Manuel in the countryside and other issues...

sleep...
...I needs it

I got a text message from the Glorious Leader one Monday night recently which read,

"Lvn @ 2 dnt b lte. (:"

I peered at my phone with the puzzled look of a 36 year old man, mainly because I am a puzzled 36 year old man but also because I had no idea what it meant. I peered and I puzzled. I scratched and I wondered. Eventually I set it down and went back to watching a rerun of celebraty chef/crazy scientist, Heston Blumenthal, take on the culinary "outrage" that is the Little Chef. All the mock horror and sneering was getting to me a bit so I went back to the phone again.

Seriously no one does sneering and mock horror better than a celebrity chef on a crusade to save something/make themselves all heroic. Okay some waiters have been known to ham it up a bit when you arrive five minutes late for your reservation, and by some I mean me, obviously. But have you seen Kitchen Nightmares? It's an hour of overreacting, faux outrage and sneering which inevitably ends in the making of a chicken casserole.

Every fucking time.

But the message puzzled me. I wondered what had happened to his vowels - had an upturned glass of water robbed him off his vowels? Had he lost his vowels in a particularly odd game of chance with a Chinese cardsharp? Who knows what happened to his vowels!? In the end I passed the phone to Little Miss Manuel who immediately translated the cipher to read, "Leaving at 2, don't be late. "

"Right! Leaving at 2, don't be late. Obviously. Sake why didn't he just say that then? And what does he mean don't be late? I've never been late for anything in my life!"

Correctly assuming that our relaxing and slumbersome evening was coming to an end Little Miss Manuel went home.

"But what does this mean?" I asked and held the phone out at her like a deaf person with a piece of paper trying to order food.

"What does what mean Manuel?", said the remarkably narky LMM who was clearly getting upset with my line of questioning. Although in retrospect there is every chance it was more to do with my running commentary whilst watching TV.

"This open bracket colon thingy, I mean what's that all about?"

"That? That's a smiley face", says she as she left.

A smiley face?

From the boss?

A smiley?

Face?

From the boss?

For the love of Jebus what is that all about? This, from the man who recoils in horror when someone tries to shake hands, he's sending me smiley faces? Mother of Mercy, how odd.

I had forgotten that the boss and the head chef had planned to go to some restaurant for a snoop and had asked me if I wanted to go. I didn't want to go but a free lunch is a free lunch eh?

So come two o'clock I found myself sitting in the front seat of a rather unkempt car with a grown man who likes to send smiley faces to his staff and the head chef who hasn't cracked an actual smile for about three years. Awesome way to spend an afternoon I can tell you.

"So boss, where we going then?"

"Ards?"

"Scuse me? Ards? As in Newtownards? As in not in Belfast anymore?"

"Aye, that's the one."

I spent the next five minutes muttering to myself. You see I'm not a fan of leaving the city. Okay that's not really true. I'm just not a fan of the many small towns, hamlets, and villages that masquerade as cities and the inhabitants contained therein in and around Belfast. I don't like the way everybody knows everybody else or the way all the shops are run by the same family. I mean how can the same person who runs the bar be the same person that runs the funeral parlour that runs the petrol station. It's spooky wrong that's what it is. Plus they don't take kindly to men with wonderful and elegant man bags. Troglodytes.

But there was nothing I could do about it now, I was strapped in and going to Ards whether I liked it or not. And I did not like it. But location aside I was out for the afternoon, mixing with the le grand fromages from work and I was grumping? What the hell is wrong with me?!

It's a time thing you see or rather a lack of time thing. I need more time. I didn't have time to be galavanting and brown nosing with the big boys, I could have been writing. Honestly I need an extra day in the week, an extra hour or four in a day and several thousand large in the bank. I have projects and work piling up at a rate of knots and sleep has become a inconvenience that just slows the whole process of work/living/blogging/writing down to a complete halt. So a free trip into the wilderness with the boss and the cooker monkey in-chief was all just a hassle I could live without.

But it shouldn't be like that.

Something has to give folks or I am for an early grave. That said, someone smart ass did remark the other day that I must be relieved that I can no longer die young. Cheeky fucker. I have things to be doing and not enough time to be doing it. So just like car plants all over the world and with immediate effect Well Done Fillet will be moving to a three/four day week.

And when I get my load lightened and am able to sleep again I will return to full production. Until then I'll see you every other day. And for the record lunch was good but I had no earthly idea what they were saying.

Country folk......pfft....