The seriousness of the Middle-aged middling Exec

I  am there the old fella with a face that could waken the dead and unwaken them. I could star in a twilight years' movie. This is a serious face, a face that adds more to the IRR, more to the Company turnover, more to the profit margin a than a quizical look of a young eyebrow, more than a furrowing of the young brow. This face can portray by a consternation of a jowl that negotiation has not finished. This face can cause a sharp intake of breath that may need medical staff in attendance readying breathing apparatus. This is business. This is negotiation. This face is getting the bottom line a little higher. This is why they pay me sums of money.

I am a professional , having professional conversations, and the price I pay is small talk never rises to social talk most times. So we face the post Business dinner partying. This is not a party by any definition of my father, we are misleading the witness m'lud. This is small talk gone big-time.  Conversations settle into safe places, "how's the..." the kids doing at college unless they are not, the wife doing unless there is a divorce, the rugby is doing reasonably well unless the wooden spoon is being carved.

But out of the 9 to 5, in my time, I want to party, to tell the world a joke or two that may involve self deprecation, that may not be as politically correct as one ought to be. I want to go tabloid in the broadsheet world. I must stay strong in the face of an intake of wine that may release a general sharp intake of breath all round. I must not dribble the secret sauce. I must know how to use the silver spoon after it has been placed right-most on the dish. I must not suggest if you were my wife I would drink the poison and fail to give credit to Mr Churchill. I must remember that on Monday I must still be the strong jawed IRR-focused old fella.

Once at a younger age, I was a young fella and with other young fellas and we could party under the eagle eye of the old fellas in a corporate party, to get slightly drunk and hope to be forgiven, to laugh and then laugh louder on an equation inexorably linked to alcohol.We could party-ish.  An old fella may have joined us and regretted their faux pais on Monday, his respect left at a door called Emergency Toilet Exit remembered from the night before ~ one of the boys. Now I am an older fella and emergency toilet visits are to be avoided. Sacrifices to age, I must maintain my depressing work gravity that keeps my feet firmly on the ground.

I am destined to be bipolar and to hide it in the safety of my family home.