Dear Janie,
Thank you so much for my fantastic birthday present! I didn’t expect you to remember, seeing as you'd left your Palm Pilot behind. Sam popped in to deliver the prezzie just before lunch on my birthday, and I was so pleased to get it. He told me all about his holiday and filled me in on your news. He said you might be a bit homesick because you were really pleased to see him - I hope not?

It’s review time here again. Someone higher up than I can see has decided that not only will be go through the usual review process, but that managers will get 360 degree reviews. I think Über Boss was looking forward to giving Amy her review, but now he’s scared she’ll write nasty things about him and has been a kitten all week.

Mr McAndrew hasn’t got anything to worry about from me, although I only got "good" for routine work in my last review. To be totally fair, that’s because I let the filing pile up for six months. When I finally got around to it I found a contract that I’d sworn blind I’d never received, Mr. McAndrew’s Mont Blanc pen, and a half-eaten Mars bar that was joining the other two items together.

I got "very good" or "excellent" for everything else. I don’t think I could write anything nasty about Mr McAndrew even if there was anything to say, as I’d be worried he’d take it to heart and fret over it. His last PA told him that making coffee was demeaning for her, and he still goes out of his way to do more tea-runs than I do.

We have a Sam-replacement in sales now. Xander (short for Alexander) has arrived complete with action plans and a file of business cards so large he’s requisitioned an extra filing cabinet for them. Pete is now in the throes of contact-jealousy and has set up his own "electronic" filing system, which I know for a fact is just an Excel spreadsheet with some pretty colours. I offered to put it in a proper database for him but he got very cagey. I think he’s taken twenty names and copied them over and over again.

Xander doesn’t do any graphic design like Sam did, so our other new addition is Tony who wears cardigans and looks just like my Grandad. The "young and thrusting" sales boys weren’t sure he’d fit in (probably because he can communicate with people without making puerile jokes) but he knocked everybody’s socks off with the first set of designs he did. We got chatting when I took him a Friday cream cake and he told me he used to do cartoons for The Times and that he worked on three Disney films including Dumbo. When I looked him up on the web I found a page saying he was "Britain’s biggest contribution to the development of computer-aided graphic design". And Pete was wondering if Tony would cope with Lotus Notes!

Emma, who we still call "the new girl in IT", is Über Boss’ new favourite, although to be fair she does have the grace to be embarrassed about it. She was apparently the first person to explain to him that when it says “Hit any key”, there isn’t actually a key that is called the “any key” and that really, any key would do! You can just imagine that conversation, can’t you?

The reason Emma’s in favour is partly because Perry is in the doghouse. The fax in reception broke and Perry wasn’t allowed £200 for a new one. So he got the spare laptop (brand new), hooked it up to a modem, a new printer and a scanner, installed some scanning and fax software and got Reception to use that instead.

Über Boss congratulated him on his lateral thinking and problem solving skills and would call Perry for man-to-man chats on gadgets - until Ms Rigby in Accounts got the bill told Über Boss that Perry had spent ten times the cost of a new fax machine. Mike has had to banish Perry to the stores to clean the gunk out of all the old mice as punishment.

I think Ms Rigby has a crush on Mr McAndrews. She always seems to be calling and asking him if he wants to "do lunch", or she drops by to discuss his expenses claim. He keeps telling her she needs to talk to me about it because I handle that sort of thing for him (I take the big pile of receipts he finds in his pockets at the end of the month and try and decipher what he’s done, where he’s been and how he got there). Ms Rigby hasn’t been to see me yet, though.

Mr McAndrews blushes whenever I mention her name, but I don’t think she’s his type. Mostly because she says things like "do lunch" which sets Mr Andrews off about how people should be having lunch not doing it. He said something about the present imperfect participle (I think) but I got a bit lost. The wiggly green lines in Word take care of grammar for me!

Mr McAndrews did buy me dinner on my birthday. Shame it was a takeaway pizza because we had to work late to finish the end of season report. He promised me we would go somewhere the next time we both get a free lunchtime. That'll be 2006 then.

That’s it for now. I hope all is well in sunny climes and that we can meet up soon!

Lots of love,

Kerry

xxx

EB