12 hours on cheese corner

I’m going slowly deaf. I suppose it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise given my family history - but the process of ageing and its effects still catch me off guard when they start to manifest themselves.

One of the changes to my semi retired lifestyle, post France, has been the opportunity to take up a bit of casual work in order to pay for the little luxuries in life...like food. 

Given The Current Mrs Brooms compulsion to keep ordering “essentials” off Amazon I’d not been in the People’s Republic of West Wales for long before I signed myself up with a job agency to see what was out there. Not a lot as it transpired. In fact I’d almost given up on the whole thing when I received a phone call from the agency offering me a very interesting, apparently once in a lifetime, opportunity. 

Now in my defence and in light of the first paragraph I did take the call in a very noisy environment, on a mobile phone that I still haven’t really got to grips with.

The nice lady from the agency wanted to know if I’d be prepared to work in a “G String factory”? My mind was instantly abuzz. I mean, at the very worst I’d be manufacturing parts for guitars, but at the best, well the best had to mean exotic ladies underwear, surely?

In a state of high excitement I attended the address I’d been given the very next week, where confusion and attendant disappointment quickly set in. It was apparent at 5:30 in the morning, even to my jaded eyes, that the site was not designed for the production of exotic underwear, or indeed musical instrument parts, for it was very plainly a massive dairy.

So then, not actually G Strings at all, no what they wanted me for was Cheese Strings... Doh.

The facility specialises in what I’d loosely term, mozzarella, and I’ve been working 12 hour shifts there off and on since January last. In the cruellest twist of fate I’ve gone from top flight accountant at the Trinity Mirror group in Canary Wharf, a sort of big cheese if you will, to a bloke that merely moves boxes of cheese. I laugh to myself at the irony of the situation regularly. The night shift gives you plenty of opportunity to reflect on your life choices I can tell you. 12 hours alone on cheese corner (an area of the factory) has been known to break a man.

Anywhoo it was on one of my half hour rests there, during a night shift, that I got a garbled voice mail from the missus about a cat she’d been looking to buy. Given that the old hearings on the wane I strained to make out the message and had to repeat it several times. Something, something, Persian Birman cross, something. Bit of a weight, something something 750 pounds. Could we have too....something.

Bloody hell I thought 750 Ib was one hell of a big cat, she was right about the weight issue. The cat flap was going to need to be bigger than the ruddy door. Very tired but ever the supportive husband I sent her a message back telling her to do what she felt was right but that she should try to clarify the size of the beast.

Mmm. 

Turns out the message actually was that she’d found a Persian Birman cross cat that was only 750 pounds but that we’d have to wait a while to collect it. Then it got worse because “could we have too...” actually was meant to be, “could we have two?”

She’d sent the breeder the money on the back of my apparent approval!

So, several months on from this little CAT astrophe, and in an effort to shore up the contention that there are more pictures of cats on the internet than porn, here are our two new potential miniature mangling fiends. Hope you like them. Margot is the ginger and Elton the white. A steal at only £1500 quid the pair.

Just as a bye the bye, it’s just occurred to me that this time last year I was attempting to put out a fire on the brakes of the lorry that  I was using to bring back all our worldly goods from France. 800 miles using only the gears and  handbrake to slow down an overloaded vehicle is not to be recommended I can assure you. How time flies eh when you’re having fun!