Rabbit stew

John was looking at walking and cycling maps again first thing this morning when I got in. Later, Lester came in and handed him a plastic container of food.
John: "What's that?"
Lester: "Rabbit Stew."
He went on to explain that it was a sample of what he was going to be cooking "on the road".
John: "So you're bringing pots and pans with you?"
Lester: "Yeah. I've got a stove, some pans, and a rabbit snare."

We've now got visions of them sitting at the roadside like Elmer Fudd or Wiley Coyote, waiting for Bugs Bunny or roadrunner to come along.

From the way John spoke about things up till now, he was finding pubs for breakfast, dinner and tea.

Learning from life

Joss came down from the 6th floor to talk to one of the girls, and told us about her harrowing driving lesson. The driving instructor had told her to drive down by the park, and they had just started doing a 3 point turn in the road, when out of nowhere came a strange acting local. He started banging on the car, then the instructor told her to lock the doors. After he had tried the doors, unsuccessfully, he started shouting at them to get out of the car. So the instructor told her to put her foot down and get out of there. Obviously being stressed, she jerked away hitting the kerb.

She thought that the guy looked like he was either drunk or on drugs. I suppose driving scholl cars aren't a bod target for robbery, after taxis, because they must drive around with a fair bit of money in.

Since the idea that Lester and John are opting for early Statutory Voluntary Redundancy, they have been planning what they are going to do with their time. John has suggested some rather challenging walks, some of them for days, even weeks. these would include camping out wherever they got to on each day. Lester had said that he wasn't used to camping. John had been trying to tell him that it was fine.
Lester came in yesterday and told John "There's something that my wife and you afree about."
John: "What's that?"
Lester: "That a should pitch a tent in the garden and sleep out there."

Redundancies

Did I mention we are facing some redundancies? It's very odd, with most of the office depressed and not sure if they are going to have a job and pay their mortgages; and the other half (the oldies that have worked there for years) rubbing their hands together, hardly able to wait to get their voluntary redundancy and early retirement. I've never seen some of them so happy. Sue and John down my end of the office are the only ones with any energy, thinking that these are the last few weeks of their working life.
Other than sorting out my CV and vaguely looking for alternative jobs I've had to start taking a look at what rubbish I've got on my work PC, to see what I want to keep. A lot of it is little blogs which I had written at work, and used to e-mail to myself to post on here. I did find quite a few I don't think I had posted and so, tried to e-mail a bunch over to myself. Unfortunately one of them got stopped by the profanity detector, and quarrantined. So I'm going to have to read through them all before sending them home. There were some good ones, which were worth saving and brought back some happy memories.

No holiday

Meanwhile over the other side of the office, Lester was getting to grips with the company portal holiday booking system.
John: “You’ve booked the 20th & 21st. That's two days.”
Lester: “No, I’m only booking off the 20th. I’m coming back on the 21st.”
John: “You need to book the start date as 20th & end date as 20th.”
Lester: “That makes no days doesn’t it?”
John: “No you twonk, it’s one day’s holiday.”
Lester: “What do I have to do if I want no days off then?”
John: “Don’t put them on the portal then!!”

Strange parents

We felt a little sorry for Jason when he was telling us what he was up to at the weekend. Jason had spent the weekend with his small boy and the mother of his son, I stress –not girlfriend or anything like that. He met her on some night out up north, and didn’t have what you could call a long term relationship with her. He complains about her all the time and thinks she is only out to get whatever she can. He took them both into town and bought the kid a £100 D & G tracksuit for his first birthday, and two pairs of trainers. He showed us some pictures on his phone, and then told us about his mate, who they met up with, who also has a small son. He winds Jason up, and was doing this by asking the mother of his child if she had considered moving down to live with, or near Jason, to be like a real family. Kerry asked what Jason’s mom had thought about the kid. Apparently she has not seen him. Jason said that she was particularly maternal. She went on to ask about his dad.
“Oh, he’s likely to spoil him rotten, like me. Although he’s not spending any money on him until he’s had a DNA test.”

Get out of jail

Like many workplaces at the moment we have bbe threatened with redundancies for some time, since being taken over around April time. Sadly today, they anounced that they wanted to loose around 700 staff, which left everyone in a mood.
Jason managed to cheer us up though, as usual. He'd been looking around for jobs for some time anyway, and a couple of his mates work as prison guards. He had tried joining the police, but they weren't taking people on. His mates had told him that there was a new prison being built not far away, and he would almost certainly be able to get in, as a guard.
I asked if it wouldn't be a very depressing environment to work in. Jason reckoned that it was like a "youth club, but for older people..." according to one of his mates who he went to see inside, six months back. There was a big rant from Elaine about sentencing, and people given 5 year sentences being told they only actually serve 2 and a half, before going on to suggest that Jason would be open to bribery, and would probably be smuggling stuff in for the inmates. That, coupled with some of his dodgy-dealing, buying and selling schemes, he would be more likely to end up on the inside rather than outside.

Here's Bob

Ned and Lee weren't about when Bob was telling us about bumping into Elaine on a tube in London. We asked Elaine as soon as she got into the office and she was all "Oh my god, Bob tapped me on the shoulder on the tube!!".
She had to give a repeat performance when Ned and Jason finally got into the office. They hadn't heard earlier on in the week, when Bob had told us his version.

Surprise, it's Bob

Towards the end of last week a few of the staff have taken holiday, while the kids were off school. Elaine had told us that she might be going to London, but we didn't realise that Bob was taking his family to London to watch the Switzerland vs England match, and do some other stuff over a long weekend.

So we were quite amused when Bob said "Guess who I saw on the tube on Saturday."

He had seen Elaine with her husband and kid. Which is quite a feat, considering how many tube trains there are, and that they were going to completely different destinations. Even ending up in the same carriage.

He told us that he only realised it was them as he stood up to get off the tube, and tapped Elaine on the shoulder and said "Hello and goodbye".

We are now dying to hear how shocked she was to end up meeting Bob in London.