The Water-Rat captured by pirates

[shewhomust]

greengolux returned from holiday without any pictures, and people - specifically, co-workers - accused her of selfishness. Her post on the subject reminded me of something I didn't quite get round to posting about last summer: so here, better late than never, are Brian Wilson's holiday photos.

Neil and Jan came to stay last summer, to see the Tall Ships and have a holiday. Jan brought with her a vivid reminder of office life, of the way groups of people who spend much of their life together, but don't necessarily have much in common except the work which doesn't entirely absorb and fascinate them - in those circumstances, people latch onto whatever entertainment they can find. Trivial subjects are elaborated into epic narratives and complex jokes.

This reminder took the form of a toy hamster. He looked more like a guinea pig, but Jan assured us that he was a hamster - one of a collection of singing hamsters which lived on the desk of a colleague. This particular hamster was Brian Wilson (as you could tell from the surf board), and Jan's holiday task was to send back to work a photograph of Brian Wilson on his holidays.

We started modestly; Brian peeked out of Jan's backpack while she admired Durham cathedral, and the resultant photo was e-mailed back to the office. But we got caught up in the project, began to make stops so that Brian could have his picture taken, enjoyed the sheer absurdity of the exercise.




We perched him on the Angel of the North - which has, after all, replaced the Five Bridges as the emblem of Tyneside. We took him to Whitley Bay - how could we not have taken our Beach Boy to the seaside? And we took him to see the Tall Ships sailing out to sea, past the Customs House in South Shields.

At first this didn't seem a very promising prospect for photography: it was a grey, damp day, and the ships were all far out on the Tyne. But there were a crowd of people there, all determined to enjoy themselves, and some of them had taken this to the extent of dressing in pirate gear. By now, we knew no shame. We accosted a pair of amiable looking pirates, and asked if they would mind posing with Brian, in order to bring a little colour into the lives of a bunch of office workers: how could they refuse?

That's the story. I don't know what the moral is: that a little entertainment goes a long way in an office? That it is possible to do something which you find simultaneously extremely silly and extremely entertaining? That there's no point in taking photos unless you want to, because it's an activity that can eat up your life? All of the above...

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Thanks to durham_rambler for the photos.