Lottery winners

Last Wednesday I got talked into putting in a pound for a syndicate up my end of the office, when the National Lottery was on a roll-over. The fantastic news was that we got a line of 4 numbers and could have walked away with £7 each for our £1 stake. Sadly that's not what happened. What happened was that they all decided to put the ful 90-something-pounds on the Saturday roll-over.

You're imagining that we lost the lot...but no...we won £10 back as much as we put on to start with. So what are we doing with the money? Throwing it back on the lottery. Meanwhile two people shared the £13million rolled-over lottery on Saturday.

Butlin's

Jason has actually booked some real holiday for the end of this week. Before he left though, he wasn't looking forward to it. He's taking Jason Junior to Butlins holiday camp in Skegness. Lately it hasn't been the weather for the seaside.

He had done some research. He knew Dora the Explorer was going to be in residence there. He even knew a bit about the characters in the TV series.

We couldn't really imagine him doing much with the kid though. We only have visions of him eyeing-up the red-coats.

Dan's in-laws

I happened to bump into Dan in the city centre on Saturday dinnertime, which reminded me of this sad story.

He has just got married and bought a new house. His next door neighbour decided to move out, and they thought they might take a look at buying the house to rent out as an investment. not being loaded, they spoke to his wife's parents about lending the money to do this. Naturally her parents wanted to see what they would be investing in, so they arranged a viewing. Sadly for Dan, they loved the house, and thought they might like to live in it. So Dan has the very real nightmare of the possiblity of his in-laws moving next door. This might be alright if you had a good relationship with the in-laws, but he really doesn't get on with her dad. Stupidly the wife and mother-in-law thinks that they would get to like each other better if they spent more time together. Of course this isn't the case at all.

Dress down Alan

Occasionally we have a dress-down Friday, where we all pay £1 to a nominated charity and wear plain clothes for the day. Our last one was Friday 1st October just gone. We were all amused yesterday, 8th, when Alan walked in wearing tee-shirt & jeans. When asked, he admitted he had got his Fridays mixed up. Luckily he wasn't in any meetings and he could hide in the corner quietly for the day.

Just to clarify; the picture is not actually of Alan.

Drinks machine

When I got back from holiday a few weeks ago the biggest change was that there was a new coffee machine. I was amazed to get this e-mail today:

"It has been brought to our attention from the Klix Vending Engineer that
some of our machines are being written on in permanent marker pen.Please do not
deface the Vending machines in any way as they are on lease and do not belong to
the company.If any machines are vandalised i.e. written on, the
company will incur a cost to replace the affected areas/parts

Thank you for your co-operation"

Paternal

Jason returned from his two weeks Paternity leave, all smiles. He didn't say how much contact he had actually had with his offspring and his mother. Ned was hoping that he would let it slip that he hadn't been to see the kid at all, and he could start some kind of disciplinary process with him.
I've been asked about this a lot, and basically all he had to do was sign a form saying he was the father of a new baby (no proof needed what so ever) and he was given two weeks extra paid leave.

Hair

One of the oddest occurences happened this morning in the office. I got in a bit later than usual and saw that Lester had had a haircut. It was Jim's birthday as well, and he had ballons and streamers were all around his desk.

Then it came to light that Lester had got Jim to cut his hair in the toilets that morning with some clippers that they had borrowed.

There was a lot of talk about how he had cleaned up after himself, being no hoover or brushes anywhere to use. When I went to the toilet later that morning you could see the hair all around one of thye sinks. I still do not know why they did it, or why that particular morning, or why in the toilet.

Has anyone ever had their haircut cut in the toilets where you work?

Cappuccino

Lesley asked where Jason was at some stage. I had to try and keep a straight face while I explained to him that he was on unexpected Paternity leave. After laughing about it he asked if it was genuine. I explained that he had been showing photos round, but he wasn't too happy about the kids name, he wanted Jason Junior(or JJ).
"What colour is it?" he asked.
"Kind of a cappuccino colour," we told him.

Cherry picking

Ned had taken a weeks annual leave to go and visit his family down south. When he got back he had brought a big basket a cherries in with him to share.He explained that he had been picking cherries at his dad's house. "Stuck up the tree for three days, with a bucket round my neck," he expanded. "Like a flippin' monkey. While my dad and brother watched him from their garden chairs."Apparently, many years ago, it had been his idea to grow a fruit tree. So every year he goes to pick the cherries off it. Entrepreneur as he is, he managed to pick 8KG, which he sold to the local shop.