Friends, do YOU work in an office? And, if you do, do you have a co-worker who routinely enters through a window, even if you work on the 99th floor, say?
Most of us would hold our hands up and say "yes" to that question, I suspect! Did you see the story about poor local man Pete Slocomb from nearby Nob End, in this morning's Onion News (West Worcestershire) print edition? Again most of us would give a hearty "yes" to that enquiry too, so I think I'm definitely "on a roll with my "barrage" of interrogations for you this morning, which is a nice experience once in a while (!).
Poor Slocomb!!! But it's a weirdly familiar story to me personally, let me confess (!).
Yes, at the office where Yours Truly used to work, until I retired 18 years ago (would you believe (!)), such "dramatic entrances" were so common, that we didn't even turn our heads! Although we all worked for the UK Government, I myself was just a lowly medium-to-top-secret agent, DS-grade (deskwork specialist), while many of my co-workers were, on a daily basis, risking life and limb on semi-dangerous "spy-capers" out in the real world, and they were known to routinely practise items of "fieldcraft" on their daily commute.
What's slightly less well-known is that bursting through a window is a two-way "thing", and many forget that the ability to 'burst out' through a window is sometimes as useful as 'bursting in'. Pause for a moment, and you'll see that that's true!
And I remembered this little "wrinkle" this morning, reading the Hungarian news (as you do!).
Do you remember that story from December 2020 about that Hungarian MEP (Member of European Parliament) who was taking part in a Christmastime orgy in Brussels? And do you remember how the politician escaped through a window and out along a gutter, when the 25-person orgy was raided by Belgian police? It beat the "Boris Johnson in Downing Street Lockdown Drinks Party" headlines into a cocked hat, that's for sure!
flashback to December 2020: the Hungarian MEP, József Szájer,
taking part in a Christmastime orgy in a Brussels apartment, who
escaped through a window, injuring himself, when police raided the building
how one Hungarian cartoonist pictured the scene: through the window,
we can see police arresting participants in the Christmas orgy,
while Santa Claus attempts to enter via one drainpipe, and
Hungarian MEP József Szájer exits by another - what madness !!!!!
Even budget UK airline RyanAir joined in the fun with this much-publicised ad on social media.
Much unfavourable comment was made at the time about the orgy's participants being mostly men with just a handful of women, which seemed to sit rather oddly with Jószef Szájer's party Fidesz and its official tough anti-LGBTQ stance, but I'm going to let that one slide - Szájer is now back in public life after a 4-year absence, but says he's given up politics and he doesn't want to talk about orgies right now, so fair enough!
Other headlines from Hungary this week are more sombre than the Szájer story, which is a pity, Geert Wilders being the current controversially crazy Dutch leader and Csurka a controversially current crazy Hungarian politician.
What madness !!! And time to reflect, perhaps? And is there any connection with this other headline today?
Today is a day for reflection for me in any case, as it's what would have been the 77th birthday of my dear late sister Kathy, had she lived.
as Lois and I walk over Poolbrook Common and have our americano and
toasted tea-cake at the café this morning we pause to think about my dear
late sister Kathy, who would have turned 77 today, had she lived.
Here are Kathy and me as kids, standing by the stone bird-bath in the snow-covered back garden of our home in North London, back in January 1955; me aged 8, Kathy aged 7 and our little brother Steve, aged 2 and a half.
flashback to January 1955: me (8), Kathy (7)
with our little brother Steve (2 and a half)
Kathy doesn't feature a lot in my collection of old family photo albums: and the ones that used to be there on the pages, are mostly blank spaces now.
She 'unstuck' many of the photos of herself, and removed them from the family albums after she moved to the States in 1983, eventually getting married there. But there were never that many photos of Kathy to begin with, simply because, as she became a teenager she became a bit semi-detached from the rest of us. She was always "the cool one", seldom going on family holidays, preferring to "do her own thing", usually involving something much cooler than what the rest of use were doing, to put it mildly!
Here she is aged about 12 or 13, "bursting into womanhood" in the back garden of our home in Bristol (not at this exact moment haha (!)):
Why did she move to the US in 1983? Well, she was always looking for a bit more excitement in her life, plus I think she had probably been a bit jealous of me when, in 1982, I started on a 3-year stint in the Washington area working for a US Government agency with my wife Lois and our 2 young daughters Alison (7) and Sarah (5).
I was on the British Embassy payroll and this made it easier for her to get a secretarial job at the Embassy, starting in the spring of 1983. And Kathy was actually living with us in our 4-bedroom house in Columbia Maryland for her first few months, before finding her own place in Washington DC.
flashback to 1983: one of the earliest pictures of us all -
me, Lois and the girls, plus a very blonde and cool-looking Kathy,
standing on some pier in Maryland, waiting to go on a boat ride
How our two young daughters loved her - who wouldn't want to have a "cool" auntie when you're that age, especially now that you're becoming more and more conscious that your own parents are not really as cool as you probably thought they were when you first came into the world, and you notice that they seem to be forever telling you what you must do and what you mustn't do - my goodness, no!
flashback to 1983: (left) at Washington Zoo and (centre, right)
Boston, Massachusetts, by the harbour and re-living the Boston Tea Party of 1773
It was great to have her in the house with us, having a laugh with us, watching MTV and the films in the evening on HBO and Showtime, on our "cable TV", while enjoying glasses of beer (with me) or glasses of Babycham with Lois, and travelling round with us at the weekends and eating out all 5 of us together, which was nice.
As an ex-barmaid who'd done evening work for extra money in pubs in Bristol, Kathy passed on to me loads of insider tips and super-hints about drinking beer, including how to pour a can out into a glass without it foaming over the top - so it was goodbye to beer-soaked shirt-sleeves, and since then I've never looked back haha!
Kathy came with us on holidays that year, like the one pictured above to New England - at nearly 500 miles the longest drive I had ever done in my life by, like, a billion miles [Really, a billion? - Ed] , sharing the driving with me, which was a relief, to put it mildly.
I felt it was a real time for me to properly "reconnect" with her, and it's always remained a special time in my life, with some unique memories to cherish.
After several months Kathy moved out of our house and got a flat in Washington DC, which was more convenient for her workplace. By now she'd got her own car, a second-hand Ford Mustang which I took her out to buy locally in Columbia. And some time after that she met an American called Steve, who worked at the local CNN bureau, and they got married, by a JP in Virginia I think, a few months after Lois, myself and the girls moved back to England in August 1985.
the four of us - Lois and me and the girls - plus a stray neighbour kid,
waving goodbye to Kathy by the front door of our house in Columbia Maryland.
(left and centre) with Kathy and Steve on the roof of their apartment
building in Washington DC - the city cathedral is visible in the background;
and (right) little Sarah in the empty CNN studios on a weekend,
with plenty of time to practise her news-reading skills, which was nice.
Awwwwww!!!!!!
Happy days!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzz!!!!!
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