Despite the fact my dad was a scientist, and so was my uncle, I was actually not very good at science at all… I make the excuse that I was away from school for about six weeks with glandular fever just as we started doing chemistry, and I never quite caught up… actually, I don’t think I would ever have caught up even if I’d had those first six weeks… I have however passed on the science gene to my son who read physics for his degree.
However, there is the other sort of chemistry, that unexplained and maybe unexplainable ‘thing’ which happens between two unlikely people. I was thinking this tonight as I watched eighty year old Mary Berry and forty something Paul Hollywood present a Christmas cookery programme together… there is definitely chemistry between them! I don’t mean in a romantic sense, but you can tell they just ‘click’ despite their apparent differences. When I was at work I had colleagues who I liked and got on well with, and I had colleagues where there was that extra something, nothing romantic, nothing that went into our out of work lives, but there was definitely a sort of ‘chemistry’. With such people you might barely know them, and yet they would understand everything about you, just as you would about them and they would support you through thick and thin – just as you would them.
I had just started a new job, and had only me a couple of colleagues and my boss, all who seemed really pleasant and lovely – and indeed they were! A couple of days into the job, I was in the tiny staff room; it was separated into a social and a work area by some eight-foot high bookcases, with a gap, a sort of doorway between them. On one side was the door out into the corridor, and this was where we hung our coats and worked, and through the gap on the other side of the bookcases which were actually used to store files and all sorts of stuff as well as books, were half a dozen easy chairs arranged as if in an old-fashioned railway carriage with a low coffee table between them, and the windows in the wall looking out over the town.
I was in the social area, just packing up ready to go home when my boss came through and asked in a friendly helpful way how I was getting on and was everything OK. All was well and I was fine, I told her, and I was really delighted to be working here, even though it was very challenging. In turn I asked how she was and remarked she looked a little tired (we were a very caring group of people!) She said she was alright but she needed to see her reiki teacher as she thought her chakras were not quite correctly aligned, and she needed some help especially with the yellow one… At that point, a colleague who I hadn’t properly met before stuck his head out from behind the bookcase where he was packing up his things… he looked at me with a slight smile… and I just knew that he was thinking exactly what I was thinking!
Over the next ten or so years, he and I became very close as colleagues and I knew I could rely on him absolutely, just as he could rely on me… and we stood up for each other and supported each other through all sorts of difficult situations. We never ever socialised outside work, he was as devoted to his wife and family as I was to mine, but that we had a particular friendship. Since I left that job, I think I’ve only seen him once… and that’s because it wasn’t that sort of friendship… but I know if I was ever in desperate need I could ring him, and if he ever needed help he could get in contact with me and we would be there 100% for each other no matter what the problem was.
To many people, my husband and I seem a strange couple… but there is that chemistry between us, in this case a romantic chemistry, and that is why we have such a wonderful, happy and successful life together!
Lois Elsden 