Thursday 29 September 2011

Photos

Surprisingly;Bob came in on Monday with his compact digital camera and asked if we could all have our group team photograph taken, as that this was one of the last times that everybody would be together. He asked me if I minded organising the others. I told Ned; who thought it would be a good idea after the initial surprise. Unfortunately Ned went missing after dinner. So I spoke to the others, who Iwas shocked to find were all up for it, and organised it for Tuesday.
Just before dinner we all decided that we should have it taken outside in the sunshine, and grabbed Sam from one of the other departments to take it. he took two on Bob's cameraand two on Kerry's i-phone. Sadly Jason was playing up, sticking his fingers up for the first one and making more lewd gestures for another couple. Out of the four, only one of them was useable. I'll have to post the photo once I've annonomised all the faces.

Sunday 4 September 2011

Wasp

There are a lot more wasps about this year. They aren’t to be taken too lightly. Earlier on in the year Lee was stung by one at this desk, and his hand swelled up quite a lot. I can’t remember if I blogged about that, but I had to take him to the Asda to get the pharmacists advice; and ended up buying him some anti-histamines.

On Friday though there was one in the office. The air conditioning isn’t working and as the day wears on the office gets really hot, so we have to have fans on and open up the windows as wide as possible to get some breeze flowing through. I hadn’t noticed the wasp; engrossed in my work of course; until Vits and Jason shot up out of there seats and headed towards me.

My manager was in, and asked what the problem was. Jason was keeping a safe distance from the wasp, near the manager’s desk.
He said “I’ve never seen you move so fast.”
Jason replied “Only when I run from police and dogs.”
“And wasps!” said my manager.

The wasp flew up into the strip lighting unit above Jason’s desk and stayed there for a while. When it flew back down Lee opened up the windows as wide as possible and wafted the thing out, before slamming the windows shut behind it. Later on there were a couple of wasps on the window looking to come in.

Lecture

Most of my postings are work related, but on Friday I took my car in for its MOT and I heard this when I went to collect it. The mechanic was sorting out my bill and telling me that I needed to change my rear windscreen wiper. They had been sent three different ones by their suppliers during the day; ranging from a tiny 5” wiper to a 20” one, so they decided I needed to get a genuine Toyota one rather then a look-e-like one. While this was going on another customer came in who I recognised as being there at 8.15 in the morning dropping a vehicle off. Obviously a regular customer they greeted each other.

Mechanic 1: “How’s things?”
Customer: “It’s been a tough day.”
Mechanic 2: “Tough day?! You wouldn’t know a tough day if it turned round and bit you.”

They bantered for a little while then got on to talking about last week, when the police were swarming around trying to catch speeders, which they seem to do once a year. Then the customer got on to telling us about one of his drivers being pulled over by the police one of the nights.
Customer: “They asked him where he was going. He told them he was going to a lecture about binge drinking. “Binge drinking…” said the policeman “…who organises a lecture at 12.30 at night?”
“the wife” said the driver.

After laughing at that the mechanic serving me told us that he had been on holiday in Spain with the wife and another couple two weeks ago. They had been drinking in the hotel bar after their evening meal, and his wife had gone up to bed on her own at 11.00, leaving the others drinking. This bloke had stayed for another couple of glasses of wine (for some reason he couldn’t drink beer) then gone up to the room. When he got into the room his wife asked what time it was. He told her around 12.30. She said “You’re grounded!”
“Grounded?...”he said “…you can’t ground me!... I’m 50.”
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