A colleague of mine likes to cycle. This is a much more expensive hobby than the uninitiated might expect. 600 quid for a set of bicycle wheels. And that’s a bargain. He would come in from lunch with a bicycle saddle under his arm having done a deal with someone on the internet. Anyhow, he made his bike. He brought it into the office one day. Literally, as he felt it wasn’t safe in the garage. I lifted up his super-light, titanium, immensely expensive, fairy-dust sprinkled bike. “It’s not that light,” said I. “Ah,” he said, “you need to take off the water bottle.”
Work
Busy but, yet, Disappointing
Mr. Waffle was out yesterday evening and I decided I would achieve much in his absence and he would be suitably impressed on his return.
I made brioche. It took forever. I was up until all hours. It tasted like bread and looked like the hunchback of Notre Dame (assuming that he was singed on one side). I didn’t spend seven hours proving for this:
The Princess and I bought white t-shirts. And then I spent hours yesterday evening trying to transfer Monster High images on to them using transfer sheets purchased while we still lived in Belgium with the deeply unsatisfying results you see below (do you think transfers go off?):
On the plus side, we did make some progress both in party bag packing (did I mention that the Princess’s ninth birthday party is on Saturday?):
and in roller blading:
Then, as I sat down after a very long evening of domestic duties to print out a document from work, I realised that the printer was out of ink after the strain of printing Monster High transfers. Alas.
Office Christmas Party
We went to a Karaoke booth after dinner. A new experience for me. I ended up singing a duet with a colleague. Until you have sung “I’ve got you babe” with a bald colleague, you will never fully appreciate the power of this line: So let them say your hair’s too long /’Cause I don’t care, with you I can’t go wrong.
Quite.
Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept
Tom Fishburne had a great cartoon on mission statements which my loving husband pointed out to me.
This led him to a link with (sadly) real mission statements.
He points out that this one (for Albertsons, a supermarket) would fit any organisation in the world:
Mission Statement
Guided by relentless focus on our five imperatives, we will constantly strive to implement the critical initiatives required to achieve our vision. In doing this, we will deliver operational excellence in every corner of the Company and meet or exceed our commitments to the many constituencies we serve. All of our long-term strategies and short-term actions will be molded by a set of core values that are shared by each and every associate.
Dragging the Devil by the Tail or A Sad Litany of Failure
OK, this happened months ago but the pain is still fresh. I appreciate the post is stale.
12.00 – Go to meeting.
17.00 – Meeting ends. Return to office to find all kinds of urgent messages. Urgent, urgent, urgent matter must be attended to. Ring husband to say I will be late home. Find text message from him that he is in a meeting and can I be home to relieve the babysitter. Tackle urgent matter at great speed.
18.00 – Urgent matter dispatched in record time while eating lunch. Go multi-tasking [faintly Bridget Jonesish] me.
18.05 – Hop on Dublin bike.
18.20 – 18.45 Cycle around looking for a rack to park my bike. Fail to find one.
18.50 – Arrive home. Stash bicycle in the back garden. Husband is there before me, face like thunder.
19.00 – Announce I will cancel dinner out. Am told not to. Slink out in disgrace.
23.00 – Decide not to drive around city looking for place to stash Dublin bike.
9.00 – Regret previous evening’s decision on discovering that charges for keeping the bike overnight are astronomical. Alas.
More Matters Linguistic
Vignette 1
Me: Michael, how will you be able to speak to people when we go to France on holidays, if you don’t speak French to M (childminder).
Michael (with dignity): I am saving my French so that I don’t use it up before we go to France on holidays.
Vignette 2
A colleague of mine whom I know quite well and who speaks very good Irish encourages my faltering attempts to speak in our first national language by exchanging the odd bit of dialogue with me.
The other day we both had to attend a long meeting with a big group [like all such meetings, it was one to look forward to], for which he arrived quite late. I suspected that he had forgotten our vital meeting as I had seen him out the window emerging from the canteen with a cup of coffee. Not the act of a man in a rush.
After the meeting, I went up to him and said as much. Attempting the language of our forefathers, I said, “An rinne tú dearmad ar an gcrinniú?” “An ndearna,” he said, neatly pulling the rug from under my feet. “I knew that,” I wailed. This is why our first national language is so delightful:
An ndearna t̼? РDid you?
Nà dhearna mé – I didn’t.
Rinne m̩ РI did.
That’s only the past tense, lads.
