We farewelled a long-term employee of Giant Steps this morning. David was brought in to control the school's finances in the very early days of its existence, when every penny was a prisoner, and the financial excesses of the Board of Management were putting the future of the school in jeopardy.
I inherited David when I took over the school in the year 2000 and it's fair to say that, without him, I would have been unemployed not long after because the doors would have been closed. In the 20-odd years he was on the staff, he never mixed with other employees and maintained a low-key, shadowy existence. As Neil Diamond might have said, he was a Solitary Man.
It fell on me to give the farewell speech, as one dinosaur to another. As I said, even dinosaurs had their day, being perfectly adapted to the times in which they lived. In its early days, Giant Steps needed a parsimonious, penny-pinching, pedantic, particular person, and that was David.
It was clear he was very reluctant to be there, refusing a cup of coffee and a cake. As he said, he only wanted to shake our hand and go out the door. But, he agreed to play the game. The four women present would have chatted all day, but the three men had varying levels of tolerance. For us, it was a duty; for the women, it was a pleasure.
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