The Flying Tippex Incident

I was using a little Tippex at work the other day and I was being very tentative and respectful with it and for the briefest of moments I wondered why that should be. Just for the briefest of moments. Then it all came back to me in a rush. The Flying Tippex Incident. How could I have forgotten, even for the briefest time?

You all know what I’m talking about, right? Tippex. There are apparently many different words for it in different parts of the world. ‘Liquid Paper’, ‘Snopake’, ‘White-Out’. It’s correction fluid. It was invented by Mike Nesmith’s mother, he of ‘The Monkees’ fame. We all know where we are now. Yes? We’ve got the scoop? Okay.

Once upon a time… wait, wait. How could I not have written about this before? I nip off and put the word ‘Tippex’ into the blog search feature. Nope. Not a single mention. Strange. But, then again, perhaps not so strange. Some stories are hard to tell, for reasons that will never be clear to anyone but me.

I was working in an architect’s office in London. One of several where I worked in my time there. I don’t want to name names or anything, but it was a lovely place and my time there was very happy and memorable. It was all good. I was there a long time and when I left, I bought them a big dictionary and wrote inside that I didn’t have the words. I thought that was pretty cute. I hope it’s still on a shelf there somewhere, even though everyone I knew there is now retired or gone from us.

I think I was a useful part of that office and I also think I was pretty well-liked there. Who could dislike me really? Well, I was considerably younger then and I had a bit of a temper on me. I still have the potential to erupt but these days I seem to be able to manage it better or maybe there just aren’t so many triggering moments in my life. Either way, I don’t tend to go off the deep end so much anymore. Important to note that I would only ever really harm one person when I went off on one of my explosive moments and that person was, of course, me. Back in the day, if I went off on one, I could easily punch a wall or kick a chair, often severely damaging knuckles or toes in the process. But never hurting anyone else, just me.

This one day, I was tippexing something out on a document at my desk. The phone rang and I answered it. I can no longer remember who was on the other end of that line or indeed anything about the content of the conversation that ensued. All I know for sure, nigh on thirty years later, was that the call pissed me off mightily… and I mean mightily.

I hung up. No, let’s try that line again. I smashed the phone handset back into its place, cracking the entire instrument in the process and hurting my hand too – par for the course. The four partners in the office all sat at their desks which were in all a line, up the office from mine. They all looked up when the phone got smashed down. My going off on one was not unheard of but it was still a pretty rare thing. In the relative serenity of the office, nobody liked it very much.

And I wasn’t done. Not yet. The phone smashing had given vent to some of whatever long-forgotten frustration I was suffering but it wasn’t nearly enough to end the eruption. Throughout the entire phone call, I had kept the Tippex bottle in my hand, gripping it ever tighter. It was still there. I looked down at it, squeezed tight in my paw…

And then I just… threw it. I launched it up the office, along the line of all the desks where the partners sat. It was just the four partners and little old me back in those days. Had I said that? Four professional men, intelligent and reserved. And me, a belligerent Mick with a Tippex bottle.

A Tippex bottle on which the lid had not been tightened.

It was a sound throw. I haven’t usually got a very good arm for such things, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime attempt, full of force and vigour. The tiny bottle whizzed past all four of the partner desks and made landfall just short of the library wall at the end of the office space. There it pretty-much exploded, the lid/brush combo flying free and releasing the viscous white liquid in a comet-shaped spatter on the recently laid carpet.

We gathered quietly, the four of us, and we stood around and inspected the damage, which was patently irreparable. The Tippex bottle had bounced and continued its trajectory up onto the books and catalogues on the library wall. There were splats of correcting fluid everywhere. Heads were shaken gently. Wry smiles exchanged. I had behaved abominably, childishly and unprofessionally and I was instantly filled with regret and self-admonishment, which was my standard response to losing my temper. But, for the partners' part, there was no talk of reprimand or sanction. There was a gentle one-on-one with the senior partner, who hoped I might exercise a little more composure in the light of future challenges. He also had an ironic little task for me, if I wanted it, to try to make some reparation for the damage I had done. I accepted it.

So it was that, one week later, I stood over a bemused insurance man who held his clipboard and his disbelieving expression with equal weight. He listened carefully as I explained how I had ‘dropped’ the Tippex bottle accidentally and would there please be any chance of some money to replace the section of carpet? There wasn’t. Tippex spills were not covered in the small print.

And, besides, the seventy-mile-an-hour trajectory of the crime-scene spatter rather undermined my account of a low energy spill.

I’m sure the Tippex mark is long gone now, as the partners – my good friends – are gone and, indeed, as I am gone. I like to think I was a bit calmer after that. I think I learned a little something from it.

And, as with all the other mistakes I have made in my life, I only ever really forget it for the briefest of moments.

2 comments:

George Henderson said...

Hi Ken,my biggest mistake was,years ago in old Embassy Snooker club,I was retipping cues for a few youngsters,I was due in work , trying to get finished quick,picked up the super glue,top was stuck fast,so I bit it off & tipped the cues,I have a habit of sticking my tongue out a bit,when doing something precise,soon discovered it was now super glued to my moustache,freed it with scissors,but suffered a hairy tongue for a few days after

Jim Murdoch said...

Ah, Tipp-Ex. [Remembers the smell] I’m holding a Tipp-Ex Pocket Mouse in my hand as I type this so I know the spelling’s right. Haven’t used it in years but it sits nose down in my fancy desk tidy I bought in John Lewis probably twenty-five years ago but after the Tipp-Ex. I have so much stationery in my office that I will never use including a forty-five-plus-year-old box that once contained 5000 26/6 staples and now probably contains about 3500. I miss all that, folders and files, hole-punches and India tags.

I don’t have any exciting Tipp-Ex stories to share but I did once—and only once—lose my temper at work. I was talking with one of the shop managers who was being herself and not listening to reason and after the phone call ended abruptly, I marched out of the office declaiming, “Does no one in this fucking company know how to do their job?” or something similar, headed straight to the kitchen picked up a plate (my plate, a plate I had bought (from BHS this time)) and smashed on the counter. You see people on TV chucking plates at walls but that is just so not me. After sitting in the loo for ten minutes I wandered back in and sat at my desk and not a word was said by anyone. That is also the one and only time I’ve ever sworn at work. I have no idea what got into me.