Friday 25 May 2018

Liturgy for Queuing Behind the Person with the Giant Water Bottle at the Water Cooler

How long, O Lord?
How long must we wait in this queue
While this person who has the world's giantest drinking bottle
fills it with cold water?
After all the working day's only 8 hours long.
Or nine, if we're trying to impress the boss.

I mean, just how big is that bottle?
It is so wide that the seas in their boundlessness could not fill it.
If all the floodgates of heaven were opened
yet the bottle would only be filled slowly.
If the fountains of the deep were broken up
they would barely fill it to the "10am" line.

In vain we queue across the kitchen
Waiting for just one plastic cup of water.
The women from Merchandising pass out in the heat
and the men from IT sulk, and wish they had any communication skills
for then they could share with their friends how much their thirst bites
if they had any friends.

And now I am fifth in the queue.
And my tongue cleaveth to the roof of my mouth.
I pant like the hart that longeth for cooling streams
Even for the Wadi of Egypt or the Great River.
But behold what do I see?
You must be having a freaking giraffe.

For behold the bloke at the front
Now has pulled out a bottle the size of Nubia
The Queen of Sheba could sail on the surface of the water in that bottle.
The Leviathan could sport and play in its deeps.
If poured out, it could wash away the King of Egypt's armies.
You could drop a couple of Noah's Arks in it, and nobody would be any the wiser.

So I shall hie me to the chocolate machine
and pay a quid for a can of Tango.
The sugar sticketh to my teeth
and I don't like the taste of orange.
But at least I won't be crumpled on the floor of the office kitchen
Like Mandy from Accounts.

Selah


Want to support this blog?
Want a good laugh? Want to laugh at the church? Want to be secretly suspicious that the author has been sitting in your church committee meetings taking notes? Then Writes of the Church: Gripes and grumbles of people in the pews is probably the book for you.

From Amazon, Sarum Bookshop, The Bible Readers Fellowship and other good Christian bookshops. An excellent book for your churchgoing friends, relatives or vicar. By the creator of the Beaker Folk.

1 comment :

  1. I've always thought that if you charged for water, even a nominal 1p, people who don't carry coins wouldn't bother and would go and get another bottle from a commercial outlet.

    Water coolers are wonderful things, normally free, so people take advantage. We need to remind them that water is a precious resource and that drinking it from large plastic bottles is destroying the environment, and depriving others of the much needed commodity.

    Waste Not, Want Not, is an old fashioned saying, but we need to heed it.

    ReplyDelete

Drop a thoughtful pebble in the comments bowl