Jonola14

TAXI BIRD

For over a year, I have been calling Debs ‘The Bird’ which to some is sexist and controversial; to others it is amusing; but to me it is a term of endearment and one that I now use through force of habit.

People at work ask “what are you doing this weekend?” to which I reply “music stuff, football on Sunday and seeing the Bird”; friends enquire “how’s the Bird?”; and she even calls herself ‘Bird’. Mother, of course, hates the fact that I call her ‘Bird’ and says things like ‘poor Debbie’; ‘I don’t know how she puts up with you’; and ‘you’ll end up losing her’, which I cast aside as poppycock, balderdash, piffle, nonsense and numerous other sorts of aloof turns of phrase.

It’s our work Christmas do on Saturday night and around 1,000 people will be descending on Battersea Park for a free bar, entertainment and a Race Around The Kasbah. Living in Watford is therefore a disadvantage so I asked one of the secretaries to book the Bird and I a taxi for the return journey for the early hours of Sunday morning.

This is the same PA that I wind up every day by playing mature practical jokes like removing the ball from her mouse, pushing in her chair to her desk while she’s sitting in it, and winding sellotape around her head.

She booked it under the name ‘Jon Cook and The Bird’. Touch