Dots before my eyes.

Today's Mondayitis is brought to you by blue dots. Not to mention red and green ones.

Well, it isn't, really, it's brought to you by having to go out tonight to a networking function I have co-organised.  I always get depressed in the daytime before I have to go to these functions. Y'see, the networking functions are at the end of the day when I've had enough of the human race. I don't want to be changing into my business attire at 4pm and heading out. It's time to head home. Once I'm at the functions I'm fine though; get a glass of chardy into me and I'm quite cheerful.

But back to the blue dots.

The board which runs the association for which I do the networking nights is all in a kerfuffle about putting coloured dots on the name badges of the attendees for tonight's function. A blue dot means they are top level members, a green dot will mean they are middle level and a red dot means they are the lowest level.

My co-organiser for the event, whom I shall call The Fit One (as she is, she teaches gym classes part time), has already put dots on the name tags.

The poor chook will now have to take them off following a heated email discussion about the colour of the dots and whether all three levels of membership need dots.

Someone said they should be gold, silver and bronze instead. Just try buying bronze sticky dots at the newsagent, my friend. You might get the gold and silver, except they are likely to be star-shaped; the stickers which cheer up the kids in infants' school.

Someone else said only the top level members should get dots so people could see they were 'important'.

This was all getting a bit heated.

Our Leader (chairman of the board) has now sent an email around saying there will be no dots at all at tonight's meeting and we will discuss, as a board, the way forward regarding dots at the next board meeting.

The Fit One will be annoyed right now as she'll have to peel off all the dots as we undoubtedly don't have enough spare name tags WITHOUT dots!

Our Leader is taking her duties very seriously. She has developed a slightly patronising style of writing which irks me somewhat as the pedantic English she uses is often misspelt. If you can't spell it, don't write it down. The syntax bugs me though. She's trying to sound smarter and more imposing than she really is. It doesn't go with her bumfreezer skirts and low cut tops.

So we will spend at least fifteen minutes at the next board meeting talking about dots. Maybe the dot problem will be resolved, maybe it won't.

We have a very active Board at the moment who find a lot of ideas for The Fit One and I to pursue which is fine, but we have a very limited budget and the switch from blue dots to gold could make the difference between being in the black and the red.

It's enough to send you dotty.