A Farewell To Charms

I've Probably Used That Before
Except none of you will remember, and I doubt anyone bar me reading this will be so obsessive as to trawl through over thirteen hundred and odd posts to see if I did, indeed, already use it.
     In the above title I refer, of course, to the imminent departure of Charlotte, one of my co-workers on the Seventh Floor of the Electric Goldfish Bowl.  I also cover how long it takes a party of women to put on make up.
     Excuse me whilst I add-in a picture of <thinks> ENIAC!

This was hot stuff in 1946

     ENIAC stands for "Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer", it came into being in 1946 and helped with the calculations on the feasibility of thermonuclear weapons.
     However, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the departure of Charlotte, which is intentional, as I don't want the photograph of the lass herself to be displayed on Facebook by default.
     "Is she young and attractive?" I hear the lechers amongst you query.  PUT YOUR TONGUES BACK IN!  Conrad isn't going to respond to anything so shallow.  Art?

Charlotte is on the left

     Here she is.  Typically, she had responded with considerable vim to the attempts of Naz and myself to kill a wasp that had formed a mysterious bond of attraction with our party.  "No!  Don't kill it!" was her impassioned wail.
     I think my tash could do with a trim, don't you?  Off to the hairdressers next weekend I think, as my plumage is looking a -
     - sorry, got a little side-tracked there.  I said "typically" as Charlotte is a graduate of something Animal-y and is keen on living things of all varieties.  When convalescing in the car park of Heaton Park*, she explained that the occasional bee one sees lying unmoving on the ground is actually suffering from exhaustion; it can be revived by offering it a solution of sugar dissolved in water.  How long this will take is academic, but surely shorter than the time it takes a party of women to put on make up.
     Fittingly, she is off to be an intern at a zoo, working in the Aquarium**.  This wasn't her first choice, but competition for working with the Large Carnivores (Lions and Tigers) is as fierce as the critters themselves.  I suppose working with tomorrow's fish fingers doesn't have the same kudos.

Point proven

     Typically of your humble scribe, the above is nothing to do with the main point of this article, which is:  How long does it take a party of women to put on their make up?
     I ask this because we finished at 5:00, and your modest artisan had to be on his way by 6:00 to catch the last direct bus home.  I anticipated having about an hour to enjoy a delicious soft drink, which didn't take into account how infernally long it takes a party of women to put on their make up.  By 5:15 I was tapping my toes.  By 5:20 we were down in the atrium of the EGB, still waiting.  How long does it take a party of women to put on make up?  Entirely too <add rude word here> long!

No sign of them.

     The clock rolled around to 5:30 before they assembled in a giggling flock, and -
     - WHAT NOW!  WHAT IS IT NOW!?
     Lack of money.  Unlike your talented typist, they hadn't bothered to arm themselves with sufficient money for the night out, so there was another loooong pause as they all took turns getting money out of the cash machine in the EGB's atrium.
     Then we walked to Sinclair's, which took another 10 minutes, so Conrad had time to arrive, say hello, say cheerio and depart***.
     Well, apart from having time to take that photo, which I will roll out again:

Once again, I am on the right

     I feel obliged to point out which person is me, just to be clear.
     Another thing I feel obliged to point out is that I will not miss Charlotte on the floor one little bit.  Not at all.
     "Gosh, Conrad!  How thoroughly like your unpleasant and churlish self!" I hear you chorus.  Well, only because she's far too efficient and capable; she makes other people look bad by comparison, so the overall level of performance ought to drop once she's out of the way.

Well, I seem to have clocked up the word count without doing anything except bang on about how long it takes women to put on make up, which is one of those unexplained mysteries of our times^.  I shall be back tomorrow with a whole lot of other scrivel, don't you worry.

Remember - keep watching the skies!

Or else ...

*  I was convalescing, being old and tired.
** There's a joke in there somewhere, I know it.
*** Not really, but it's funnier this way.
^  Nobel prize in the offing here, chaps.