he said, flashing me a killer smile. "Most definitely".

I said goodbye to Debbie and headed off to get the bus into town.

Our work here was done.