Mid March 2013 and the office was all geared up for a visit from the President of the United States. Obviously not the President of the United States, just the president of our parent company but, from the fuss and tidying, he might as well have been. It was also the day of Gigi and Gail’s redundancy meetings so the mood was fairly sombre and nervous.
14 March 2013
In an effort to shift a few of the pounds I put on in those last frantic weeks at Mad House and prepare my bingo wings for summer I’ve broken out the hand weights in the mornings for the last few days. This morning my right shoulder felt a little stiff and achy though so I gave them a miss. I think I will need to ease into it gently and try to make it an every other day thing. The achyness was almost certainly down to my old shoulder injury, gained in a car crash eighteen months ago.
Whenever you say you’ve had whiplash there is a ‘nudge, nudge’ kind of reaction because people think it’s a joke or a way to get compensation from insurance companies. I’m sure that happens but it’s tarred all whiplash victims with the same brush and that really isn’t justified. In my case there were months of terrible pain, sleepless nights, physiotherapy and, almost a year and a half later, it still plays up from time to time. This is not an excuse for giving up on the weights though, tomorrow I will have another go.
The walk to work plan this morning was to meet Gigi at the top of the Little Hill and walk over the New Bridge. Today was her redundancy meeting, the one where she and Gail would find out if their proposals had been accepted or if they would lose their jobs. When I got outside it was another bright, frosty morning with ice glistening on the cars, roofs and gardens. As I started to walk up the hill the sun looked massive hanging just above the trees at the top of the first bend. I almost stopped to get my sunglasses out of my bag but I knew Gigi was waiting for me at the top so I put up with the glare and squinted instead.
Round the bend, with the worst of the hill in front of me I tried to keep up a good powerwalking pace. Gigi was standing waiting for me at the top and I wanted her to think I could easily take hills like this in my stride. Being red in the face and out of breath probably gave the game away though. That hill never gets any easier. Standing outside Gigi’s house is like looking down from the top of the world.
Obviously Gigi had a lot on her mind with the meeting coming up. As we walked I tried to waffle on telling funny stories to try and keep her mind off it all. I can waffle for England. Not sure if it worked or not but the walk seemd to go really quickly and she was smiling when we got to the office. It’s strange how distances seem so much shorter with company on a walk. Maybe I need to get a walking partner for all the training, then again, I do enjoy all the solitude and being able to let my mind wander along with my feet.
Arabella is still marooned in Portland, or as we call it, Fraggle Rock, overseeing launch plans. She called in a panic to say some vital boxes of champagne had been delivered to the wrong port and she didn’t have time to go and fetch them. The Launch is tomorrow! Alice and I manged to get the problem sorted fairly quickly. Truthfully Alice did all the work, I just watched and read out addresses really, although I did call the ports and Arabella to confirm everything.
Then it was on to sorting out the cruise with no music. The musicians who’d been so eager had still not sent in passport details. This took up most of the morning but eventually I had four scans of passports so that was one less headache. All the while the president was wandering around the office poking his nose into things and making everyone nervous. We also had the pleasure of a visit from one of the big wigs from head office, we call him Laughing Boy because he never smiles. He was there for Gigi and Gail’s meetings and they all went off behind closed doors to discuss things.
Around about lunch time Gigi came out of the meeting in tears. Things were obviously not going well. I grabbed my coat and bag and went outside to see if I could find her with the idea of whisking her off for a coffee and some time to gather her thoughts. When I got outside thought I couldn’t find her so I walked up to the High Street and sat in Pret with a latte anyway. I sat in a corner with my coffee worrying about Gigi. It didn’t look good and I was feeling a little derailed by it all as, last week, it seemed as if they liked her proposals and there had been a feeling that she and Gail might stay. All this had been going on with the President of the USA wandering about the building too. I wondered what he made of it. Did he even care? We are small fish in a big pond after all and he is from across the pond, we’re just little dots in the distance to him.
After my coffee I walked back through the parks. Even the drifts of crocuses and daffodils couldn’t quite make me smile though, pretty as they were. I almost went to visit the determined little rhododendron but I thought I’d best get back to the office so I carried on walking. On the corner the sight of a magenta flag billowing in the breeze caught my eye. Actually it was the word coffee printed on it I noticed.
Of course I’ve seen it many times before, I pass this way often enough, but, in all my wanderings I’ve never thought to go inside and buy a coffee. Perhaps I should, it’s far closer to the office than any of the other coffee shops and the building is quite a landmark. It was built in the 1920’s as a Wesleyan Methodist Central Hall and is now used for concerts and as a cafe with tables outside in the summer. With its dome and arched entrance it is an interesting looking building, I wouldn’t mind a peek inside. Probably better I don’t get into the habit of going in for a coffee though, I have enough problems resisting as it is without finding another good coffee shop even closer. As it is I can tell myself the coffee is most likely terrible and save a few calories.
In the end I walked past, two coffees in one lunch time is too much even for me, so I carried on past St Mary’s Church, framed by blue sky and fluffy clouds, and back to work. There were big plans to tackle the trial version of the library cataloguing software and go through the scores that came in this morning. As usual, events overtook me though, two long winded telephone calls with musicians agents, more sorting out on the cruise that might now have music and a multitude of little glitches to solve. In the end I didn’t even get round to the expenses. Oh well, they’ll all still be there on Tuesday and the important things are sorted.
Just as I was tying up all the loose ends my phone rang. It was Commando. He was on his way to give me a lift home. I asked Gigi if she wanted to come too, we were going to walk home together so it seemed only fair and she’d had the day from hell. I guessed she probably wasn’t feeling like a long walk on her own. So that was one less walk than planned and one more coffee. It felt like that kind of day though.