cc -3090: Mango

Preparations for Clyde to Caledonia have stepped up to an overwhelming pace... and there are stories but most so tedious that recounting seems to be anaesthetizing my listeners. I think I'll give you another chapter instead...

... and a random photograph of the Tall Ship refelected in the new Riverside Transport Museum.

Mango

There I was, I.T. training away and rather enjoying all the tea breaks after the break-neck pace of media. I had reached a truce with the uniform, just trousers by now since the bum snatching skirt had been accidentally dispatched to Oxfam (oh dear). This donation was a humanitarian act on many levels, least of all the final recipient. I would surface, occasionally, from the torture of confinement to notice the discomfort of trainees and colleagues trying to maintain a level of courtesy when presented with my butch swagger in a pencil skirt and court shoes. Not only that, but the discomfort definitely contributed to my homicidal mad cow tendencies and one afternoon I threatened a mild group of librarians with nipple clamps if they didn’t get their portfolios finished…

Sadly dismissal of said skirt did not wholly alleviate the crabbiness. Tea breaks are all very well for a while but I started to get restless. I thoroughly enjoyed the training, despite the odd blunder, like a swear word or the time I was warning six rapt librarians of the vagaries of domain registration, citing, as usual, my Scottish Executive example.

“.co.uk is the extension to use” I said “and not the .com which belongs to an American escort agency”. With a flourish I tapped in the .co.uk URL, little knowing that Scot Exec had recently relinquished it in favour of the more appropriate scotland.gov. The American escort agency had happily snapped up the domain and there appeared, on an unsuspecting screen in Aberdeen College, in front of this group of mild mannered librarians, a four-foot high display of resplendent fannies. With a wholly appropriate expletive I leapt in front of the screen, a futile gesture that left many fannies in full view and the rest projected onto me… a most accurate depiction of how I was feeling just then.

But it was back at the office that things were really going awry; I am a homicidal mad cow you know. The crisp-chomping, radio-playing, game-clattering receptionist with RSI finally started wearing her hearing aid, but rather than turning the radio down this gave her the remarkable ability to sing or (heaven forbid) whistle at the same time, often a completely different tune which was delightful. Alas this still didn’t drown out the screeching cooler or crisp chomping. We were moving into winter; the heating went up and so did my temper.

I affected a two-week escape to Zimbabwe in November where, apparently, I took a great big invisible pill because no one wanted to hear my stories when I came back. Now I do go on a bit sweeties, but I did not give up my fabulously glitzy job as a TV buyer to sit and listen to interminable discussion of Survivor. I just don’t do soaps, and when, as a supposed budding media buyer in the fast world of witty and cruel negotiations, I unwittingly gave away a centre break in the Emmerdale bus crash many years ago I knew my days as a TV buyer were numbered. So if I couldn’t get into soaps for a fabulous salary and fast life, I was hardly about to effect genuine interest in second hand opinions of the tea room. Miserable me.

Where does the mango come in then? Well round about this time I was getting rather large. With no airtime at teatime I’d just chomp biscuits and crisps, then go home and reward my crabby self with acres of wicked food. I realised my gluttony had reached an all time high when I was eating a mango in the bath (the only place for it). A morsel of mango fell off the knife onto my stomach. The mango, finding itself on the precipitous slopes of the belly, began a speedy descent towards the water. Far be it from greedy me to lose out on a bit of food, quick as a flash I raised the knife, intent on retrieving the speeding mango, realising in just the nick of time that I was about to stab myself through the heart in the process. Horrors.

That was it. Enough gluttony and girnin’ I decided, I’m removing myself to an occupation that keeps me active, happy, too busy to eat and where I don’t have to wear a suit! I’ll squeeze into one every now and then for a bit of training; you see, between expletives, I’m rather good at it. Yes possums, when you get as old and ugly as me there’s no room for modesty. Just get out there and do what you’re good at, and that’s what I’m going to do, trips on my boat. Peccadillo. Going to make stories rather than sitting waiting to tell them.