Who woulda thunk

You may remember, a couple of months ago I gave up my office chair, opting instead to sit instead on an exercise ball. I know it doesn't seem very professional, but sometimes, in a technology firm, it feels like one can get away with murder. The way I thought of it, if I could just sit on a ball all day at work, I didn't need to go to a gym. Ever. And I didn't need to feel guilty about it. I mean, doesn't even chocolate have less calories when eaten on a ball?

"What's that you got there?" Richie Rich had eyed me dubiously when I first brought it into the office.
"Huh, what? Oh, the ball?" I'd asked innocently, "You don't mind, do you?"

Sigh. "No, I suppose not," he'd paused. "Besides, somebody's got to be on the ball in this office anyway," he had grinned, thrilled by his own witticism. In this way Richie Rich and I are alike, each of us tickled pink by our own humour.

And so started the 'On-the-ball' phase of my life. A couple of miscalculated spills (but no permanent bodily damage), a couple of snickering colleagues (but nothing particularly new there anyway), a couple of back pains (but no sign of hardening abs) and I had successfully transitioned my world from office to playhouse.

Then one day, without my realising, the ball mysteriously developed a tiny leak. Day by day, it kept losing a little air, so gradually in fact that it was almost imperceptible. At any cost, I have to confess I didn't notice it - and nor did anyone else, actually, while each day the ball surreptitiously sagged by a further inch.

Then one evening, a couple of days ago, Richie Rich was striding past my office door when he suddenly stopped short.

"You're sitting on a bean bag!" he observed. I looked down in surprise. And so, apparently, unknowingly, I was.

"It's got a leak in it!" I realised in dismay. But how do you identify a microscopic leak in a bean-bag-sized ball? I picked it up and put my ear against it, listening for a hiss of escaping air. Nothing. I squeezed the ball, trying to force the air out. Still nothing. My mouth turned downwards in utter disappointment.

"Here, gimme that," said Richie Rich impatiently, reaching out for the ball. Engineer by breeding, he wasn't about to be beaten by this simple conundrum in physics. He shook it, he squeezed it, he examined it visually, he tried to bounce it, but all in vain - we just could not discern the leak. But his failure only made him more determined (a trait which, in the right circumstances, is a primary reason for his success. In the right circumstances.)

"I know what we'll do!" his eyes lit up. "Let's go out and buy a can of purple air, like those sprays you get for parties and stuff, then we'll pump this into the ball, and then when the air starts escaping we'll be ablet o see where from!!!"

He'd got it. Sheer genius.

"Erm, then your office will be full of purple air," I pointed out.

He deliberated my point, decidedly unimpressed with this possibility, and especially unimpressed with my having popped a hole in his bubble (no pun intended). But he conceded my astuteness and drops the idea. And so it comes to be, that the leaking-ball mystery was never resolved. So it comes to be, that I now have a bean bag in my office.