Beyond the Drawbridge

It is my pleasure, most mornings, to take coffee with the Black Queen in the common room. We like to get there early and steal the biscuits. On occasion, work intrudes and we get there a little late, to find that all the nice ones are gone and we’re left with scabby teddy bears or dried arrowroot. All the good seats have gone by this time, and we are forced to sit with — by definition, almost — unpopular people.

This happened a couple of weeks ago. One table only had space, and two of the chairs were taken. One of them was occupied by PR, who for reasons unknown seems to believe that he and I are the only two people in the department who use Macs. I have come to this conclusion because every time he sees me at coffee he asks me a Mac-related question. Every time.

This in itself would not be so bad, except they are quite — how shall I put it? — singular questions. In other words, it is quite possible that no one else has these problems, or more to the point, no one else in the world would have initiated the sequence of events that inevitably led to this particular problem. I tend to begin by saying “Well, I don’t do it quite like that” or similar, but he never seems to get the hint.

On this particular occasion the script started to unfold as usual, and BQ started talking to someone on my other side. Can’t blame her, but my heart sank when I realized I was going to have to spend my coffee break listening to this drivel. But hope flared in my heart when the incomparable MS walked into the common room, and headed towards our table. Surely, I thought, she’ll have something interesting to say, and deliver me from this?

But no. MS, bless her, obviously thought our conversation was too important to interrupt, and sat down out of hope’s reach.

Twenty minutes later, when MS rose to leave and I was about to gnaw my own leg off, I saw my chance, made an excuse and caught up with her at the stairwell.

“M,” I said, “next time you see PR talking at me, please, please please please, rescue me.”

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 06:00 and is filed under annoyances. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.