2007 — Day 64 - the rain, it droppeth on the Just
When Christa returns, it should be carrying a helium-filled birthday balloon for the Aged P. Let's hope it stays inflated until tomorrow, at least.
An end to IBM (mis)management
The inept clown confessed he'd forgotten to remove me from the payroll (hence the odd payslip a couple of days ago). It will likely take me months to retrieve the tax even though another part of IBM honorably coughed up the over-payment of my AVC within three weeks or so of noticing it. (Computers work in the blink of an eye, don't you know?)
Then he told me he'd given me my final performance rating in absentia on 1st January, logged on to the "system" as me to accept it (is that ethical?), and had thereby exposed me to the faint possibility of a minimal bonus in March by giving me the poorest rating I've had for 15 years, despite giving me a payrise earlier in the year.
"Not with a bang, but a whimper".
Moving right along
I bumped into Christa's pal Gillian; she "mans" the till in the Oxfam bookshop and recognised me as I was in there buying:
- Zen for cats by Henry Beard who, in an earlier phase of his existence, was a stalwart of the National Lampoon while it carried the sublime work of Shary Flenniken
- My brief career by Harry Mount (the amo, amas, amat chap, for those without total recall) recounting his failed attempt to hack it as a barrister
- The genius of Shaw edited by Michael Holroyd, aka A Symposium if you please! Holroyd is, of course, the authorised biographer. To be
honest, I would have paid the £10 total for just this title but we poor pensioners (see above) have to be careful these days.
The first of these, having been read in the car while waiting for She who must be adored to return, will be housed on Len's shelf in due course! One of them was classified on the till receipt as "academic" — I wonder which one?