Back to the grind

It's the final countdown

I re-started work yesterday and i've been upto my eyeballs in it ... no time to breathe, people to see and e-mails to reply to.

There's been a bit of friction whilst i was away between one of my collegues and one of the secretaries ... i really don't want to be involved in it all and i just don't want to be taking sides - it's not my problem, it's for them to sort out between themselves.

I've got a sneaking suspicion, however, that the root of the problem lies in the way that my colleague deals with people in general; he's too much of a nice guy and wants to be a friend to every-one.

He's also not the most direct of people and tends to go around the houses when he explains even the most simplest of things - he annoys me with that as well.

This then means people tend to switch off, so he in turn gets wound up because people don't listen to him and you sense a general feeling of frustration setting in and so on and so forth.

I have the distinct impression that he has been told, either by our boss or by our boss' boss to 'impose' himself ... which appears to have made things worse - in france we talk about le petit chef meaning someone who trys to behave like the boss when the boss is away ... once that perception starts to seep in, there's the inevitable uphill struggle to regain credibility ... so my colleague's in for a tough old time with that one.

I can't really intervene because i'm not suposed to be aware of any of this stuff.

A part from all that, i've been asked to organise a bit of a social evening for the start of next month.

We know a guy who was voted meilleur somelier 2001 (best wine taster/expert 2001) who has a very nice little appartment on the rue de Rivoli, overlooking Le Louvre.

The idea is that we invite people along to get pissed up learn about wine and how to describe it using technical terms - it's really great fun.

We've already had a few piss ups done some red wine tasting, champagne tasting and we organised a blow out a nice morning brunch with the help of la maison du chocolat just before easter.

The next one is about identifying which wine goes best with which cheese.

I have to find about a dozen people who'd be interested; this shouldn't be too difficult, but in france, we're now hitting a period chock a block with bank holidays (for obscure saints, mostly) where people tend to make the most of it to have long weekends.

So, in a mission impossible stylie, i have about ten days to get this thing up and running.