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I had a meeting with a supplier yesterday, a supplier from over the water, the Emerald Isle.

There were two of them. One with a round, very red and slightly jowly face, the other with an angular, very pale and taut face. Chalk and cheese. Or, if I may, chalk and beetroot.

One had an Irish name, and the other Italian, although both had tick (sorry, thick) Irish accents.

I was fascinated by this double act, but especially by the angular one, whom we shall call Seamus.

Seamus' head was large and generally square. His jaw line was hewn from granite. There are people like this in cartoons, and when they get into a fight someone punches them and their hand shatters. That was the kind of head it was. If I was going to fight him I would have a horseshoe in my glove. (Did anyone every really do that? Really? Or just in cartoons?)

Actually if I was in a fight with him I would kick him in the plums.

But I digress. On top of this head was a standing wave of black hair. It was higher on the left, and it didn't move. At all. Below this was a permanent frown. Not a frown, but a creased forehead. Whatever his eyes did his brow didn't move. If he ever had a face lift they would find a couple of feet of extra skin in his forehead, and a good part of that has never seen natural light.

You know when a kid runs a stick along metal railings? You could do that with Seamus' forehead.

The other curious thing was his mouth - a thin line in his face. More of a blemish than a gateway for food and bullshit. The mouth barely moved. Just the occasional twitching of the lips, a slight broadening or narrowing, perhaps the hint of a smile. And yet there was a voice - a normal voice, if a little hurried. Seamus would make a perfect ventriloquist, and had the Italian chap not been on the other side of the table I would have assumed they were a cabaret act.

Such is the crazy world of supplier meetings.

Of course, Seamus probably blogged that he met this weird finance director that wouldn't stop staring at him.