Ticked-off
I’ve not had a good weekend; in fact, I’ve not had a good week - I’m thoroughly ticked-off (in the American sense). We have to deliver a big project next week and there are still some serious bugs remaining. In fact, if you look at the simplest measure in the bug database, there are 35 open “must-fix” bugs. The big-boss uses only this number as the measure of quality, and therefore asked me “formally” to inform my team that they were to come to the office to work this weekend in order to make sure that the number falls to zero for the shipping date (”otherwise, you and I will have some serious issues to discuss”, he said with what he obviously thought was a disarming smile). The problem with his request was that this involved asking two new guys to work this weekend, one of whom has been with us for only 3 weeks and has his child for the weekend only, and therefore would have to ask him to spend a sunny Saturday kicking his heels in an air-conditioned soulless office - a good preparation for later life maybe? The other unfortunate aspect of this is that I had to “formally” decline to come to the office, which made me feel even worse, and my boss even angrier, giving me a good ticking-off (in the British sense)
We planned to go to Beaune this weekend to leave the kids with Papi for the last week of the school holidays. I always enjoy these trips (see some of my first posts), as they are often accompanied by a purple haze of burgundy-red. To be honest, I could just have easily have sent my wife and sat in the office, presumably looking perplexedly at the list of bugs and writing a variation on this post, but what the hell, sorry guys, I’ve done the grind in the past, family and alcohol come first (not necessarily in that order).
Another reason not to work this weekend is that the hunting season starts next week, so the forests become off-limits to sane people for six months. This means that it is the last chance I will get to go mushroo
ming, it being a particularly good period, as the Girolles are in abundance (or so I thought). Saturday afternoon, after a long lunch, a siesta and a suitably concerned-sounding call to the office, we set off to the forest, armed with knives and bags for the kilos and kilos that we would undoubtedly be bringing back for dinner that evening.
French forests (the ones around Beaune anyway), are dense, dark, sprawling, and, at this time of year, damp underfoot. As you step on the fallen branches, they crumple like paper into a deep, shag-pile carpet of dead leaves. Girolles are orange mushrooms. Unfortunately, French slugs are orange too, as are dead leaves. In the past, when I have been looking for Girolles, you can put up with bending to pick up a slug, as you will always find clumps of mushrooms to make up for the disappointment. This time was different though. I saw nothing; clambering over the fallen branches, picking the spider’s webs from my hair and mouth, slipping down embankments for an hour or so with not a single sniff of fungus soon ticked me off. The only bright moments were seeing an adder glide off the path into the undergrowth - the first time I have seen a wild snake in Europe - and son 2 picking a toad out of a puddle and putting it inside son 1’s Wellington boot, much to everyone except son 1s’ amusement. As time wore on however, I began to feel more and more guilty about not staying in the office to give moral support, and thinking that I would never get back in time to call the big-boss with a status update (as if that would change anything).
Believe it or not, as we got back through the door, my phone was ringing and it was the big boss. This left me on the horns of a dilemma - answer and tell him that I didn’t know what the status was, or don’t answer, call a team member, and then call him back pretending that I didn’t know he had already called. I’ll let you guess which option I chose…
In fact, things had moved on surprisingly well in terms of the product quality. In terms of the bug count, however, things weren’t so good, falling only by about 5 or 6. My attempts to explain that a pure bug-count is not necessarily the best way to measure things fell on stony ground. Big-boss, once again, ticked off. Software team; tired and ticked-off. Me; ticked-off by the big-boss. Bugger it, let’s get a bottle, off with its cork and back into a purple haze.
So now it’s Sunday afternoon; the guilt of not being in work has worn off with the wine from Sunday lunch, and the apprehension of going back to work tomorrow has not yet settled in. Good news though - they are showing Wigan Athle-tick versus Chelski on TV. Small comfort, but you take it where you can. I settle back on the sofa, arms behind my head, and my wife says, “what’s that black spot in your armpit?”. I twist to look, thinking that maybe it’s a previously undiscovered mole, but this black spot is surrounded by a red ring.
A closer look, and it turns out that the only thing I brought back from the forest yesterday was a tick, a small burrowing insect that gets under your skin, gorges itself on your blood over several days, leaving you with Lyme disease, a particularly nasty infection that needs treating with antibiotics, otherwise you end up with arthritis and heart failure. Tweezers out, tick - OFF!
So, as the weekend ticks to a close, I’ll take a break, and wait until later to post about a hospital visit during the week that was possibly the worst since I was diagnosed as an epilep-tick…
