remote cards

He is a skinny guy. Big glasses. A little twitchy. Some of the girls find him a little creepy. He strikes me as being a little edgy, nervous. Today is his 50th birthday. Though he isn’t at work – he is at the dentist, so figured he might as well take rest of day off – given we stop early on Fridays. So they celebrated yesterday. Coming into swipe at the back door, there was a picture of him, sitting on a kid’s rocking horse – the kind you put money in, and it rocks and plays music for five minutes. Up the stair well and into the office, there are more photographs – from holidays and parties, the ghosts of excesses past come back to haunt him for the occasion. Pictures in dresses, in wigs, accompanied by nuns and fairies and prisoners. People nudge him and wink, yeah, it was a fancy dress party. Yeah, my wife gave them to a colleague. He laughs it all off admirably, adapting to his role as centre of attention. Lunch time he produces a stack of cakes from the bakers round the corner, lines the dozen boxes up on top of a line of cabinets, goes round and tells everyone they are there. For the next half hour everyone is laughing about sticky fingers, and about the cream they’ve got all over their faces. Morning after, the only sign is the 4 spots of blue tack on the pillars the length of the floor, and that picture of him on the horse, still on the back door at 7.30am this morning.

Labels: birthday, cake, glasgow, party, Poster, work

The student is a summer placement. One of those unnaturally tall youth who remind you that that you are getting old and that all the kids are so tall these days. Bit of a floppy hair cut, without being particularly long. The stooped shoulders you often get with someone so tall and skinny. He plays the game, shirt and tie like the rest of us weary professionals. But he has a perpetual smile on his face, which is bemusing. Fridays are dress casual today, so today he looks more like a student than ever, green branded t-shirt, a big baggy backpack on his shoulders and a thick grey fleecy hoodie. occasionally you'll hear snatches of him regaling bemused old guys with youngster's stories - like the time he went paint balling for his 18th birthday, and they were firing at him non-stop as he ran for it, and somehow only hit his gun, or that fancy dress party, and there were two guys in the back dressed as Men In Black, really. He has that habit of going into too much detail, geeky detail, a sincere form of TMI as he bobs his head and grins. The other day someone asked him to do something, and he laughed, that’s one of those tricks isn't it, that you play on the new guy, next you'll be sending me for tartan paint! Like I say, its Friday, Friday is bacon roll day, in an hour or so, he'll go round his department with a post-it pad taking people's orders. Maybe glance at us, squatters on their floor, even if we were here first.

Labels: bacon, glasgow, men in black, paint ball, placement, student, work

Ah, gala dinners.
The man on my left is a genetic scientist who, of course, knows my boss. The many years of drinking and plotting to write a book together! Which topic? "Oh, we've long since forgotten." The man on my right is a gay hypnotherapist, who also owns a shop for opera tickets and deals in antiques: flamboyant, wealthy, utterly without ambition.
The man on my left and the man on my right know each other, of course, from an infamous dinner party at a mutual friend. The drunken shenanigans long past!
The wife of the genetic scientist is piqued by all this knowing one another. "This city is really a village", philosophises the wife of the genetic scientist. "We do not have this in Germany."

Labels: dinner, people, work