Where to begin?
It's almost too difficult to write about her, due to her superior intellect and knowledge of anything you care to mention, and my being a mere "underling".
She resembles Rabbit from Walt Disney's Winnie-the-Pooh. Gingery hair, a long nose with a kind of round bit at the end and slightly protruding teeth. Her eyes are not complicated by make up, indeed, it would be quite a task to make them appear more piercing than they are naturally.
At the moment, she and Tiny are on a conference call. When Tiny is taking one of these on his own, he sits very quietly, and only speaks when spoken to. Jane, however, is currently (excuse the pun) rabbiting on at great length about the plight of the Great British butterfly with the Developments Director (she should be listening to building plans).
She varies from a sweet, almost girlish voice that belittles her fifty-something years , to a stern "I KNOW ALL, FOR I AM OMNIPOTENT" teacher's voice. Any topic you care to mention, and I mean anything, she will not only know more about it than you, but in her discussing of it, will make you wish you had never been born. You don't really need to be there to have a conversation with her. She can do it all by herself. She'll start about the intricacies of an ancient Hermetic order's influence upon Moroccan tapestries, and minutes later, will have gone off on an unfathomable tangent about her elderly parent's defunct hot water boiler. All the time this will be punctuated with girlish giggles, which render the unfortunate receptacle of her speech positively nauseous.
She is at her best when absorbed with her computer screen. This (generally) keeps her quiet. I don't know what she's looking up on the web, but I'd say it's either some kind of fundamentalist animal-rights campaign site (she created a big fuss over having to choose sandwiches with "dead things" in them for her carnivorous colleagues, despite having offered to get them), or something to do with the highly fascinating Steam Fair she is visiting this weekend. She has been talking about it for as long as I have known her, and refers to it as if it is nationally recognized as the single most spectacular event of the year.
Just when she's been quiet long enough to almost forget her overbearing presence, she'll break the blissful silence with a heart-stopping cackle, and if you don't ask her what caused it, she'll tell you anyway. She also has the irritating habit of assuming you know what she is thinking and starts talking half way through her thought process. For example, she has just shattered my concentration by informing me:
"I'm describing the size of my tent to Dave, but it's okay because he's a builder! So..."
Obviously I have no idea who the hell Dave is or the need to discuss tent sizes with him, let alone why a builder has a special insight on the matter. Luckily, before the trickle could become an avalanche, she was interrupted by someone bringing her a cup of tea. In her most saccharine voice she replied:
"OOOhh! Thankyou! I wasn't expecting such kind bounty!"
After the first few weeks of trying to follow her monologues, I have now trained myself to let the sound of her know-it-all voice wash over me. Although sometimes it is impossible to ignore, particularly on the rare occasions that she touches upon a subject of vague interest. When she expounded her knowledge of sleeping disorders, her half-baked 'facts' frustratingly penetrated my concentration. As someone who has had to visit sleep specialists over the years, I actually know a think or two about this, and could only wish I suffered from Narcolepsy so I could pass out asleep.
There are so many wonderful examples of, and curios in her character, I could go on about it for longer than it would take her to discuss the benefits of full fat milk rather than semi-skimmed. So I shall end with something I heard her say to a colleague just moments ago:
"Please accept my apologies, it took a long time, and you received no useful answer"
