careering

So now we are entering the dark days of Waterstones Brentwood. Both Paula and Paul have left. They will be missed for their humour and for the work they did and even, yes, as people. When I mention work, I’m really talking about Paula. She did work none of the rest of us knew existed, though we will do now, when, left to accumulate, it suddenly falls down on top of us. Paul took a more leisurely approach, but I shall miss hearing his characteristic, immensely slow, tread on the stairs. Although it suggested the relentless advance of Frankenstein’s monster, it was oddly reassuring. It seemed to say that there was all the time in the world.

Genteel, intellectual, and sleepy, Paul was like a survivor from another age, a golden time when everyone who had a certain temperament was practically guaranteed a job for life with the BBC. Failing that, he had to make do with Ottakar’s, but, sadly, he decided that he needed money. On his leaving card I wrote that he’d never survive in the real world: ‘You’re doomed. Doomed, I tell you! DOOOOOMED!!!! All the best, Martin.’ The pen smudged, and I said that it was my tears. It wasn’t of course. It was just a crappy biro.

Here is my favourite anecdote about Paul:

We were loitering at the back gate of the shop, waiting for a guy to turn up with a skip, when a man in a plaid jacket who seemed to fit the bill came bounding along. Paul walked up to him, smiling shyly, and said, in his slightly suggestive, Leslie Philips kind of way: ‘Hello…’ The man, who was not our man at all of course, looked very uncomfortable, and hurried off, no doubt thinking we were elderly rent boys...

Which is probably how he'll end up, come to think of it.