Juvenile and silly

The end of my first week in Central Quay has arrived. After a week’s holiday I had to travel to Glasgow for my first day in the Daily Record building on Monday morning, unsure or what was to greet me in my new place of work. Scottish & Universal Newspapers, the regional division of Trinity Mirror, has now been merged and united, with the other Scottish Trinity divisions under one roof, a roof that is apparently newspaper shaped from the birds’ eye view. I always did wonder why the building had that strange shape about it and it was Iain, our I.T. guy, that informed us of this fact on Monday after we finally managed to get the Property computer up and running and fully functional again, or as fully functional as it can get. The Auto run Property PC computer sometimes needs a bit of a kick to get started. I sometimes wonder whether we should employ the use of an old engine hand crank to get it going.
The folk making room in their office space for us S&UN lot all seem very pleasant though I doubt I’ll be able to remember all the various names fired at me in the first week.
I found my new desk in the middle of the Design studio complete with stickered name tags. One Michael, another Mike. It’s amazing how many people assume my name preference to be Mike. Ka gives people into trouble for calling me Mike. Even Adwatch, the advert booking, tracking and management system that we work from, calls me Mike. Since when did a computer system have the audacity to become this familiar without your permission. Yes, okay, I’ve got to know Adwatch a lot better over the past twelve months since it’s introduction, got used to it’s own way of working, it’s tricks, idiosyncrasies and characteristics but I can’t remember ever giving it permission to address me as Mike. Still I suppose there must be worse names that I could be called. It’s better than TARDIS drawers anyway.
I borrowed a plate from Christine on Wednesday for my lunch. As Christine carefully unwrapped the plates that had travelled over from Hamilton, Lorna, who sits alongside Christine, informed me that if I ever required anything it was pretty much guaranteed that Christine would have it in her drawers. Christine laughed in agreement calling them her TARDIS drawers, which I suggested could be her new nickname. Obviously this took on slightly different connotations and as the other surrounding woman in the large open plan office started berating me I ran for cover, before Christine could frisbee me with another of her plates.
It was almost as bad as a time I was passing another lady in the Gillard Welch publishing office, where I used to work down south, more than a few years ago. The nice lady in question was just about to dig into a rather large, almost mutant like, item of fruit, which I quite innocently commented on as I passed.
“Gawd, that’s a big pear!” I gasped, with comic disbelief as I walked. For some reason this stopped the lady in her tracks just as she was about to bite into her fruit. By the look of her face, I’m not sure she realised I was merely being silly about the size of her mutant fruit and not at all meaning to be rude.
I don’t think she spoke to me for a week after that.
Another innocent innuendo not unlike Colin McG running down a Brussels subway train urgently shouting and offering to help a lady passenger with her melons after we’d all been at the extra strong guinness. The passenger’s melons had escaped and were rolling about, all over the carriage floor which colin, being the ever helpful gent that he is, quickly rushed to retrieve for her. Being in Brussels she probably only spoke French or Dutch so she probably wouldn’t have understood why the rest of us were laughing at Colin’s shouting as he ran after the rolling fruit whilst the other Belgian passengers looked on with furrowed brows.
All juvenile and silly, of course, but there’s nothing wrong with being juvenile and silly on the odd occasion, especially when it’s your birthday and you’re yet another year older.
Ka has now officially hit the mid thirties as it was her birthday on Monday for which I took a few hours holiday and left the office early in the blistering sunshine to be part of her family birthday carry out meal in Uddingston, this time supplied from the 4 Seasons restaurant in Hamilton to which I drove in the pelting rain. Ah, the spring weather, don’t you just love it?
It was then my turn on as Thursday as I hit 34 (thanks for all the birthday wishes by the way!). As it was my usual day off, Ka took a holiday and we had a relaxing morning, during which we popped to the shops and Ka bought her very first scratch card with which she won a tenner. Not bad for a first time. In the afternoon we headed off to the cinema to see 21 Jump Street, a very stupid film about two cops that go back to school to ensnare some drug dealers, whilst working undercover, pretending to be school kids. Silly and juvenile but a good laugh.
We then went out for dinner to the Torrance Hotel in the evening and had Mum, Dad and Lynsey Ann round to the flat for a wee glass of wine and a slice of birthday caterpillar cake afterwards. Unfortunately Ka managed to put her specially bought number candles on the caterpillar the wrong way round and I ended up being 43?!
As Dad happily clicked away with my camera I refused to blow the candles out until the numerics were sorted out and we now have a couple of pictures of me burning my hands with birthday wax as I hastily swapped the two numbers around.
Friday was busy once more in the office but I did make the time to take part in the grand National lucky dip, in which you pull a horse from a paper cup for a pound. Ka had been lucky with her scratchcard so I thought I’d give it a shot. I got two horses, both of which, Andrew, my new work colleague, told me I had no chance with after reading the Daily Record’s notes on each. The horses were Arbor Supreme and Neptune Collonges.
You never know.