Eurodan in English

Small World

It's time for a belated online hello to my new neighbour, Matt.

Matt and I started work at Lycos in London on the same day at neighbouring desks. It was the first Monday in January 2001 and most of the staff were still on holiday or hung over, and our boss was ill and wouldn't in fact show up for some time to come. Matt was the news and sport channel editor and I was in charge of the music channel. It felt a bit like when Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect landed on the semi-abandoned Vogon freighter, in fact. For some time we had literally nothing to do, and no way of even knowing how to go about getting anything to do.

Ah yes, happy times. I jumped off the sinking ship within a year - the very crassness of working for such a lumbering, self-important buffoon-fest of a company with a truly lame-duck product held together by sticky-tape was the final, line-in-the-sand experience I needed to give me the 'life can't go on like this' epiphany I was due for and send me hurtling towards my change of career and a much happier existence. So never say that web portals don't have their uses. Besides, I also got to meet Craig David and Emma Bunton.

Matt held on for considerably longer than I did, and managed to put in a very creditable couple of years of pretending to be busy by letting his calls roll over onto voicemail while reading the Guardian Online and looking for a subsequent project much more worthy of his intellect.

Anyway, the reason I'm waffling on about all this is that back then, when we started at Lycos, I felt it was really rather a coincidence, seeing as we both came from Hull, had started on the same day, were working at neighbouring desks, (and both had rather a liking for all things German, as it happens).

But the improbability drive has been cranked up considerably higher of late, as Matt has now moved to Brussels to take up an altogether much more fitting post with the Greater London Authority's European Office, and - get this - has moved into the flat upstairs in this building with his partner Emma!

In fact, the pictures taken on this website which are supposedly of my flat are actually the one which is now Matt's - they're owned by the same landlord, you see.

Anyway, now that the improbability drive has sufficiently warmed up (apologies for the non-Douglas Adams readers), I think it's time to shimmy on over to Alpha Centaurii. Apparently they have different liquorice.

Posted by Eurodan at July 6, 2004 10:43 PM