There are two builders on my roof. They’re up there now, banging away. We discovered an unexpected water
feature in our newly decorated bathroom a couple of weeks ago, on account of the part of the roof above
it, the valley, having rotted and mouldered and started to leak every time it rained. Two hundred and
eighty quid to you, chief.
They’ve spent an inordinate amount of time sitting around swilling
tea. They only got here at 9.30 and by 11.30 Steve had already made them two drinks. He just can’t seem
to grasp the master/servant relationship. Every time we pay someone good money to do something he hangs
around, getting in their way, fiddling with their tools and wanting to know if he can help in any way.
But he went out at lunch time and now I am in sole charge of them. The iron fist in the velvet glove.
They get one cup of tea at 3pm, and, if they behave themselves, a choice of rich tea or digestive biscuits
(I’m afraid that the Jaffa Cakes have been reserved for the benefit of bona fide visitors only). I’m
sorry, I’m not about to run an all-you-can-eat buffet on top of what I’m already paying them.
It’s
been an expensive week. The cat started honking up everywhere on Monday, kept coughing and lost her voice.
I figured she’d got something stuck in her throat. By Tuesday she was no better so I reluctantly took
her to see the vet. He prodded and poked and x rayed and groped her before delivering the news flash
that she’d probably got something stuck in her throat, but he couldn’t know what without sticking an
endoscope down her.
Turned out it was a single blade of grass caught behind her larynx. Not even
a big one. About 2 cm long. Even the vet looked a bit disgusted with her. “I pushed the endoscope right
down to see if anything else could be causing it but that was all there was...”, he trailed off as if
he couldn’t quite believe the trouble he’d been put to over such a trivial matter. For all the histrionics
- the retching and wheezing and spluttering- she could at least have the decency to have a chicken
leg or a small child lodged down there, something impressive, a tale we could have dined out on for
months to come. Truly, I have the minciest cat in all the land. One hundred and fifteen quid to remove
a single blade of grass. Anyway, if it happens again he can add the surgical removal of my boot from
her backside to his bill.
I started my maternity leave this week. Had a big, and it has to be
said, rather emotional send off last Friday. I’d been geared up for a low key leaving, for sloping out
of the back door quietly at four p.m., possibly having taken advantage of my imminent bout of protracted
leave to tell several key personnel to go boil their heads, possibly not. I’d said I didn’t want a fuss,
didn’t want a leaving collection or presentation, but as with most of my suggestions at work this was
roundly ignored and I underwent the ritual humiliation that accompanies any birth, marriage, birthday,
or leaving at our place - the dreaded all staff e-mail summoning people to come and witness my boss do
a character assassination dressed up as a witty and affectionate reflection on my career with the organisation,
outside his office at 10am.
Simon being Simon, he made a bizarre little speech, focusing chiefly
on the comedic antics of Steve (yawn - no surprise there) with whom he’d recently returned from Euro
2000, but managing to touch briefly on my shortcomings as a manager, stating that I took too much work
on myself so as not to overload my staff. This was dressed up as some sort of tribute to my caring nature,
however given that he’d identified the very same point as a major personality flaw in my annual appraisal
only the previous week I took the opportunity to be highly personally offended and made sure that in
my thank you speech I pointedly thanked my staff for their hard work and support in taking some of the
heat off me in during these last, difficult weeks. There were knowing nudges and raised eyebrows amongst
the rank and file, I don’t mind telling you. Sucks to you Simon, with big, hairy nobs on.
I’d
just been intending to go out for a leaving lunch with a handful of people, but it would have appeared
churlish not to extend the invitation to everyone present, so I grudgingly issued an open invitation
to the pub, hoping that people would have the decency to interpret it in the spirit in which it was meant
(i.e. a nicety which I by no means expected people to take seriously for God’s sake). Forty of the
buggers turned up in the end. The waiting-on staff tutted and huffed around us because we’d not booked
in advance (well I thought I’d be pushing it to get a party of five! That’s another reason I was so glowing
about my staff in my speech, by the way, ensuring at least their loyalty for this most public gauging
of ones popularity - when it comes to the crunch just how many people are prepared to turn out for you
in response to an open invitation? Make no mistake, these things are noted. So, considered on that level,
although I wanted a quiet send off, forty people is actually quite reassuring, particularly as there
was a rival do elsewhere in town for someone’s fortieth birthday, and when you factor in that there are
only about a hundred people in our office on any given day, and, it being a Friday, that number was considerably
lower because of people taking long weekends. A brief, informal head count of those in and working in
the various departments (undertaken purely to ensure that I had purchased sufficient cake to dish out
as a thank you for my leaving presents, you understand) revealed that my leaving do attracted approximately
77.89% of the available staff, which, I think you will agree, is very respectable and obviously means
I am a great deal more popular than I had hitherto realised, a point I must make sure to exploit in some
way on my return) and I ended up sitting with people I only vaguely knew. But no matter, it was all very
jolly. For about ten minutes. Then I felt this looming presence at my left shoulder and noticed people
sat across the table from me had whitened and were sporting fixed grins and glassy eyes and my heart
sank as I realised The Boss was stood behind me heartily offering to buy everyone a drink.
The
Boss has seen me day in, day out for the last eight months. I have attended meetings with her, we have
discussed legal cases, staff matters and other issues of great import. Not once has she ever, EVER had
the common decency to make any sort of reference to my delicate condition. She is practically the only
person in the whole organisation who hasn’t. I know, because I’ve kept a mental tally of people who have
had the opportunity but not the good manners to address the subject with me, and having scored various
people off as they came to their senses, eventually she was the only one left. Even her deputy, a slippery
public school type, obviously deeply uncomfortable with manifestations of female sexuality, felt moved
to comment on it recently. Granted, it was in the context of a round table discussion on the criteria
for awarding annual appraisal box marks and true, what he actually said, looking at me over his half
moon glasses with what obviously passed for a twinkle in his eye in his book, was “You can’t, for example,
hem hem, expect to be awarded a Box 1 merely for being pregnant, my dear, hem hem”. Chortle chortle.
He was very pleased with himself. I smiled tightly back and mentally stuck pins in his piggy little
eyes.
So I thought it a bit rich that she should hijack my leaving do simply to indulge her
You Must Love Me complex. Particularly as I’d heard that she’d recently commented that “...the trouble
with working mothers is that they want to have their cake and eat it”, when her legal adviser had pointed
out that her current policy on maternity leave and part time working appeared to breach EU employment
law.
Anyway, as if her mere presence putting a dampner on things wasn’t bad enough, she plonked
herself down next to me (I’m still trying to figure out quite how she did it as whilst she was at the
bar I hissed at everyone in my vicinity not to move in case she came back and sat in their place, and
nobody did) and bent my ear for the next hour and half solid. Essentially, the gist of her monologue
was that pain is all in the mind, she worked until three and a half minutes before the birth of her children,
refused all pain relief except a stick to clench between her teeth and was striding back down Whitehall
to brief the Minister on a ticklish point of foreign policy within the hour. After a while I stopped
even pretending to be interested but she still yapped on. We have the misfortune of having attended the
same university and she wheels this out as some semblance of common ground between us whenever she’s
feeling generous or desperate. Did I, perchance, remember her good friend ‘Inky’ Jones, with whom she
roomed and who is now deputy governor general of the Bank of England? No? Well how about good old Julian
Whittingsly-Smythe, the curator of The Tate gallery? No of course I fucking well didn’t, they were all
there a good twenty five years before me, as were you, and anyway would have been far too posh to have
consorted with the likes of me. Stop showing off, woman! The temptation to play her at her own game
was almost irresistible. I wonder, ma’am, did your path ever cross that of my great friend, Will Northmore,
Drama 1987 - 1990? I believe he currently mans the cheese counter at Fallowfield Sainsbury’s, and can
occasionally be seen wandering the streets of our great city dressed as an oversized snowman, handing
out leaflets for cut price double glazing.
I spent longer than expected in the pub, she intent
on staying the distance until 2pm, well after everyone else had muttered hastily concocted excuses and
left. Although I’ve informally mounted a little hate campaign towards her of late (chiefly, it must be
said, revolving around pointedly declining to laugh at her feeble attempts at humour in meetings or social
gatherings. Sadly I do not wield the sort of power or influence capable of making any real waves for
her) even I could hardly get up and leave her on her own with a full glass, so I had to keep her company
to the bitter end and then stay in the office until after 6pm to make up my hours and to give my, ahem,
‘full and frank attention’ to a number of incriminating files and papers (or ‘The Disappeared’ as I expect
they are probably being referred to by now).
And then that was it. Pack up my little car, two
fingers to the doorman and leave.
BLOODY HELL, I DON’T HAVE TO GO BACK TO WORK UNTIL NEXT YEAR!!!!!!
Next Spring, if our finances pan out all right. Do think of that readers, when your alarm goes off
bright and early tomorrow morning. As you wipe the crust from your eyes and make your bleary, sleep fuddled
way to the bathroom, spare a thought for little Mavis, tucked up warmly in her little truckle bed. Perhaps,
wakened with a cup of tea and a kiss by her devoted husband, she’ll enjoy a little breakfast tv in bed
before rising. Or perhaps she’ll sleep on ‘til nine or ten as a prelude to a day of light shopping and
lunch with the ladies of her ante natal class. Do think of that readers, won’t you? I’ll certainly
be thinking of each and every one of you poor suckers. And probably giggling like a madwoman.
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Chloda Minge in "Minciest cat in all land" shame
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