There was an all-white cat who lived in one of the houses at the top of the road who had been coming to our house and putting the frightners on Hodge since he was really quite small. He had one green eye and one blue eye. We called him Griddlebone and he marched up and down the gardens of the road as though he owned them. He frequently wandered into our house in summer when the doors were open to Hodge’s furious and hissing disapproval. Only the other day, I arrived home to find Mr. Waffle indignantly announcing that he had just seen Griddlebone weeing against the kitchen window (from the outside, I hasten to add). Griddlebone was insouciant, he was nimble and devil may care and the other morning, I found his body on the busy main road nearby. A neighbour came out and took in the body before it got squashed. Apparently his owners called him Bowie; he’ll always be Griddlebone to us.
Archives for 22 April, 2018
New Job
I have secured a new job. I only started just after Easter so I’m still at the stage of working out what I’m supposed to be doing and trying to find my office. I think it’s going to suit me better than the last job though so that’s all to the good. Disillusion may, of course, set in. One of my former colleagues gave me a goodbye card with a fish jumping from a smaller bowl to a bigger one. When Michael saw it he said, “Mmm, still a fish bowl though.”
On the first day, I went out for a bowl of soup and a woman at a nearby table waved to me and said hello. I began to frantically scroll though the deeply inadequate Rolodex in my head: was she someone I had met at work that morning? “No,” I realised, “it’s M from bookclub.” Then I said (aloud), “I thought you were M from bookclub but you’re not, are you, wait, wait, I know who you are, I do, you’re M’s sister…” “Catherine,” she said kindly. Why would I think aloud like this? Suitably mortified, I scuttled away but with the inevitability of these things, the following bookclub was at M’s house which she shares with her sister who dropped in to say hello. “I’m so sorry about the other day,” I said. She was very kind but did comment when she turned to tell her lunching companions that I was Anne from her sister’s bookclub they all said, “Yeah, we know.”
So, lots of new people in the new job, none of them, it turns out, a sibling of one of my bookclub members but, so far, they all seem very pleasant. I must say, I do miss my friend in HR from the old job – a lovely, lovely woman who convinced me that there was a point to HR (comment from another friend working elsewhere on my telling her about the wonders of our HR division – “Really? In my experience HR are scarcely human and not at all resourceful”). But I can still meet HR friend for lunch and my new location is delightfully central.
Wish me luck.
