MEET CHARLEY STRONTIUM

Hello. My name’s Charley Strontium. I have to say, right at the outset, that I haven’t got an awful lot going for me. I’m only forty-eight, but I’ve been as bald as a billiard-ball since I was twenty. I’ve a bit of a pesky speech impediment, which means I can’t articulate my words properly, so I have to repeat everything I say because no-one can understand me the first time. I’m small, a little bit skinny and I look a bit like a wolf with my sharp, narrow face, teeth like pine needles and vee-shaped chin. To cap it all, I’m extremely short-sighted, so I have to wear thick-lensed glasses to see a yard in front of my face. I was bumbling along at work, minding my own business, when I received the call. I’m a data processing administrator, working with invoices. I take an invoice and enter the details on a computer database, then pass the invoice onto someone else for filing. You can see from that that I’m a key cog in the company machine. Anyway, my employer needed a group of people to oversee a new project, and I was chosen, mainly to act as a ‘gopher’ for the director. Amongst other things, I had to go for his sandwiches in the morning and his newspaper at night. The company had bought some revolutionary new finance software called ‘Express Vision’ and the nine of us who made up the project team had to go down to Birmingham for a fortnight to learn the new system. The step after that was for us to train other staff in the company when the new system was installed. We flew down on a bleak and bitterly cold April day, and made our way to the hotel from the airport. I’d never been in such a plush hotel. My grade isn’t high enough to allow me to stay in such places and I’m far too lowly to travel away with work. Toussaint is part of the team. He’s one of the company’s senior managers. He’s a big, outgoing chap, popular with everybody because, I have to admit, he’s got a sense of humour that is quite appealing, unless you’re the butt of it. He’s old now, but he must have cut quite a dash in his prime. Trouble is, he’s never liked me. ‘Strontium’, he said when we were down in the restaurant, having a meal on the first night, ‘Your rubbish.’ I coloured and stared dolefully down at the remains of my pudding. ‘I-I-I b-b-beg your pardon?’ ‘Your rubbish,’ he repeated. I felt awful. I didn’t know where to look. ‘Give me your rubbish and I’ll put it in this bin.’ Everybody laughed whilst I squirmed, as red in the face as a Winnigstadt cabbage. The next night we were dining in town, at a Chinese restaurant that had been recommended to us by the hotel. I’ve never been to a Chinese restaurant before, nor do I much want to go to one again. ‘No pie and chips served here, Strontium,’ said Toussaint, ‘You’re not in your usual greasy spoon now.’ The soup arrived. It was wishy-washy looking stuff with a few bits of vegetable floating about in it. Not my ‘cup of meat’ at all. Toussaint was sitting across the large circular table from me. I had picked up my spoon to drink my soup. He looked right through me and, I have to confess, I simply couldn’t meet his gaze. ‘Strontium,’ he barked, ‘That’s not the way to drink Chinese soup – use chopsticks, man.’ I dolefully picked up a pair of chopsticks and fished hopelessly about in the bowl, hoping desperately to find a fragment of vegetable to lift into my mouth in order in order for me to retain even a shred of dignity. I failed, and the whole group laughed themselves silly. Someone even took a photograph of me, soup bowl held about six inches from my face, chopsticks sloshing around in the pale and disgusting liquid. The restaurant rang out with ribald laughter. I said nothing, just sat looking at the richly-carpeted floor, looking for ‘a hole to get sick in,’ once more to quote Bob Dylan. The next few days comprised a great many Power Point presentations about the main features of the system. I have to say I found them extremely boring. Toussaint did too, and kept flustering the lady who was presenting them by regularly interjecting when she was in full flow. ‘What does ‘Bounce the Apache’ mean, Madam?’ he yelled at one point. ‘Kindly remember that some of us only trade in the Queen’s English, not your wretched American jargon.’ I wish I was more like him, but I’m n-n-n-not, and that’s l-l-l-life, I s-s-s-suppose.