You probably wouldn’t realise it, but to be honest I am slightly twiddling my fingers this afternoon. I had kept the day reasonably clear as I had hoped to be out of the office on a marsh in Suffolk wild-fowling with Bob. This was his birthday present bought in an auction to raise money for the Thurlow Hunt, a fine and charitable gesture I made when somewhat under the influence and without the moderating presence of Mrs S.
As it happens I don’t much like the idea of shooting duck. I may have told you about before about a trip I made back in 1992 when a group of us went to the steppes of Inner Mongolia having collected our shotguns in Beijing which had been flown in circuitously from Paris because a UK/Sino arms embargo existed at the time. We then travelled by train from Harbin to Qiqihar, a journey made slightly less gruelling by a bottle of malt and a large bar of Toblerone that one of our group had had the foresight to bring along. I digress. The point I was trying to get to was that on the very first evening I shot my first ( and only ) duck which, held in the headlight of a rickety Chinese jeep, was revealed as the most beautiful bird I had ever seen. “Merdre, an elegant silver teal”, our French guide exclaimed. “I’ve only ever seen three of these in China” ‘e said. So now there were only two I thought to myself ruefully and, determining not to shoot anymore rare and lovely ducks, spent the rest of the trip playing cards with the locals, smoking dodgy Chinese cigarettes and getting drunk on some pretty rancid beer. But time moves on and Bob’s enthusiasm for the chase is quite infectious so I thought I would give wildfowling another go. We’ll see, but for now, the guy who was meant to be taking us on this latest jolly tells me the water levels are still too low and the ducks havn’t arrived, hence I’m here at the work station and Bob is at home supposedly catching up on his Iliad reading.
Anyway, it doesn’t do one any harm to have the occasional quieter day and it has been a particularly gruelling and busy week. I am quite exhausted. Nevertheless I still found the time on Tuesday to come to the rescue of an unfortunate analyst who had flown in the day before on the red eye from HK to Helsinki only to find, when she went to freshen up and put her work clothes on, that her five year old son had changed the combination of her suitcase.
The poor lady failed to find any locksmith in either Finland or Stockholm ( Sweden?? ) who could open it. Nor was the hotel, when she got to London, able to help. So it was she turned up for her first meeting with one of my clients on Tuesday morning still in casual clothes and the offending bag in tow. Clearly increasingly desperate, she was still equally determined not to resort to my suggestion, the obvious one, of forcing the damn thing open. It was a much treasured and expensive Rimowa. Her own investigations had identified an outlet in Stratford where, she told me, there was a chance a technician could sort it out. I didn’t hold up a lot of hope for that. More to the point I didn’t much fancy the trip. I occasionally end up in Stratford when I fall asleep on the way into work and miss my stop at Tottenham Hale. So I determined on a different strategy. I wheeled the bag back to the office and in between making calls to clients and fielding complicated requests I turned the numbers of the combination lock to 0 0 0 and started meticulously twisting the dial and clicking on a journey through, if it were necessary, to 9 9 9. A little while later….I don’t really want to say how long in case the boss is reading, suffice to say a blister was starting to form on my thumb….BINGO! The lock sprung open. What unbridled joy. I re-set the combination to 8 8 8 which seemed appropriate in the circumstances and emailed my analyst with the happy news. Got to say my children looked at me askance when I relayed this story to them. They have their suspicions about what I get up to in the office, but I tell you what, talk about bang for your buck. Later that day my super generous analyst rolled up with a bottle of Pontet Canet 1998 for my troubles! One of my favourite wines and how amazingly generous is that? You lot could take a lesson or two from her.
I think I’ll drink it tonight when we get back from watching the Bond film. Now that is a good idea.
No comments:
Post a Comment