h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Being a spy isn’t naturally consistent with having a social life, part of the problem is the 100s of things you shouldn’t say but there is also the long absences which are hard to explain.
This weekend I’ve been putting some effort in to the ‘having friends’ part of my life. On Friday I went to the theatre to see ‘The Anatomy of Melancholy’. It was an amazing play; an attempt to put an Elizabethan medical textbook on the stage. It was packed full of Elizabethan medical terms, obscure remedies and toilet humour. I had to use my best spy skills as I was attending with the synagogue mums who have radical but ill-informed views on things like bed times, potty training and Palestine.

On Saturday I went to a bonfire party. There was a massive fire, lots of food and dangerously close fireworks. I drank rather a lot and may have let my guard down. One of the problems with being a spy is the need to have a lot of background knowledge in a variety of areas. As I spend a lot of time working with government and in the scary world of international finance I know rather a lot about public policy. At one point in the evening I reached the uncomfortable realisation that the last thing I said was.. ‘and then they passed the 1935 Road Traffic Act’ which suggested I’d strayed from small talk into a lecture on the history of bus regulation.

[Amy P]