Back in the crossover period of the 80s to the 90s when fashion was still learning, sunflowers had sunglasses and guitars and Timmy Mallet wasn’t yet deemed ‘cause for concern’ by the mental health board  I had a friend named Tom Sharp. Over the years we lost touch but our parents stayed friends and would do as parents do and talk about what their child is up to now.

It turns out that Bobby Sharp (Toms Dad) told my Dad that Tom was now working in recruitment and has recently started at a new company so is looking for some names to go on his books. Dad said he’d pass the message on to me and Mum suggested I Facebook Tom (Dad doesn’t care for social networking so it didn’t come to mind).

I already had Tom on Facebook so sent him a message trying not to come across that the only reason I wanted to say hi was because he might have a job to offer me. I’m not all take take take you know. We exchanged a couple of emails and the issue seemed to be forgotten about.

I was explaining to Mum that ‘now I’ve formatted your Mac finally you’ve got a load more space and it’s better blah blah blah’ when my phone rang with a blocked number. At first I didn’t recognise the voice. I think it was something to do with the ‘Is that Mark?’ that instantly throws you into expecting a stranger to be on the other end. Then came ‘It’s Tom’ when I realised… it was Tom.

After a quick catchup on what must be years (definitely pre-beard… which is a long time ago) he passed me over to his colleague, Jen. Judging by her voice and Toms I think it must be a rule to have a friendly tone as she was really nice. I think she even called me Darling at one point. Can’t get much nicer than that… Anyway… there’s a possible job going that, by the sounds of it, might as well have my name next to ‘WANTED’.

I would love this to work out. Of course I would, that’s a null statement. I will update this as soon as I know.