The Long Goodbye

[rhythmaning]

So it has been quite a week. A lot of booze has been drunk, though the hangovers – if any – that I have had I think have been disproportionately gentle. A lot of goodbyes were said.

It started off last Friday night; a celebration for four people leaving work. Well, it actually started the night before, down in London: my colleagues from London that were leaving left, but I wasn’t there, so I can’t tell you what went on (my spies tell me it was a late night; “jaded… very jaded” was the description of the following morning).

So up north here, it started on the Friday night. Part of a bar on George St, a place we used to go when we worked in St Andrew Square – before the move west, to the Ubermeister’s headquarters outside of the city limits – before, when we were able to socialise in the evening, just stop out for a glass or two or four of wine – part of a bar on George St had been set aside, fallow, for the departing and their company. That’s us.

Needless to say, I was late; but I was one of the first there. More or less. I started on the white wine – and, magically, I managed to stick to white wine. This is nothing less than miraculous, and though I reckoned I must have drunk a minimum of two full bottles – and probably a lot more – this is why I wasn’t suffering too much the following day. (So I was suffering; just not as much as I might have deserved.) It also explains how I managed to have conversation about pretty technical work stuff without remembering a word. (The other night, someone asked me about a conversation I had had about “gestalt theory”. Clearly last Friday I had been able to hold my own on this topic – it sounded like we had had a lively debate. Except that I have no recollection of the conversation taking part at all. I thought I had barely spoken to G. – the reason we were in conversation the other night was that I was apologising for not having spoken to her on Friday. “Oh, but you did…” she said – and laid all this gestalt stuff at my feet.)

One of the guys that was leaving I had known for twelve years – since I joined the firm. We worked very closely for a few years, working away from home for weeks at a time – a team of four; that was the most interesting time I have had at work – a really smart team, doing new stuff, making it up as we went along. What I relished about J. is that he thought perpendicularly to me – we never came at something from the same angle – apart from music.

(He’s from the west coast, and raves about the Blue Nile. But he is also a jazz fan; he buys so many CDs that he has to smuggle them into his house, in case his wife finds out. Strangely enough, one of the other members of the team was also a jazz fan – he was there too, last week – so whenever we got bored with work, we’d talk about jazz. This really got to the fourth member of the team – who had no interest in jazz at all. Though we did manage to drag him along to a David Sanborn gig one night when we were working in London.)

So there we all were, talking jazz. Well, three of us. And drinking wine, more wine, beer.

It turns out that, despite four people (from a local team of maybe ten or twelve – so that’ll be eleven) leaving – a fair number – there hadn’t been any kind of ceremonial in the office. Nada. Rien. Which I thought was pretty damn poor, but didn’t surprise me at all. In fact, it really hacked me off.

There was a lot of wine (had I said that?). And then the department head turned up, keen to improve her scores on the annual employee opinion survey. So she stuck her credit card behind the bar. So – let’s just get this straight – she couldn’t be bothered to say goodbye in the office, no leaving speech or anything, no thanks-and-we’re-sorry-to-see-you-go (though of course she wasn’t) – no nothing – but hey! Let’s bribe everybody with some booze.

It has to be said that it worked fine, no problem, and the bar staff helped us chalk up quite a debt on the card. (I really, really hope that it was a personal card, rather than the corporate number – I mean, I hope it was her own money. Please. Please…)

There was quite a crowd gather to say goodbye; people who have all known each other for a long time, so it was good night.

I have no idea what I said to most people. I remember someone telling me I should be an academic, purely based on the way I looked. (I need a hair cut.) I really hope I swore at her, though I doubt I did.

It was good to catch, even if I have no recollection of most of the conversations with which I was involved.

Thing is, one woman – I’d say, girl, but I might get crucified – was in a show – she is a dancer when she isn’t at work. And at work, she had said she’d be there at ten thirty, and I had said I’d be long gone. So she gets there at ten thirty or so, and I am still there. This is some four hours after I got there, so pretty late on. (It was round about now that we had the conversation about gestalt. F*ck that.)

I was there for another hour or so – I only know that because my wife told me what time I got home (and she says that we had all sorts of conversations – I seem to have made a load of promises when I was speaking through the sauvignon blanc) – until there was a move to go dancing. Oh no. When someone says, it is time to go dancing, you know, you really know, that it is time to go home.

So they all went off dancing for another three hours, whilst I sloughed off home to sleep fitfully, angrily, and to laze in bed until midday. When all I was good for was buying fish to feed frankie_ecap and her man K., and then slump in front of the tv watching the FA Cup semi final. Not moving. And with the sound turned down.

(Read the next post for the next instalment of this thrilling story…)