Thumbs up

Cam came in to work on Tuesday with his right hand in a plaster cast. He had pulled a tendon 4 weeks ago, but not done anything about it. In fact he had been carrying on training with weights at the gym, until he decided it wasn’t going to go away. Apparently the hospital had x-rayed it to see if there was anything broken, then the doctor had told one of the nurses to take him to have a plaster put on it. As he was walking down the corridor he asked the nurse “Where are you going to put a plaster?”
She explained that it wasn’t going to be a “band aid” plaster.
The funniest part of it was that they had plastered it with his thumb sticking up, so he looks like he’s giving the thumbs up to everyone. Of course he now has the trouble that, with his thumb in such a position, he can’t get the sleeve of any of his shirts over it. He only has one sweatshirt which has enough give in it to get the sleeve over his thumb. So because he’s got to keep the cast on for two weeks, he’s got to find some new shirts with baggy arms, or cut some of the shirts he already has.

Clive's rule

Clive was sitting at his desk at dinnertime with his scale ruler near his mouth.

"Are you still hungry?" I asked.

He grinned back, "No."
What am most bothered about is if he's trying to measure anything off his computer screen rather than using a scaled drawing.

Euro millions jackpot £160M

Everyone has gone Euro lottery crazy, even though there are so many people buying tickets that you are less likely to win than ever before, or have to share your prize. Each little clique has set up their own syndicate, but where people move between cliques there is an overlap, so you don't want to turn down any offers of being in their syndicate, in case they win and you're left in the office on Monday with everyone else being millionaires. So it's all proving very costly, having to cough up £2 a pop.

Pigeon

Earlier on in the week the office was boiling hot. With the air conditioning being turned off, waiting for the 4th floor to be renovated, we had all the fans on and all the windows open as wide as we could. Then, towards dinnertime I saw Lee lunge at the window to shut it. A pigeon had landed on the ledge, and apparently another time a pigeon actually flew in through the window. It had to be chased round the office by the security man with a mail sack. LOucky escape this time round.

Harry Potter - kids film

So it appears that the last Harry Potter film is released tomorrow. Lee brought up the subject, telling us that the local cinema has nothing but Harry Potter across all 14 screens tomorrow. Kerry and myself admit that we have never seen a whole Harry Potter film all the way through. Lee is a bit of a fan, but says that the first one came out around the same time as the first Lord of the Rings film, which he preferred. He went on to say that the next one of those is out sometime soon:

Me: "The fourth film in the Lord of the Rings trillogy?...Did someone write a fourth one just for the cinema?"

Lee: "No they're making The Hobbit...in two/ two hour films. It's all about him finding the ring to start with. I don't know how they're stretching it into two films."

Me: "Oh,...The Hobbit,...we had to read that at school."

Kerry: "Me too. The book was about this thick." (gesturing with her hands at a fairly big book thickness)

Me: "It takes all the fun out of it if you have to read it for school."

Vits: "Is it that old then, the Hobbit?!!"

Kerry: "Thanks. It's not that long ago"

Me: "Yes, it is that old...there weren't any printed copies...they were hand written by monks."

Lee: "On parchment."

Office double act

I got in this morning and John and Lester were at it.
Lester; “We do thinks together, we’re a family.”
John: “If I was to say to you “let’s go sailing for a week…”
Lester: “Well I wouldn’t fancy going sailing anyway.”
John: “Well how about if I said I’d managed to get tickets for the rugby 6 nations.”
Lester: “She wouldn’t let me,…not stop over ..she knows what I’m like,…or what I used to be like.”
Vits was ear-wigging, the only other person in at that time down our end of the office;
Vits: “I love their conversations.”
Me: “What are they on about today…what’s started it all.”
Vits:(Whispering) “Well… you no Adam is leaving today. He’s going to work in Brighton for 4 days a week.”
Me: “I’d heard that.”
Vits: “Well the money he earns should pay for bed & breakfast accommodation…but he’s leaving his girlfriend here. Then Lester says that he couldn’t do that, because he’s got a family. Then John asks what they got up to last night. Lester said she was ironing in the kitchen while he was watching television , drinking his beer. Then John pointed out that they don’t actually do anything together."

Adam came in on his last day. John asked "Have you sorted out any digs down there yet?”
Adam explained that he hadn’t, but that it wouldn’t be a problem.

When the conversation kicked off again Lester said that he wife was going down to London today:
Lester: “She’s going with the school.” (I had forgot his wife is a teacher).
John: “What are they going to see?”
Lester: “Don’t know…the sights…didn’t ask her.”
Then as a comedy finish:“Stopping over for the night.”

Beware of the dog

Some of the field staff have difficulties with customers out on site, so they often get the admin team to add comments on the database, against certain addresses. I assumed that this was informing staff that there is a dog which might cause them harm at the address, rather than a comment about the owner.

Jason's holiday

Jason had gone on holiday to Ibiza, taking his mom and brother. Apparently his plan was to leave his mom on the quiet side of the island, while he went over the other side to party. We had been discussing the fact that he wanted to take severance, although I had heard that he was moving into a new apartment.
Lee: “He is…but it’s his auntie’s apartment…he’s paying her rent. He can’t stand living with his mom anymore.”
Me: “I thought he was actually buying somewhere.”
Lee: “No, renting off his auntie.”
Me: “So he’s taken his mom on holiday with him? But can’t stand staying with her?”
Lee: “ I’m not sure if he’s told his mom he’s moving out yet. I think this is a sweetener, before he tells her he’s moving out.”
Kerry: "How's that going to work? If he picks up some woman and takes her back to the hotel and his mom's there?"
Lee: "Well, it depends how drunk he gets them."
Kerry: "Yeah, the sort of girls he attracts."

He had taken a couple of days holiday at the last minute before he went on holiday, and no-one was taking any bets about him phoning in yesterday to book another day off. Sure enough he phoned in with a story about not getting back home till 3am from the airport and can he have another day off. I told him we were expecting him to phone in anyway and asked how is holiday went. He laughed at us talking about him, then went on to tell me how hot it had been and that he had got sunburnt. I was shocked because he's mixed race. He went on to tell me that he was covered in calamine lotion, and that he was peeling, leaving him a mixture of coloured patches. He also had white eyes, because he had been wearing sunglasses all week. He reckoned we would all be laughing at him when we saw him.
Then today we were expecting him to phone in again because it was daft to come in for one day. So sure enough, we weren't suprised when he did. He told me he wasn't sleeping too well with the sunburn and finding it difficult to get comfortable. We are all looking forward to taking the pee out of him when he turns up on Monday.

Cherry time

I saw this story in the news about bumper crops of cherries, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinkadvice/8609262/Cherries-Will-we-have-a-record-crop.html and thought of Ned, who has booked next week of to go and visit his parents and harvest the cherry crop from their cherry tree. Last year he spent days up the tree with a bucket around his neck, then selling them to the local grocer.