Tempus Fugit

We had drinks in the office last evening.  It was to mark the fact that one of our number had notched up 50 years' continuous service.  You heard me right, friend - 50 (five-o) years.  He's a charming chap, our demi-centurion, so it was a well-attended gathering.  The powers-that laid on food and strong drink in our boardroom, and a dozen or so  of us went at it.

We sat around the boardroom table and swigged from bottles of ale and swapped war stories.  I was probably in the mid-range of generations represented in the firm currently.  Despite the good humour and nascent drunkenness, I'm certain I detected a certain sadness in the room.  This was I think due to the feeling that 50 years in the service of one company, even one as broadly benign as this one, was probably one of the most unromantic ways in which a man could spend is tenure on Earth.

Now, we all of course will see out our careers in this way, i.e. as jobbing functionaries in uninspiring buildings around the capital.  But one never sees oneself in this role forever.  When one changes jobs every few years, there is always the possibility, albeit a VAGUE one, that something dramatic might intervene - relocation to the tropics perhaps, or retraining as a trapeze artist.  Our colleague's career starkly illustrated to us all that this probably won't happen.  Shit.

I left after an hour, the rest of the room moving on to the pub.  I couldn't face any more.  This morning I awoke to a partially-crushed spirit, so I phoned the office and pulled I sickie.  I didn't lie; I told them I woke up feeling terrible, which is quite true.

I spent the rest of the day painting the chimney breast in the front room, hoping that a romantic seque in life's journey might fall into my lap.  It's 7:30pm now.  The chimney breast is roasted red, but I am as-was, staring down the barrel of another dull day at work tomorrow.  Oh, well, I tried.

"Pass the Quavers, would you?  How 'bout those Gooners, eh?"