Verlaine at the HR Christmas drinks

When his name came up she said that she had just been reading Edmund White’s biography of Rimbaud, and doing what all of us do – that is, googling the protagonists, Rimbaud and Verlaine – and as soon as she recognised our colleague in that famous painting (short nosed, bald and overly upright with his lover Rimbaud on one side and a flask of red wine on the other), she had to re-evaluate what he had been saying all year about his wife and their ADHD sons, who had their mother’s sense of humour (noticeable pause) – and also that imitation of the poor woman in Customer Service, which always had us laughing, since he could do her shoulders and her way of clutching at the cup she’d emblazoned with all the names of her long deceased cats. My friend said it was clear how this colleague had survived through the centuries. First, he was obviously intelligent, and then came his cunning way of insinuating himself into every drinks event that went on in Human Resources, when he really worked in Accounts – as of course he had never done a thing for HR (and the sheer quantity of drink he put away should have made them wary of hosting their Christmas event on site ever again). He only did Accounts.

No ride home

Of course, the moment it lengthened its end, straining to perceive what I was, I could see that the thick black slug which had burped its blood on the kitchen floor -- trailing it after itself as if feigning an injury or suddenly overcome with bilious despair -- that this slug was in fact a leech that had taken a one hundred kilometre ride from its bed of mud and, like a fat boy ensconced in a beanbag in front of an endless PlayStation racing car track in someone else's house, seeped tears as he played since there was no ride home.