Jono, being Jono, is never a shy public speaker and will do what he can to woo his spectators. Even at a business meeting, I wouldn’t put balancing a canoe on his nose while riding a miniature bicycle beyond him if he felt it would impress his audience. Seeing his earlier squirms, I am certain that today he has no choice but to face the music on his poor week. “Whoops!” he says as he, with clear intent, theatrically drops his notes on the floor. “That’s a shame gang, but proves, my friends, that little annoying things can happen to the best of us.” He then produces a smile Tom Cruise would be offended by. Oh dear, I see exactly where he’s going here, he’s going to gloss over the bad week he had by making a few funnies and performing party tricks. “You see team, unfortunately I haven’t had as great a week as my handsome mate sitting opposite me; and he is handsome isn’t he?” He gestures in my direction and gets a little laugh from the studio audience; if he hadn’t used such a sarcastic tone I might actually be complimented. I remain straight faced as he carries on with his ‘Jono made a booboo, sorry’ charade, before he sits down and basks in the glory of the chuckling crowd forgiving him for his misdemeanours. He may as well have made and passed around balloon animals, anything to distract from the truth. His job is to raise money for the fund; he’s not doing that, if fact he’s losing clients, so surely at least Brian is outraged?
I turn to Brain, who doesn’t look pleased, but more importantly, doesn’t look irritated either. He is using his aggravating neutral face, the one where you don’t know what’s coming next. Bizarrely, he moves on to the next agenda item, which is some nonsense about labelling your food items in the fridge. Unbelievable. How did Brian, or anyone else, let him get away with that, it was daylight robbery! My achievements have been completely ignored because of a circus act, who earlier committed a murder, but could juggle well so who cares. This is un-Brian like and I’m gob-smacked because Brian, like myself, has a pet hate for bull.
The ‘art’ of bull is not something I hold in high regard. Misdirection from the truth, lying, or feigning knowledge of a subject will always get exposed in the rat race, eventually. Brian and I have a nose for bull. We’ve been in meetings where so much bull has surrounded us that we felt like the clean-up crew in Pamplona after the cattle had a big curry night. In said meetings, you either decide to put up with it and then take your business elsewhere in future, or expose the bull artist for what they are. My preference is the latter, and so is Brian’s.
Even Jono is bright enough to be aware of Brian’s intolerance to bull, but for some reason the boss has let this one slide. I stop myself from objecting to this nonsense because I wonder if Jono knows something I don’t? My outrage has now been temporarily replaced by the need to get to the bottom of all this…time to become Columbo again. But damn, my Omega tells me that, unfortunately, my detective work will have to wait until after lunch. It’s time to go feed and water Pete Dunstan.
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