Too Few Candles (He's Really Old)I can't pinpoint when it was that GingerBeard and I became friends. For the longest time I could never remember his name; he'd call in to my office to use my scanner - which was just as well as I'd demanded one when they were fitting out my office and then never used it. I'd promise to email him the files and then have to sit there for ten minutes with my colleague trying to remember what his surname might be so that I could send the stuff on. He earned kudos by calling to have things scanned close to lunchtime and then agreeing to pick me up a sandwich while he was out, somehow this progressed to invitations for after-work pints with himself and his mate ("You should come, he has lovely hair. Bouffant style. Wait til you see..."). By now it feels like I've known him for years.
He drives me mental. He takes the piss out me constantly and in public, laying it on particularly thick about my twin Achilles heels; that I'm lacking in sense of both the common and fashion varieties. He mocks my fickle attitude to romance and my inept pursuit of same. He antagonises me when I have a hangover and am hovering dangerously close to tears. He makes valiant if not always successful efforts to cheer me up when I'm having a black day, and he occasionally brings me chocolate. He thinks my blog is ridiculous* but reads it most days and has perfected the art of making "put that in your blog!" sound just like a stinging riposte. He's stubborn as a pig, kind-hearted, annoyingly overprotective, disarmingly funny and touchingly generous. I piss him off royally and unintentionally by doing all manner of things (like laughing at him when he falls off his bike) but thankfully, he always gets over it.
He turns, oh, I dunno, 38 or something today.
*I should perhaps qualify that by saying that he thinks all blogs are ridiculous, and only reads mine and his brother's. I'm not sure which one of ours he thinks is worse.
