Almost three years ago I uploaded a post about fancying cartoon characters, namely Jane Lane from Daria:

jane lane

As I put it, back in the day:

Now I hadn't watched any Daria episodes for some time, but it suddenly dawned on me that someone I had pulled and been quite smitten with a couple of years ago was Jane in all but the hair (don't think outside of a cartoon you could quite pull that hairstyle off).

I have now met someone who does uncannily resemble Jane, right down to pulling off a similar type of hairstyle (kind of like a Jewish Cleopatra). What’s even more uncanny is that, just like Jane, she happens to spend most of her spare time painting.

I’m finding working with someone I’m deeply smitten with hard to get my head around. Considering I spent far too many 9-5s sitting next to the farmer’s wife lookalike, someone who looked like they’d received an arse transplant from a cow, it’s no surprise that the semi-regular company of someone nubile and artistic has gotten me all in a tither.

Our employer has a pretty intolerant policy on staff relationships, to the point where there’s an apocryphal story that goes around the office about “friendship coffees” having to be declared after they’ve taken place.

Unfortunately for me, the Jane Lane lookalike only works part-time due to her other job in a gallery. Therefore my efforts to reach the friendship coffee stage are at the mercy of our shift patterns.

Personally, I think my manager has cottoned on to my tither and for the rest of June has rota’d myself and the Jewish Cleopatra apart, to the point where if one of us is starting a shift the other is finishing it, and vice versa.

The only chance I have of seeing her for the next few weeks is by either being on time or, shock horror, early for work. And as anyone who’s spent 60 minutes in Covent Garden choking on incense fumes while waiting for me to stroll over knows too well, punctuality is not my strong point.

At our team meeting today I will be raising the issue of staff shortages and insisting, nay demanding, that we increase the amount of shifts on offer to our bank (in-house temp) workers over the summer.

A hidden agenda, you say? How rude!