It seemed a good idea at the time

I've been giving some thought to what I am going to post for Mel's blog hop on Sunday.  When I signed up for it, it seemed AGES away and I would have plenty of time to think of something witty and original and arty and thought provoking.  Now suddenly it is Thursday and the blog hop is Sunday and I have done nothing!  Not even dull and boring.  So I decided that I needed inspiration from the old box of forgotten photos - got totally sidetracked and still haven't found anything witty, original, arty or thought provoking.  But I did find this

There is actually one professional model in this photo, can you guess which it is? 

So here's the story behind it.  When I left school I went to work for a holiday company that specialised in luxury villas and apartments overseas.  I worked there from 1976 to 1986 and I am guessing this photo may have been taken in about 1984.  My job there was in the Passenger Relations Department, basically replying to all post-holiday correspondence and trying hard to settle disputes with disgruntled holidaymakers.  The other three ladies in the photo are people who worked in the same department as me.  The gentleman um, well, you know, we kind of stole him out of the front window display.

Our manager had gone on holiday for two weeks and she was one of the few who had a proper office, the rest of the building was mostly open plan.  So when she was away, other people were constantly 'borrowing' her office for meetings which was really annoying as her office was where a lot of the filing was kept and if someone had the office on 'Do not disturb' we couldn't get in there.

I'm not sure whose bright idea it was, but someone thought that it would be a good idea to have a sitting tenant in the office so that people couldn't take advantage of it and as her office had a frosted window in the door, so long as they could see someone/something sitting at the desk, they would think it was occupied.

So after work one day we sneaked downstairs, crept into the window display of a couple sitting having a drink in front of a backdrop of a Greek taverna  and removed the gentleman from his seated position, removed the fake glass of wine from his hand and smuggled him upstairs.  How we didn't get caught I don't know and we must have looked a sight carrying him upstairs as the 'gentleman' in question had no legs. 

But we put him in position, closed the door and it worked like a charm.  People looked through the frosted glass, saw a figure at the desk and moved on elsewhere.  We, however, were free to come and go as we pleased.  The only slight flaw to our plan was that our manager had her flights changed and returned to work a day early, only to find 'someone' sitting at her desk.  Ooops!