I’m counting down the days, like young Godber in ‘Porridge’. I have three working days left here, spread over the next three weeks. I am fast running out of work to do. There are only so many times one can use a thesaurus to re-jig all the adjectives in my final report, even though the sentence: ‘I adjure you to reconsider your modus operandi and epitomise the priorities that we need to abrogate a major proportion of risk to the preferred supplier’ is infinitely preferable to ‘you had better tell these bleeders to pull their socks up.’
The truth is, there’s very much an end-of-pier feeling to my time here. It’s always the same when the job is done, and you are merely clearing up loose ends and leaving the aftermath for someone else who is permanently employed. Your colleagues would rather you weren’t there and you would rather you weren’t there, until the whole clumsily spinning top ends up butter side down and you are on your way somewhere, but you don’t know where.
I won’t need to stay at the hotel any more. I’ll be travelling to Maryhill there and back each Wednesday until the end of the month. I had begun to feel like Major Gowan, almost a permanent resident, stumbling into the foyer and rasping out ‘Papers, Fawlty?’
The hotel was packed today. There is a medical conference on in the city. I was told that they were discussing diabetes. The breakfast room was filled with Sri-Lankans, Indians and black Africans, all with a deep and abiding interest in diabetes. It seems an awful long way to come to discuss something about which I though there were few surprises left, but maybe I’m wrong, and they’re on the edge of a major breakthrough that will stop the disease in its tracks. I said to a beautiful black woman in the lift on my way out: ‘I hope you’re not looking forward to your cooked breakfast – it’s served from heated tin trays and it tastes like candle-wax’. She laughed divinely and, positively thumping a tail with health, said ‘I only eat yoghourt.’
I went for a walk around the area this lunchtime. I noticed that I now walk like Prince Charles, with my hands permanently clasped behind my back. This is the legacy of walking an old dog who insists on following on six feet behind me. It’s easier to clasp the hands behind the back with the lead in them, thus reducing the effort required in virtually having to pull the dog around the streets, as if one were pulling a trolley without any wheels. It seems that it’s a habit that’s very hard to break.
I will not miss Maryhill. Woodside library was once quite a regal building, with a splendidly elegant cupola framing the main library. Now, the walls of the library are riddled with damp, and bits are missing from the interior coving. Two buckets stood on the floor directly under the cupola, to catch the rainwater. They were there the last time I called in. The whole place smelled like an old dishcloth.
I meandered along the Garscube Road, past the litter, the dog-ends, the boarded up shops, the derelict public houses, the peeling buildings, the dog dirt, and the stagnant rainwater lying in pools on the pavement. Three middle-aged men stood smoking outside of what seemed to be the only public-house left in service in the area. They looked years older than they probably were and had that flagstone-grey visage of those permanently parked indoors - unhealthy and unfit. They were unkempt, unshaven, pot-bellied and balding. They regarded me with absolute loathing as I walked past, as if they had divined that I was English and didn’t support Celtic, or Rangers. I was pleased to make the sanctuary of the office, stuffy and unpleasant though it is.
I don’t know what’s in store for me in the future, but I will ensure that it doesn’t replicate this.
The truth is, there’s very much an end-of-pier feeling to my time here. It’s always the same when the job is done, and you are merely clearing up loose ends and leaving the aftermath for someone else who is permanently employed. Your colleagues would rather you weren’t there and you would rather you weren’t there, until the whole clumsily spinning top ends up butter side down and you are on your way somewhere, but you don’t know where.
I won’t need to stay at the hotel any more. I’ll be travelling to Maryhill there and back each Wednesday until the end of the month. I had begun to feel like Major Gowan, almost a permanent resident, stumbling into the foyer and rasping out ‘Papers, Fawlty?’
The hotel was packed today. There is a medical conference on in the city. I was told that they were discussing diabetes. The breakfast room was filled with Sri-Lankans, Indians and black Africans, all with a deep and abiding interest in diabetes. It seems an awful long way to come to discuss something about which I though there were few surprises left, but maybe I’m wrong, and they’re on the edge of a major breakthrough that will stop the disease in its tracks. I said to a beautiful black woman in the lift on my way out: ‘I hope you’re not looking forward to your cooked breakfast – it’s served from heated tin trays and it tastes like candle-wax’. She laughed divinely and, positively thumping a tail with health, said ‘I only eat yoghourt.’
I went for a walk around the area this lunchtime. I noticed that I now walk like Prince Charles, with my hands permanently clasped behind my back. This is the legacy of walking an old dog who insists on following on six feet behind me. It’s easier to clasp the hands behind the back with the lead in them, thus reducing the effort required in virtually having to pull the dog around the streets, as if one were pulling a trolley without any wheels. It seems that it’s a habit that’s very hard to break.
I will not miss Maryhill. Woodside library was once quite a regal building, with a splendidly elegant cupola framing the main library. Now, the walls of the library are riddled with damp, and bits are missing from the interior coving. Two buckets stood on the floor directly under the cupola, to catch the rainwater. They were there the last time I called in. The whole place smelled like an old dishcloth.
I meandered along the Garscube Road, past the litter, the dog-ends, the boarded up shops, the derelict public houses, the peeling buildings, the dog dirt, and the stagnant rainwater lying in pools on the pavement. Three middle-aged men stood smoking outside of what seemed to be the only public-house left in service in the area. They looked years older than they probably were and had that flagstone-grey visage of those permanently parked indoors - unhealthy and unfit. They were unkempt, unshaven, pot-bellied and balding. They regarded me with absolute loathing as I walked past, as if they had divined that I was English and didn’t support Celtic, or Rangers. I was pleased to make the sanctuary of the office, stuffy and unpleasant though it is.
I don’t know what’s in store for me in the future, but I will ensure that it doesn’t replicate this.
