The chief, the apprentice and the tycoon

It has been a day of surprises and upsets at Derek Belm & Sons.

After literally seconds of speculation, my Chief Model Maker has announced he is leaving my employ.

Jonty is off to fulfill a life-long ambition and open an exotic amphibian pet shop on the Isle of Mull with his partner Judas. I feel this is a niche market and have warned him against it, but he is confident of success.

This leaves me with a conundrum. Who should I promote in Jonty’s place, or should I seek an outsider to fill his freekishly small boots?

The obvious internal candidate is Maurice, the world’s ugliest model-maker. Despite his facial misfortune, he has the experience and thanks to his cyber girlfriend Gravel he now has the self-confidence to do the job.

But do I want someone so facially challenged respresenting Derek Belm & Sons? The public face of the company needs to be pleasant, not appalling.

The wild card is my apprentice, Sammy-Lou Westwinds. Despite her youngness and relative inexperience, Sammy-Lou is now without a shadow of a cloud the most talented model-maker I employ (not including myself, obviously).

She is currently helping me to complete a model of Birmingham’s canal network – there are more actual factual canals in Birmingham than Venice, did you know? Sammy-Lou is in charge of the wet bits and is doing a brilliant job.

The fact she is a girl no longer counts against her. Indeed, as more of my colleagues warm to the idea of employing women for the first time in our noble craft’s history, Sammy-Lou is something of a role model and trail-blazer.

But it may have come too soon for Sammy-Lou, so I might have to appoint externally.

On top of all this, I’ve also been cat sitting today.

My wife (Mrs Belm) was working as an actual factual magistrate today so insisted I took Christopher with me to my underground workshop as he gets lonely when left at home.

To mark the occasion, she purchased a Richard Branson Tycoon outfit for Christopher – a garish jumper, slacks and an unconvincing beard (he already has the arrogance and cheesey smile).

Christopher seemed to take to his Branson outfit, judging by the web pages I discovered on my computer after leaving him alone in my office for an hour or so.

I think Christopher might be plotting a few unusual take-overs for Derek Belm & Sons.

I found research from Companies House on Fly, Fly and Fly Again (a local airplane charter company), the HELLO!!!! mobile phone shop, The Hints Valley Narrow Gauge Railway and Victor’s Vinyl Vaults, the record store owned by Smelly McPhail.

Quite why he thinks we should branch out into airraft, trains, mobile telephonic devices and music is beyond me, especially as Christopher is a cat and clearly doesn’t have a nose for business.

I’ll be glad to see the back of Christopher, but not Jonty.