Happy St George’s Day!

A day in the calendar generally overlooked or forgotten by the average Englander, unless they happen to stumble across the specially designed Google logo, walk into Clintons Cards or, like me, work with someone who wishes they had been born in the Middle Ages.

Andre is in her element today! Full get up going on with tabard, flowing shirt and cape and laden down with original, home made bread pudding. In she walks at 9am in all her regalia grinning away! That is until she realises that there are only 2 other people sat in the office smiling back. She’s prepared enough pudding for 20 people but looks like she’ll only be feeing 4 including herself. It’s another quiet Friday in the office and Andre foolishly relied on the holiday calendar to try and determine who would be in today. School girl error. But it’s ok; it just means we will all have bigger portions!

Hang on; didn’t she bring in bread pudding last year as well?

Wasn’t it actually a bit stodgy and not very tasty?

Damn.

So at 10am on goes the cloak again and out comes the trolley trundling down the hall. “Cream with your pudding?” “Yes please”. I decide to dive right in and get this over and done with while Ginger and Moody savour theirs and leave it for lunch time. I’m not prepared to face this pudding cold so on I go….. Actually it’s not too bad, bit bland (but then what can you expect from medieval cooking?) but fairly tasty. Filling though…..eugh……must…..finish……she’s…………sitting behind…..me…..watching….agh. Done. Phew.

An hour passes.

Ow. Belly ache, that pudding is not sitting well. I email Ginger and warn her of the dangers of the pudding. Ouch, painful, pudding expanding in stomach...

Meanwhile Andre passes round the room showing off her dragon (and no that’s not a euphemism) to all and sundry and explaining the origins of Mr George. Yes, we heard it all last year and I think you got your dragon out then as well luv.

I went off to sun myself for a bit at lunch time with Ginger promising to come and join me in “just a minute”. I’m gone half an hour and she never materialises so when I return and question her absence she is seething!

“I only just bloody got away from her (‘her’ being Andre)! She kept going on and on, her phone went at one point and I thought I’d escaped and then she came straight back!”

Just before I went to lunch Ginger had made the fatal mistake of taking an interest in Andre’s lunch, asking if it was a celebratory one. She then got the low down on pottage, how it is made and what is in it and even how the people in the middle ages used to have it for breakfast! Once I’d gone Ginger then had a chance to taste some – lucky, lucky – and then had some further history explained to her. Andre then went from spices in her lunch to how spices were discovered and used then about a young guy she used to work with who was chauvinist and she got him back by ………

…….phone rings (yes! Ginger has escaped!) ……….

………..calling her mother (Damn!) (How did calling her mother get him back? Maybe he had to go through the ordeal of listening to her wittering on?) Then how she spent 30 minutes arguing with her mum over whether to use a swirl or straight pattern on her embroidery and then about her old boss and a hilarious prank they played on her (the boss). The boss used to leave loads of her clothes at work so one morning Andre and her colleagues used a hat stand to dress it up all in her clothes and shoes apparently she wasn’t very happy. Loser. That sounds like a decent prank to me that should have been taken in good humour.

At this point I walked back in, distracted Andre and Ginger made a run for it. Poor thing. I’m glad I missed it, this day is dull enough as it is. I’m also glad we only have one St George’s Day a year, Andre is far too over excitable today and it’s a little bit disconcerting.

Oh…’scuse me, think that bread pudding is making a break for it. Enjoy the sunshine people!