I am truly in my prime

There is one person I have yet to mention and that’s because she’s not in my radar at work often now. The lady in question used to sit behind me next to Andre but has since been moved to another team who sit the opposite end of the office. Still part of our department just on a particular project, it’s all very dull I assure you.

We (not the royal ‘we’, that would be me and Gunner and Kirstie) call her Miss Jean Brody, not to her face of course but it’s a good thing she has a nick name as I can never for the life of me remember her real one. She sat behind me for several months and I still can’t recall it, it’s not an especially unusual name but clearly very forgettable. Anyway, Miss JB is a far better title. Gunner came up with it one day when we were sending some ranty emails to each other about her, he just imagines her to be some Scottish private school mistress with her head up her own arse, which she basically is minus the uniform.

Miss JB is 40 but dresses like a 50 year old, she wears the oddest combinations of outfits and has a mahoosive cleavage which she tends to show off quite a lot. I often catch her in the loo’s doing her make up in a really weird fashion and she gets terribly self conscious if you walk out of a cubicle to discover her there slapping on the rouge. Miss JB came to us some time last year (I forget when, the days and weeks start to blur after a while) as a temp and had worked for this illustrious company before a couple of years back. Normally she works in TV as a producer or director or something and this was a stop gap whilst the TV job market was pretty pants. She was asked to help out FB (lucky her!) with some work which FB relished, bossing he about all the time and basically giving her all her own work to do as well.

So Miss JB sat behind me and next to Andre and you’d think they’d be the most mis-matched pair in this office. However, turns out that Miss JB is a bit of a TV/movie geek as well and a desperate loner so they’re getting on like a house on fire! Initially this was bewildering and quite sweet but it soon turned to annoying and loud which then in turn created murderous thoughts amongst those sat around them, me included. ‘But why?’ I hear you ask. Several factors came into this which I shall list for you now.

The Quoting
As they share a love of all things sci-fi and fantasy based the terrible two have of course seen all the same films and TV series, read all the same books and got all the same t-shirts. So quite often when chatting about something mundane one of them would pipe up with “just like that scene from series 2, episode 4 of Blake 7…..” and then it would go on. Neither of them have the quietest of voices so everyone else in the office would also be subject to this. OK, have your banter but please keep the nerd-factor to a minimum.

The Laugh
Miss JB has a VERY annoying laugh. I can’t even begin to explain how it sounds aside from fucking irritating. I suppose it is kind of horse-like in places but also very nasal and breathy and LOUD! So, so LOUD! She’s also a nervous laugher, as is Andre so the laugh would be popping up during the quoting but also in just day to day stuff until it seems as though she is laughing non-stop. Again with the murderous thoughts and by now we are plotting her demise.

The Big Head Up Her Arse
I mentioned that Miss JB works in TV, we all know this because she is very keen to tell everyone what she has done and the ‘famous’ people she has met. As far as I can gauge she has mainly worked on home improvement reality shows with D list celebrities but she’ll often drop them into conversation. “Oh well when I was working on “Chav Mum Housing DIY” with you know……” and in comes the name. Some people were impressed with this the first time around but by the 268th time not so much as they probably don’t know who the hell she is talking about and have never watched the cocking programme in the first place. Gunner informs me that she was just like this the last time round when she worked here and nothing has improved. The murderous plot is in place and I’m on ebay looking for suitable weapons.

The Stig
She loves The Stig from Top Gear, obsessed with him in fact. She has pictures on her desk of him. When there was the rumour that he might in fact be Mr Schumacher the debate raged on for days as to whether it was some clever TV ploy or not. OF COURSE IT IS YOU FREAK, WHY WOULD A F1 RACING DRIVER TEST DRIVE CARS FOR THE BBC?! You’d think she’d be a bit more keyed up on this seeing as she works in television.

And so this all went on and as a combination started to piss off quite a few people. Andre and Miss JB in the mean time went off to Blur concerts (apparently Andre jumped around a lot, I do hope she didn’t attempt to crowd surf…), had dinner together and swapped Stargate DVDs. Then finally she was moved! A great day for us all but not so for Andre. There were sad farewells and for the first few weeks both of them would appear at each other’s desks throughout the day but then it dwindled and the dinners stopped and it hasn’t quite been the same since. Bless.

But please don’t feel too sorry for Miss JB, her move was the result of her own actions and that laugh. She has since been able to get her own back in a twisted and subconscious manner but screwing up my filing system. I have a section for her team and as much as I tidy and sort every time I go back in there it’s like some rabid monkey has been in there throwing files about. I’m surprised there aren’t faeces everywhere.

I’ll have to also furnish you with the tale of her love life as that is quite entertaining. But I’ll save that for another day.

Have a grand weekend peeps.