From the very late 1990’s right up until the time I retired, I worked in an office. I chose a different career path that involved sitting in front of a computer doing things with other computers and servers for the British Healthcare system: the NHS.
The Boss
For roughly fourteen of the twenty-three years I worked in the NHS, I worked on-site at one of the County’s two main hospitals. I worked in a bespoke building that housed most of the Trust’s main servers, along with our offices.
My direct line manager was a very strange man. We’ll call him Ted.
We did actually call him Ted (only once to his face, by accident) but that was not his real name, that was his nickname. The nickname was a benign one (unlike some of the others we allocated at the time!) – he had the air of an old school (ha!) Headmaster about him, which earned him the initial nickname of “The Headmaster”, subsequently Bolton-ised (mainly because of Peter Kay and Fred Dibnah – popular on the telly at the time) to become th’eadmaster, then shortened further to Ted, which stuck. It was probably more like T’ed (the Klingon equivalent, of course).
I have never in my life come across such an extreme pedant and narcissist. He was very very particular about facts, would never exaggerate, would never under estimate. He always wanted cold hard facts. Every single conversation, work ones, private ones, in meetings, at any time every subject would come back around to him. There would be no way you were allowed to interrupt. It’s all about him, nothing to do with you. Having said that, if you were right about something and you were accused of being wrong, he would be right behind you and argue your case, usually until the other party gave in. Still, a very frustrating man!
I was just passing…
Fortuately, we worked at opposite ends of the hospital site (technicians one end, managers the other). It wasn’t all that far away, but it was sufficiently far enough so that we wouldn’t be bothered by “the management”.
On the odd occasion however, he would “pop in” to see us. He was just passing, he’d say (or I’d be up for a bollocking). It would cause the inevitable panic, with all staff scrambling to find things to do “elsewhere”. As I was “in charge” of our offices, I (of course) was the one that had to talk to him. Which invariably turned into an hour (or more) of wasted time.
He would normally just barge in, sit down and start talking (about himself). On one such occurrence, he spotted my new CD.
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
If you’ve read any of my posts, you’ll know that I like music. I used to see or hear tracks on TV or on a compilation and want to explore some of the other music those bands had made.
My new CD in this case was a compilation of the best of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band – a popular Scottish rock band from the 1970’s. They had a hit in the UK in 1976 with their song: The Boston Tea Party.
Unbeknownst to me, Ted was a big fan of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. A very big fan. He spotted the CD as soon as he came in, snatched it from my grasp and told me all about them and how much he liked them. Then the strangest thing happened: he sang one of the songs.
Next!
The song he sang was “Next!”. Taken from the bands second studio album, Next! is a cover of a Jaques Brel song translated from French and converted into a tango. Of course I know nothing of this, I only knew The Boston Tea Party at the time.
So Ted sat there, “sang” the whole song through from start to finish, throughout which I had to keep a straight (and interested looking) face, whilst my colleague (sat out of Ted’s eyeline) was silently wetting himself with laughter (the tears were rolling down his face).
When I say “sang”, I mean talk singing, very similar to William Shatner talk-singing.
I sat there for four very awkward minutes.
I am not traumatised
Thankfully, he left not long after and didn’t sing another one.
In spite of that being the most awkward and strange thing I’ve ever experienced (to date, anyway), it didn’t put me off the album.
In fact the song Next! has become one of my favourites, despite it being about the atrocities of war and the people fighting in them. In fact there are quotes from both the English and French versions on the Quotes Page.
In case you were curious about the song Next!, here’s a link to the YouTube video. Enjoy.