Tuesday was my birthday, and it was quite a milestone:
I have reached the age that Reggie was in the original David Nobbs novel : The Death of Reginald Perrin.
Appropriately enough I was an eleven minutes late that day: delays on the Jubilee line following earlier signal failure near Stanmore
I don't normally let on at work that it's my birthday but this year, perhaps in honour of Reggie, I impulsively ventured out to the claustrophobic, low-ceiling shopping centre in the wharf, and spent £37.50 on a small tray of delicate cakes for my co-workers.
The cakes turned out to be still frozen: the baker had done me.
One of Reggie's biggest problems (which actually was brought out rather well in the much maligned recent BBC adaptation of the book) was his growing sense of the pointlessness of the activities carried out at work.
I am lucky that my job is much more interesting than either Sunshine Desserts, or Groomtech. For instance: just on Tuesday we had a conference call with the Cambodia office, who want to temporarily use a non-standard solution for their storage needs. They have cleared this with IT, chiefly because enhancing the standard solution to meet their requirements is non-budgeted and not in the book of work, but they are not sure that IT have the authority to give them the authority to disregard policy and at the same time Compliance are worried that the solution adopted, while in use in many banks, might not be in the spirit of an obscure, ambiguous and implied commitment that we made to the Japanese regulators back in 2003, when the Cambodian subsidiary was partly owned by our Japanese firm . The relevant subject matter experts have left the bank and, Alibert, what do you think we should do?
"I'm sorry... I was looking at the dust in the sunlight which is really ... quite beautiful... Hey, do you think those round pistachio ones have thawed yet?"
3 comments:
Happy Birthday to you - enjoy your next year with glee and fun.
Now please tell us about that darn wall....
Happy Birthday and many happy returns!
For you another poem by Stanley Kunitz who wrote poetry and kept gardening until his 100th birthday!
This is from ‘Intellectual Things’ written in 1930 (Can you see his foresight? this poem includes many of GI’s colourful (not colourless) buzzwords: brain, vat, mind, space…;-))
”Change
Dissolving in the chemic vat
Of time, man (gristle and fat),
Corrupting on a rock in space
That crumbles, lifts his impermanent face
To watch the stars, his brain locked tight
Against the tall revolving night.
Yet is he neither here nor there
Because tomorrow comes again
Foreshadowed, and the ragged wing
Of yesterday's remembering
Cuts sharply the immediate moon;
Nor is he always; late and soon
Becoming, never being, till
Becoming is a being still.
Here, Now, and Always, man would be
Inviolate eternally:
This is his spirit's trinity.”
PS BTW Rumour has it, two new blogs are about to launch:
(1) ‘Colourless Yellow Ideas’, and (2) its sister ‘Colourless Red Ideas.’ They are awaiting your ‘Green’ blessing. I’d say send them the unthawed round pistachio ones ;-)(Kidding)
Happy Birthday Alibert! Live well and prosper
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