Once in a while I am honoured to be able to share the planet with certain fellow human beings and this weekend I met up with two of them. Not necessarily in the right order they are Richard Biggins, an architect now at Fred Gibberd and Antonia Rolls. You all know about Rolls (if you don't, read past blogs), but Biggins is a chap I don't really know that well but totally adore. Let me explain.
My firend Pru is staying. Pru is a blast from the past. We both used to work in the God's worst architectural firm in the World for the most terrifying woman architect who we not only hated but who absolutely terrified us and in response we carried on like badly behaved school children the moment she went out. She was the scariest witch in the whole West End. She was mean and nasty and a crashing snob and she had a very deep voice and looked like a man in drag. She could chill your bones from a mile away and make you want to shrink to a teeny weeny little ball of insignifigance. We really detested her. We would do THE most dreadful things you could imagine egged on by each other to be slightly more daringly awful than the day before. We thought we had probably pushed it to the limits until Biggins arrived moving it all up several notches, and I am not just talking Corian samples in the briefcase or jamming the lift with the boss in it so we could finish our backgammon game and crossword before she came in. Oh we were bad... truly.
Unfortunately it was the underdog who often fell victim of our pranks. If it was nowadays the poor side kick/office manager could happily do us for bullying in the workplace but we were happily preserved from any form of PCness in the ignorant seventies. Gosh, the poor man must have had a nervous breakdown or at least dreaded work every day. We put elastic bands in his sandwiches, perforations in his umbrella and unscrewed the handle on his briefcase (full of marble slabs) so it fell apart at the station ... if he ever got there due to lift failure ... again. He never once grassed us up to our vile female boss and I still wonder why not. He probably hated her a bit more than he hated us. He was probably on our team but we would just come up with madder more horrible mean tricks every day. And what is so awful we not only thought they were funny but we still do.
Oh my, those were the days. But one thing we will carry to our graves was our serious fear of our terrifying monster boss who must be long since pushing up stinging nettles or aged 113 in an old people's home giving some poor carer hell.. When we felt her coming we would freeze on the spot. The place would suddenly transform from Speakeasy back into office. Today we had a reunion. But as we met outside the office building on Beak Street we all felt a slight shudder down our spines ... it was her! We had to go to a pub and get happily pissed and laugh til our sides hurt all afternoon.
Pru and I are both besotted by Biggins. His sexuality is definitely a bit pink but whoa what a really super bloke. We both love you. And Rolls, we love you too.
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