Grey, Overweight and Ugly

Spending a lot of time, as I do in my male staff's reverse people smuggling office, it never ceases to amaze me how long he and the ladies spend with their ears glued to the telephone. Once when my male staff put his phone down on the desk I left my green bean momentarily and moseyed over to it in order to discover what is so fascinating about it. Let me tell you, you're not missing much. It was just music with frequent interjections from some woman telling the listen that "Your call is important to us. Thank you for your patience. Please continue to hold, an operator will be with you shortly." Imagine listening to that all day, it would be worse than having a conversation with Badger, or worse still listening to a speech by David Cameron.

Years ago, when my male staff was young and even more stupid than he is now. He smeared black boot polish all over the old style black handset of his boss's phone and then phoned him from his desk opposite. Naturally, the boss picked up the phone after a couple rings.
 "Hello...........hello?" Quizzical expression, shrugs, puts phone down. Picks up vital paperwork. Look of abject horror spreads across his face as he sees black smears on the paperwork which obscures much of the writing. He drops the paperwork and puts his hand to his face. Now he has black hand prints on his face as well as one black ear. Next he pushes himself up from his desk, leaving two hand prints on his desk. He stands there behind his desk, utterly perplexed with his hands resting on his hips - on trousers which will have to be thrown away when he gets home. He scratches his head and immediately starts to look like a Grecian 2000 advertisement. Meanwhile my younger and even more stupid male staff has his head down over his own paperwork, pretending not to notice. This immediately draws suspicion to him because everyone else in the office has been alerted that something might be amiss by the bad language emitted by his boss. Language which grows louder and more obscene each time he touches something. By now, virtually everything within a radius of five metres of my younger even more stupid male staff's boss is plastered with shoe polish and my younger and even more stupid male staff is thinking that perhaps his amusing little prank was not such a great idea after all. He was philosophical about it, he didn't much like the job anyway, but he's never been keen on phones ever since. You'd think that would be quite a handicap for a reverse people smuggler, given the amount of time they seem to spend listening to music and recorded messages on them.

Dame Edna Everage. Or is it my male staff?

Meanwhile my male staff has purchased himself a new pair of prescription sunglasses. The girls who work in his favourite cafe have variously described them as "cool", "groovy" and "trendy". Which is odd since none of them seem to have a white stick or a Labrador. My female staff, Badger and I all think they make him look like Dame Edna Everage. Badger barely manages to stifle a snigger every time he sees him, and whispers "Hello possums" under his breath. Still, all this attention from the ladies has my male staff convinced that he looks like someone called Justin Beaver, and that may be the case if this Justin dude, whoever he is, is middle aged, grey, overweight and as ugly as a rhino's bottom passage. As I understand it Mr Beaver has a little quiff of hair at the front, while my male staff has a number two buzz cut all over - well, not all over exactly, just on his head. Therefore my male staff and I recently entered into negotiations with a view to yours truly being placed on my male staff's head to enhance his Justin Beaver-ness.

There are a few problems to be solved. Firstly I find it hard to sit still for more than two minutes, so unless Mr Beaver has mobile hair, people will probably notice fairly quickly that my male staff is in fact not Justin. They'll certainly notice when I stretch out my legs as I am wont to do, and knock his new sunglasses off with one of my furry feet. The other major problem I envisage is the fact that we cavies have notoriously weak bladders and incredibly prolific bowels. My male staff's solution to this was to shove one tube up my bottom passage and stick another on the end of my.......ahem.......what my female staff calls my "cute little winky". These tubes would then feed into a kind of cavy colostomy bag which he intended to strap to his back under his shirt. Though how he's going to hide the lump has not yet been discussed. Well, there was no way I was going to have anything to do with this hair-brained (excuse the pun) scheme, just so that he could massage his own ego. Firstly, his head is a long way from the ground and I don't like heights. and secondly I'm not at all sure that I want to be seen in the company of someone who looks like a cross between Dame Edna Everage and the hunchback of Notre Dame.

BADGER'S FOOTNOTE
Billy reckons I look like one of those old black phones. Well Billy, do old black phones have beautifully manicured feet? I don' think so.