My First Memory, Meeting with the Boss, and Custard

It is summer _____We have moved to _____ It has a farmyard smell. Why? Because it is a farm. I don't need a chamber pot. I wet my bed, not the bed. My female playmate lives next door. I'm six, she is eight - I adore her white skin, cheerful smile, and mass of red hair. We develop a system of communication after we are sent to bed. One knock on the adjoining wall: Yes; Two: No; Three: Maybe; Four: Tomorrow; Five: Are you tired? Six: Have you wet your bed? Seven: Are you happy? Eight: Do you love me? Nine: Are you awake? Ten: Are you still reading Proust? Her two sisters', while strikingly more beautiful, are dimly aware of the soul. She once said, " To be clever with words is a hazard". Suddenly, I kissed her for the first, and only, time. In sudden silences I still see her, feel her soft skin; then - for some reason - I miss my childhood.

Meeting with my boss, Mr Yworry? at 10.00a.m. (The only boss I worked with who had a surname with a question mark?) Sometimes words can never do justice to the blackness of a meeting, a rendezvous, a lunch engagement, a secret liaison with a lover, etc. My boss was undoubtedly well-liked, but not always as a leader, a manager, an administrator, a visionary. Everyone knew he wore a toupee - he wore it on his left shoulder.

Very few people have the opportunity of choosing the people they work with. Who wants to work with the hypocritical, the lazy, and obsequious? In fact, what may be viewed to the outsider as "unity", may be - to the insider - a concoction of misery, exhausting conflicts, irritability, opportunism, indifference, sucking-up, and bullying. A sense of inadequacy haunts us all - Are we not human beings?

“How long have you been here?”

“About one minute, sir”

“Not in my office!” [Fighting to regain composure] “With the organisation?”

“Thirty three years."

"Are you happy here?"

"Is that a serious question?"

"Why do you feel that?"

"Well, I just don't feel I have a purposeful role in the organisation. Indeed, has anyone?"

"Perhaps another position would suit you and the organisation. What do you feel you did best at school?"

"I was particularly adept at humming along with hymns in assembly."

"I mean academically!"

"I liked dissecting frogs."

"In biology?"

"No. I never did biology. Dissecting frogs was just a hobby. My pen pal, at that time, Jean - Paul, used to send me frogs in the post. He was happy to pay the extra postage. They always came without legs. I stopped writing to him when he started sending squirrels."

"That doesn't help me generate any ideas about your future. I’ll have to give it more thought”.

Silence fell on the room. For a minute I thought my boss looked like a pair of nail clippers; useless, and neglected. I intervened through sheer boredom.

"When I was sixteen, I saw the inside of a mortuary. You remind me of the caretaker. He had blueish-gray lips, gray hair, a round chin, and collected hair. He liked talking about death, and the dead."

My boss fell to his knees, and began to weep - thirty years' too late. The last words I heard him speak were, " Cement has no future ..."

Reflections: Once I sat in Custard for two days. It made me finally realise I’m not Apple Strudel. Mr Apple Strudel lives in France, under the pseudonym Mr Apple Sauce. Then everything seemed to move very quickly, including the Custard. Suddenly, the Custard told me it was pregnant! I immediately succumbed to severe attacks of dizziness, black-outs, and eating popcorn. I called a doctor, but he refused to believe a bowl of custard could be pregnant. The minister, was worst, " I can't marry you and a bowl of custard!"

I feel as if my whole world is collapsing into a yellow void ...