OK. I’m waiting.
I have my arms outstretched upwards to the stars and my chakras open so wide a Higgs Boson could drive a ruddy great juggernaut right through the middle of them without touching the sides.
But it ain’t hit me. It hasn’t entered me. I am not speaking in Christmas tongues.
The spirit of Christmas has not seen fit to descend and use my body as a vessel for its gloriously tinselly commercialism.
I ain’t getting the Christmas vibe, man,
And I know I should be. The shops are selling their Christmas tat with the intensity of an Amsterdam window dancer. My home town had its big Christmas light switch on yesterday. Even Jamie ‘cheeky twatty’ Oliver is on the telly once more touting his mince pie flavoured ice cream (I kid you not: “individual ice creams wiv bits of mince pie in ‘em – even the pastry! Gor blimey, gov’nor!”).
The signs are there writ large upon the stars. Even the D list ones.
It is Christmas time (mistletoe and wine). It’s time to get jollied up. To get Santa’d. To get ho ho hoed.
But I can’t do it. I just can’t summon up the inclination.
It’s taken all my will power just to summon up a soupcon of enthusiasm to give my wife a Christmas wish list for myself – let alone trying to choose presents for other people.
I feel that spiritually I am shrugging with the burden of it all. I’m suffering from joy exhaustion or maybe more accurately “fear of joy commitment”.
Money’s tight. The health of the entire family seems to be dicey at the moment – if it we were a drink we would be Cinzano on the rocks without the Cinzano. Inanimate and domestic services are breaking down. My work colleagues inform me that Russell Grant got voted off Strictly Come Dancing. Things are on the verge of collapse.
Is this a good time to be having Christmas, I ask myself?
Might we not be better off postponing it until the Spring? ‘Cos Springwatch will be on the telly then and Chris Packham will be convincing us all that life is getting better because of all the birds and badgers producing young. The days will be longer. Jamie Oliver will have died from mince pie ice cream poisoning. I’ll have a modicum of hope in my heart that things will at least be getting warmer if not better.
This mid winter thing? I mean, is that really right for Christmas? Is it appropriate? Half of the world doesn’t think so.
Can we have a referendum on it, please? Put it to the vote?
Where the hell’s Jacob Marley when you need him?
P.S. This is my 800th post. That’s right: 800! 800 posts and still moaning...
Showing posts with label grumpy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grumpy. Show all posts
Monday, November 21, 2011
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Small Unremembered Acts Of Unkindness
I’m sure it’s not deliberate but this has happened with galling regularity during my time “here” as corporate slave. And it makes me hit boiling point every time because, in all honesty, I’m never quite sure how to handle it.
An engineer turns up in a company car. Or his own car. Whatever. The car is not important. But he needs to get parked and doesn’t want to use the Pay & Display spaces in town. This is fine. I lower the bollards and allow him to drive into the fiercely guarded enclave of the building’s footprint. I direct him to the staff parking bays down the back of the building. Off he drives with a cheery wave.
Pleasure, mate. I’m here to be helpful.
And then I wait by the entrance doors so I can chaperone the poor bewildered engineer to wherever he needs to be in the building. Usually a urinal which is behaving like the gateway to Hell.
And I wait.
And I wait.
And he stays in his bloody car. He doesn’t move. He just sits there in the warm, sealed cockpit of his worksmobile.
And I stand there by the front doors feeling like a jilted groom.
What do I do? ‘Cos I’m getting narked. I’m getting annoyed. I’m stood there like the proverbial last sausage and he’s rubbing himself off against his walnut dash.
Logic and the laws of dynamic motivation (is there even such a thing) dictate that I go up to the car and knock officiously on the windscreen and ask very loudly if he’s going to be joining me anytime soon because the vicar is getting impatient and the reception is booked.
But I worry that this might precipitate a faux pas of monumental proportions.
You see, he could be delayed for a very legitimate reason...
He’s taking an emergency phone call from his wife: “Darling, little Terry has found your stash of crystal meth and he’s bouncing off the walls with grandpappy’s pump-action assault rifle – the nanny is pulling her hair out and the nursery looks like a bomb site! What shall I do? What shall I do?”
Or – and this is the scenario that I fear the most – I storm up to the car, violently yank open the driver’s door and have a paraplegic engineer fall out onto the pavement like a newborn lamb from its mother’s womb.
Oh God. I am so sorry. Do you need a hand? Oh shit. I didn’t mean that the way it came out, honestly.
You get the idea.
So I wait.
And I wait.
And eventually the engineer shuffles out of his vehicle – not panicked in any way, with a full complement of limbs, wiping the foam of a take-out cappuccino from his top lip.
Utter. Git.
An engineer turns up in a company car. Or his own car. Whatever. The car is not important. But he needs to get parked and doesn’t want to use the Pay & Display spaces in town. This is fine. I lower the bollards and allow him to drive into the fiercely guarded enclave of the building’s footprint. I direct him to the staff parking bays down the back of the building. Off he drives with a cheery wave.
Pleasure, mate. I’m here to be helpful.
And then I wait by the entrance doors so I can chaperone the poor bewildered engineer to wherever he needs to be in the building. Usually a urinal which is behaving like the gateway to Hell.
And I wait.
And I wait.
And he stays in his bloody car. He doesn’t move. He just sits there in the warm, sealed cockpit of his worksmobile.
And I stand there by the front doors feeling like a jilted groom.
What do I do? ‘Cos I’m getting narked. I’m getting annoyed. I’m stood there like the proverbial last sausage and he’s rubbing himself off against his walnut dash.
Logic and the laws of dynamic motivation (is there even such a thing) dictate that I go up to the car and knock officiously on the windscreen and ask very loudly if he’s going to be joining me anytime soon because the vicar is getting impatient and the reception is booked.
But I worry that this might precipitate a faux pas of monumental proportions.
You see, he could be delayed for a very legitimate reason...
He’s taking an emergency phone call from his wife: “Darling, little Terry has found your stash of crystal meth and he’s bouncing off the walls with grandpappy’s pump-action assault rifle – the nanny is pulling her hair out and the nursery looks like a bomb site! What shall I do? What shall I do?”
Or – and this is the scenario that I fear the most – I storm up to the car, violently yank open the driver’s door and have a paraplegic engineer fall out onto the pavement like a newborn lamb from its mother’s womb.
Oh God. I am so sorry. Do you need a hand? Oh shit. I didn’t mean that the way it came out, honestly.
You get the idea.
So I wait.
And I wait.
And eventually the engineer shuffles out of his vehicle – not panicked in any way, with a full complement of limbs, wiping the foam of a take-out cappuccino from his top lip.
Utter. Git.
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Anti Social Networking
I’ll be honest. Despite being a denizen of the internet for the last 15 years I am not up on the whole social networking scene.
I dragged my heels with Facebook (and still grit my teeth when I use it).
I tried MySpace and loathed it so dumped it. I now have NoSpace and am much happier.
Skype I’ve heard about but can’t bring myself to install.
Messenger I have permanently disabled because I hated the way it would launch itself on me as soon as I turned on my PC (like being hounded by a happy-clappy stalker).
Twitter I use infrequently and cynically, i.e. only when I have a blog post to sell.
I admit I tried ICQ (remember that?) in the early days but found it bothersome and frustrating – I’d be at my computer trying to do stuff and people would bug me for inane conversations overloaded with smilies and emoticons.
Emoticons. Urgh. I hate both the word and the concept. Let’s break it down: emotions / cons. You get my drift? :-P
But some Social Networking facilities have made it through my taste firewall. LinkedIn is one of them. It seemed a good idea at the time and helped me to reconnect with an old friend but since then I hardly use it. I’m Connected with a handful of people – some old school friends, some blogging pals and, er, that’s it.
Nobody – and I mean nobody – has used the site to contact me in the manner recommended by the site’s administrators, i.e. nobody has offered me work / money / commissions / contracts. It has done absolutely zilch for my career prospects.
But nevertheless I’m on there. Pimping myself. Or rather, pimping my online persona. Links to my web site and this blog. The kind of unthinking self promotion that we all do from time to time.
Suddenly, within the space of 2 weeks, I have had Connection requests from 2 people who work in the same Local Government corporation as me. People who I see once in a blue moon and only ever in a professional capacity. One of them is very, very high up in the corporation hierarchy. Very high up.
I confess it has put me in a spin.
You see, I don’t want these people getting too close to my online persona. I don’t want them reading my blog and the comments upon it and realizing what a cynical, back-stabbing little turncoat I am. I want them to continue thinking I’m a good boy who keeps his head down and deserves the money that they keep paying me every month.
This Connection thing is too close for comfort.
And utterly pointless.
I mean, what’s the good of them Connecting to me on LinkedIn? Are they going to offer me a job?
Hello? I’m already here.
So the barricades have gone up. And by barricades I mean I have ignored the email from LinkedIn – including the reminder email that tells me these people are still waiting for me to confirm a Connection with them.
I don’t want a Connection with them. The real life connection is bad enough. I don’t want them following the breadcrumb trail back to this ‘ere blog and the harsh excoriating heart of my lifelong malcontent.
I am simply too anti-social for Social Networking.
Too curmudgeonly. Too grumpy. And that’s the plain honest truth.
I mean, they’ll be wanting me to Poke them next. And that folks is just an interaction too far.
I think I may just have to be permanently AFK.
That’s all, folks. Goodbye.
P.S. Do feel free to RT this post.
I dragged my heels with Facebook (and still grit my teeth when I use it).
I tried MySpace and loathed it so dumped it. I now have NoSpace and am much happier.
Skype I’ve heard about but can’t bring myself to install.
Messenger I have permanently disabled because I hated the way it would launch itself on me as soon as I turned on my PC (like being hounded by a happy-clappy stalker).
Twitter I use infrequently and cynically, i.e. only when I have a blog post to sell.
I admit I tried ICQ (remember that?) in the early days but found it bothersome and frustrating – I’d be at my computer trying to do stuff and people would bug me for inane conversations overloaded with smilies and emoticons.
Emoticons. Urgh. I hate both the word and the concept. Let’s break it down: emotions / cons. You get my drift? :-P
But some Social Networking facilities have made it through my taste firewall. LinkedIn is one of them. It seemed a good idea at the time and helped me to reconnect with an old friend but since then I hardly use it. I’m Connected with a handful of people – some old school friends, some blogging pals and, er, that’s it.
Nobody – and I mean nobody – has used the site to contact me in the manner recommended by the site’s administrators, i.e. nobody has offered me work / money / commissions / contracts. It has done absolutely zilch for my career prospects.
But nevertheless I’m on there. Pimping myself. Or rather, pimping my online persona. Links to my web site and this blog. The kind of unthinking self promotion that we all do from time to time.
Suddenly, within the space of 2 weeks, I have had Connection requests from 2 people who work in the same Local Government corporation as me. People who I see once in a blue moon and only ever in a professional capacity. One of them is very, very high up in the corporation hierarchy. Very high up.
I confess it has put me in a spin.
You see, I don’t want these people getting too close to my online persona. I don’t want them reading my blog and the comments upon it and realizing what a cynical, back-stabbing little turncoat I am. I want them to continue thinking I’m a good boy who keeps his head down and deserves the money that they keep paying me every month.
This Connection thing is too close for comfort.
And utterly pointless.
I mean, what’s the good of them Connecting to me on LinkedIn? Are they going to offer me a job?
Hello? I’m already here.
So the barricades have gone up. And by barricades I mean I have ignored the email from LinkedIn – including the reminder email that tells me these people are still waiting for me to confirm a Connection with them.
I don’t want a Connection with them. The real life connection is bad enough. I don’t want them following the breadcrumb trail back to this ‘ere blog and the harsh excoriating heart of my lifelong malcontent.
I am simply too anti-social for Social Networking.
Too curmudgeonly. Too grumpy. And that’s the plain honest truth.
I mean, they’ll be wanting me to Poke them next. And that folks is just an interaction too far.
I think I may just have to be permanently AFK.
That’s all, folks. Goodbye.
P.S. Do feel free to RT this post.
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
It’s Time To Kill Christmas
No, really it is.
She’s had her day. It’s time to move on. Christmas must die. And that goes for all this Happy New Year bollocks too.
You know how I know?
I came into work this morning (well, that’s enough in itself), took one look at the tin of Quality Street that some festively drunk work colleague had donated to the office and I didn’t fancy one at all. The thought of letting another chocolate morsel slip past my ruby red lips made me want to regurgitate my breakfast all over my keyboard.
And don’t get me started on the mince pies. They’re dotted around the office like land mines. Little scalloped crusts of Christmas codswallop. Poisonous pastries baked in the devil’s own arse.
But the real indicator that Christmas needs to be jerked off the nearest scaffold is the reaction engendered in me whenever anyone wishes me Happy New Year or (worse) asks me how my Christmas holiday had gone.
“Aaargh! Don’t ask me about my Christmas holiday! It was precious! Just between me and my family and I don’t want it sullied by having the experience aired in the scabby work environment where it will get cheapened by the buzz of the fax machine or a work colleague sobbing down the phone line to HR. Mind your own business, my Christmas break was mine, do you hear me? Mine! Not yours! Stop trying to finger it with your grubby little paws of perfunctory politeness and yes you may borrow my stapler.”
I have managed to gouge 2 inch deep claw marks in my ergonomically sound desk since my re-emersion into the work environment yesterday.
It does not bode well.
The sooner we can get on with mindlessly pressing our faces hard into the grey grindstone of normality and forget all this talk of goodwill and hope and the painful memories of freedom the better.
Because there is no point fooling ourselves. Christmas is just a holiday romance. It was never going to be forever. Sure she might wiggle her baubled boobies at you in December. Tell you that her Christmas milk shake is better than everybody else’s. She might gyrate her tinselled tush in your direction at the office party and invite you to pull your festive sleigh up to her bumper (baby) but she’s just a big prick tease.
Apart from a few present on the 25th she’s never going to deliver. She’s got no sense of longevity. She’s got commitment issues, Goddamnit. It ain’t you; it’s her. She needs her freedom. She needs to feel the wind beneath her wings or a hundred and one other clichéd excuses.
And I’ve heard them all before. Every sodding year.
Well, enough is enough. I can’t take it anymore, Christine Mas or whatever your real name is. If I can’t have you, then no-one can have you.
This is the end of the line. I’m sorry. I really am.
But it’s time for you to go down and stay down, bitch.
Click click.
It’s time to say goodbye.
I’m sorry. There is no other way.
Ka-blam!
Ahem.
Well, I don’t know about you lot but I feel better already.
She’s had her day. It’s time to move on. Christmas must die. And that goes for all this Happy New Year bollocks too.
You know how I know?
I came into work this morning (well, that’s enough in itself), took one look at the tin of Quality Street that some festively drunk work colleague had donated to the office and I didn’t fancy one at all. The thought of letting another chocolate morsel slip past my ruby red lips made me want to regurgitate my breakfast all over my keyboard.
And don’t get me started on the mince pies. They’re dotted around the office like land mines. Little scalloped crusts of Christmas codswallop. Poisonous pastries baked in the devil’s own arse.
But the real indicator that Christmas needs to be jerked off the nearest scaffold is the reaction engendered in me whenever anyone wishes me Happy New Year or (worse) asks me how my Christmas holiday had gone.
“Aaargh! Don’t ask me about my Christmas holiday! It was precious! Just between me and my family and I don’t want it sullied by having the experience aired in the scabby work environment where it will get cheapened by the buzz of the fax machine or a work colleague sobbing down the phone line to HR. Mind your own business, my Christmas break was mine, do you hear me? Mine! Not yours! Stop trying to finger it with your grubby little paws of perfunctory politeness and yes you may borrow my stapler.”
I have managed to gouge 2 inch deep claw marks in my ergonomically sound desk since my re-emersion into the work environment yesterday.
It does not bode well.
The sooner we can get on with mindlessly pressing our faces hard into the grey grindstone of normality and forget all this talk of goodwill and hope and the painful memories of freedom the better.
Because there is no point fooling ourselves. Christmas is just a holiday romance. It was never going to be forever. Sure she might wiggle her baubled boobies at you in December. Tell you that her Christmas milk shake is better than everybody else’s. She might gyrate her tinselled tush in your direction at the office party and invite you to pull your festive sleigh up to her bumper (baby) but she’s just a big prick tease.
Apart from a few present on the 25th she’s never going to deliver. She’s got no sense of longevity. She’s got commitment issues, Goddamnit. It ain’t you; it’s her. She needs her freedom. She needs to feel the wind beneath her wings or a hundred and one other clichéd excuses.
And I’ve heard them all before. Every sodding year.
Well, enough is enough. I can’t take it anymore, Christine Mas or whatever your real name is. If I can’t have you, then no-one can have you.
This is the end of the line. I’m sorry. I really am.
But it’s time for you to go down and stay down, bitch.
Click click.
It’s time to say goodbye.
I’m sorry. There is no other way.
Ka-blam!
Ahem.
Well, I don’t know about you lot but I feel better already.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Loose
I’ll be the first to admit that this doesn’t crank my temper up to atomic proportions but it does annoy the bejasus out of me.
You know what it’s like.
You order a DVD from an online shop. Amazon or Play, whatever. You go for the 2 disc version. The one with the extra disk that contains 48 hour’s worth of extras that you’ll ever have enough time or the inclination to watch. But you order it anyway. Just in case. The joy is in the having not the watching.
And a couple of days later (or a couple of weeks later depending on the dedication of your regular postman) it arrives through the post. A familiar tell-tale sized parcel plops down through your letterbox.
Ah, you think, my new Debbie Does Dallas DVD has arrived.
You bend down and pick it up.
And the bloody thing rattles. It rattles a lot.
Your heart sinks. Because you know what has happened. The DVDs have come loose in transit and have spent at least half of their journey to you sliding around inside the case like a very large pinball inside a very small pinball machine. Some scrote at the post office, seeing that it’s a DVD, has thought to himself: why bother to take any care over this package? It’s bound to be a Debbie Does Dallas DVD that I’d like to own myself but can’t afford due to the crap wages the post office pays so I’ll just hoof it around the delivery warehouse and use it as a Frisbee for a bit and sod the rich git with money to burn who has ordered it.
And thus Debbie Does Dallas arrives scratched to feck, won’t play properly and you have to send it back through the post only to risk damage to the replacement when they send it back to you using the same delivery system.
Now, most of the time, I admit, they play fine. DVDs can take a little bit of punishment. But it is still irritating to have paid good money for a brand new sealed product only to have it arrive in a state that can only be described as tarnished. And then you have to live with that paranoia that as you watch it for the first time... is this the moment that it is going to jump / freeze frame / fall over?
Now I know the answer is to bypass the butterfingered third party by shopping directly from a store in town and carrying your purchase home with you yourself but to be honest, (a) the goods are genuinely cheaper from a lot of the online stores and (b) I have now been addicted to online shopping for so long that I no longer know how to navigate my way around a real life shop. Alphabetized? Alphabetized? How does that work? Just tell me where the Goddamn “Search” button is!
So. My demands are simple. The post office needs to treat its charges – i.e. our goods and chattels – with a lot more respect and the people who make and supply the DVD cases to the film industry need to come up with a new design that holds the DVDs as tightly in the case as a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay tied to his water-boarding chair.
You got that? Good. I’ll leave it with you, then. I’ve got a date with Debbie.
You know what it’s like.
You order a DVD from an online shop. Amazon or Play, whatever. You go for the 2 disc version. The one with the extra disk that contains 48 hour’s worth of extras that you’ll ever have enough time or the inclination to watch. But you order it anyway. Just in case. The joy is in the having not the watching.
And a couple of days later (or a couple of weeks later depending on the dedication of your regular postman) it arrives through the post. A familiar tell-tale sized parcel plops down through your letterbox.
Ah, you think, my new Debbie Does Dallas DVD has arrived.
You bend down and pick it up.
And the bloody thing rattles. It rattles a lot.
Your heart sinks. Because you know what has happened. The DVDs have come loose in transit and have spent at least half of their journey to you sliding around inside the case like a very large pinball inside a very small pinball machine. Some scrote at the post office, seeing that it’s a DVD, has thought to himself: why bother to take any care over this package? It’s bound to be a Debbie Does Dallas DVD that I’d like to own myself but can’t afford due to the crap wages the post office pays so I’ll just hoof it around the delivery warehouse and use it as a Frisbee for a bit and sod the rich git with money to burn who has ordered it.
And thus Debbie Does Dallas arrives scratched to feck, won’t play properly and you have to send it back through the post only to risk damage to the replacement when they send it back to you using the same delivery system.
Now, most of the time, I admit, they play fine. DVDs can take a little bit of punishment. But it is still irritating to have paid good money for a brand new sealed product only to have it arrive in a state that can only be described as tarnished. And then you have to live with that paranoia that as you watch it for the first time... is this the moment that it is going to jump / freeze frame / fall over?
Now I know the answer is to bypass the butterfingered third party by shopping directly from a store in town and carrying your purchase home with you yourself but to be honest, (a) the goods are genuinely cheaper from a lot of the online stores and (b) I have now been addicted to online shopping for so long that I no longer know how to navigate my way around a real life shop. Alphabetized? Alphabetized? How does that work? Just tell me where the Goddamn “Search” button is!
So. My demands are simple. The post office needs to treat its charges – i.e. our goods and chattels – with a lot more respect and the people who make and supply the DVD cases to the film industry need to come up with a new design that holds the DVDs as tightly in the case as a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay tied to his water-boarding chair.
You got that? Good. I’ll leave it with you, then. I’ve got a date with Debbie.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Don’t You People Listen?
Rol was right. It is damned annoying when people don’t read things properly. In Rol’s excellent blog post yesterday he described his frustration at sending an email to someone that quite clearly posed 2 questions only to have one of the questions completely ignored in the reply.
I totally understood where he was coming from. Totally understood the growling frustration that you feel afterwards. Because now you have the do-I-send-then-another-email-asking-the-second question-again-or-do-I-just-give-up-on-it-altogether dilemma. Because if you chase it up you inevitably feel like you’re being a nag or just plain anal.
But this innate understanding wasn’t good enough for the universe or life or whatever master-force controls my destiny. Oh no. I had to have my understanding refreshed, updated and made more piquant...
I’ve just sold something on eBay. What isn’t important but whilst emailing the invoice I also added a little paragraph giving my address (the object is to be collected in person), phone number and a list of days and times when I’d be home to hand the object over.
I then had a reply to this email asking me where I lived! What? Didn’t they see my address in the email?
To add insult to confusion the buyer then stated that they worked in Leamington and wanted to know how far away I was because they worked in Cubbington.
Eh?
Now for those of you that don’t know Leamington Spa, Cubbington used to be a neighbouring village some miles away from Leamington proper. Over the last 50 years it’s been swallowed up by Leamington’s expanding waistline and is now a geographical belly-button. So yes, Leamington is Cubbington but Cubbington is not Leamington. There is a difference between the two. Especially if the buyer is planning to walk to my house.
Anyway. I gritted my teeth and replied with another email. I told him he was about a 20 minute drive from my house and politely referred to the fact I’d given him my address in my previous email. I again stated what times and days I’d be free to receive him. After work any day but Thursday – I specifically can’t do Thursday as I have a prior engagement that night that I totally can’t get out of.
I sent it off.
I had another reply. The buyer apologized for not seeing my address in my previous email. He’d now found it; thank you. Now he knew where I lived he’d probably come round on Thursday or Friday but wasn’t sure which yet; he’d ring me to let me know. Did I have a mobile number?
Aaaargh! Yes. Supplied in my original email along with my fecking address and the times and days I was available! And I can’t effing well do Thursday! I quite clearly said that!
Christ, how many emails do I have to write? How many times do I have to give out the same information before it sinks into this guy’s cranium? It’s not like the emails were awash with metaphor and hyperbole... they were the bare skin and bones of necessity. There were no excess words into which the salient facts could have got lost. They stood out like a couple of leylandii in the desert!
How can someone read an email but not actually take on board what the bloody words mean?
Is anybody listening? Ever?
I totally understood where he was coming from. Totally understood the growling frustration that you feel afterwards. Because now you have the do-I-send-then-another-email-asking-the-second question-again-or-do-I-just-give-up-on-it-altogether dilemma. Because if you chase it up you inevitably feel like you’re being a nag or just plain anal.
But this innate understanding wasn’t good enough for the universe or life or whatever master-force controls my destiny. Oh no. I had to have my understanding refreshed, updated and made more piquant...
I’ve just sold something on eBay. What isn’t important but whilst emailing the invoice I also added a little paragraph giving my address (the object is to be collected in person), phone number and a list of days and times when I’d be home to hand the object over.
I then had a reply to this email asking me where I lived! What? Didn’t they see my address in the email?
To add insult to confusion the buyer then stated that they worked in Leamington and wanted to know how far away I was because they worked in Cubbington.
Eh?
Now for those of you that don’t know Leamington Spa, Cubbington used to be a neighbouring village some miles away from Leamington proper. Over the last 50 years it’s been swallowed up by Leamington’s expanding waistline and is now a geographical belly-button. So yes, Leamington is Cubbington but Cubbington is not Leamington. There is a difference between the two. Especially if the buyer is planning to walk to my house.
Anyway. I gritted my teeth and replied with another email. I told him he was about a 20 minute drive from my house and politely referred to the fact I’d given him my address in my previous email. I again stated what times and days I’d be free to receive him. After work any day but Thursday – I specifically can’t do Thursday as I have a prior engagement that night that I totally can’t get out of.
I sent it off.
I had another reply. The buyer apologized for not seeing my address in my previous email. He’d now found it; thank you. Now he knew where I lived he’d probably come round on Thursday or Friday but wasn’t sure which yet; he’d ring me to let me know. Did I have a mobile number?
Aaaargh! Yes. Supplied in my original email along with my fecking address and the times and days I was available! And I can’t effing well do Thursday! I quite clearly said that!
Christ, how many emails do I have to write? How many times do I have to give out the same information before it sinks into this guy’s cranium? It’s not like the emails were awash with metaphor and hyperbole... they were the bare skin and bones of necessity. There were no excess words into which the salient facts could have got lost. They stood out like a couple of leylandii in the desert!
How can someone read an email but not actually take on board what the bloody words mean?
Is anybody listening? Ever?
Monday, August 02, 2010
Don’t Talk To Me About My Holiday; I’m Back At Work
So I’m back at work. Slumped in front of the ol’ workstation. Viewing my Tippex and my stapler with the kind of hatred one usually reserves for one’s jailer. How dare they steeple up so smugly from the confines of my desk-tidy? Don’t they know I don’t want to be here? Don’t they know I didn’t want to come back?
One week off. One short-lived beautiful week. Already consigned to the dustbin of memory. Written off by virtue of having been lived and loved and replaced by the present. How can time move so fast?
And my workmates keep asking me about it. How was my week? Did I have a good time? My oh my, I’m looking well.
Torturers the lot of them. Turning the screw. Twisting the thumbnail removers. Gouging the flesh.
I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about my week in the sun now that I’m hip deep in mire and sludge and greyness. I just want to get my head down. Get stuck into the tasks at hand. Grit my teeth and do whatever it is I have to do.
I let it all die away. The goodness. The memory of an alternative lifestyle. Another way of filling my days. I wait for the shiny memories to fall away, to be replaced by dull mundanity. Wait for the blinkers to settle back over my eyes. It’s easier that way, believe me.
I can do it then. Survive. Get stuck into the old routine. The same old same old. Kid myself that this flat-line existence is enough. Is a life.
Live for the weekends. That’s what I’ll do. That’ll get me through it. That’ll give me a toe-hold on the sheer glass-smooth face of utter tedium and desperation. And onwards I’ll climb. Upwards and onwards.
Onwards and upwards to the next holiday. The next week of freedom.
Just 4 weeks away. 4 weeks and then the sun will shine again.
No. No! I mustn’t think of it. Not yet. Not yet.
I have to keep going... have to keep going... have to...
One week off. One short-lived beautiful week. Already consigned to the dustbin of memory. Written off by virtue of having been lived and loved and replaced by the present. How can time move so fast?
And my workmates keep asking me about it. How was my week? Did I have a good time? My oh my, I’m looking well.
Torturers the lot of them. Turning the screw. Twisting the thumbnail removers. Gouging the flesh.
I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about my week in the sun now that I’m hip deep in mire and sludge and greyness. I just want to get my head down. Get stuck into the tasks at hand. Grit my teeth and do whatever it is I have to do.
I let it all die away. The goodness. The memory of an alternative lifestyle. Another way of filling my days. I wait for the shiny memories to fall away, to be replaced by dull mundanity. Wait for the blinkers to settle back over my eyes. It’s easier that way, believe me.
I can do it then. Survive. Get stuck into the old routine. The same old same old. Kid myself that this flat-line existence is enough. Is a life.
Live for the weekends. That’s what I’ll do. That’ll get me through it. That’ll give me a toe-hold on the sheer glass-smooth face of utter tedium and desperation. And onwards I’ll climb. Upwards and onwards.
Onwards and upwards to the next holiday. The next week of freedom.
Just 4 weeks away. 4 weeks and then the sun will shine again.
No. No! I mustn’t think of it. Not yet. Not yet.
I have to keep going... have to keep going... have to...
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Bread Crumbs
This week I have quaffed deep of the carafe of crapness. Supped long and hard on the soup-bowl of complete and utter work soddery. It is not an expression I use often on this blog but this week has been a shit sandwich. A shit sandwich of doorstep proportions.
There’s too much to go into here. Too much to discuss that would get me into trouble with my employers were I to share it openly – and you all know how I actively seek to avoid trouble of that nature. So let me satisfy external analysis by providing – for your delectation – one small vignette that not only began this week of work-based woe but also rather neatly sums it up.
Monday morning. We have just opened to the public. The foyer area is sparkling and smelling of pine fresh disinfectant. A contractor turns up to meet me. We exchange pleasantries and head back through the foyer to look at the faulty doors he has come to repair.
There is shit everywhere. Human shit. A trail of man-poo that slithers from the public toilets across the foyer to the library, across their cool blue carpet tiles, back out across the foyer towards the entrance doors and, yes, when I check, leads off across the parkland outside. Without any effort at all I bet I could follow the perpetrator all the way home.
The trail reminds me for some reason of the blood trail left after a seal has been clubbed and dragged back to a fur trading ship. Somebody has obviously clubbed a seal to death with an elephant sized turd.
I am gobsmacked. In fact I smack my gob and keep my hand there to prevent myself from inhaling the ripe aroma of freshly ejected effluvia that floats up from ground level like marsh gas.
In the space of a few brief seconds some scrote has – unfathomably – left the public toilets whilst soiling himself at a constant rate of one plop every third footfall.
Why? How?
How can you do this and not know you are doing it? ‘Cos I’m assuming it was an accident and not deliberate. Or am I wrong? Has the guy in question cut a hole in his trouser pockets like a POW in the Great Escape and carefully and surreptitiously dropped his load in the hope that the Nazi prison guards wouldn't notice what he was doing?
He’s failed. It sticks out a mile. And it smells. And – oh God – other customers are coming into the building and walking through it. As I watch, the wheel of a wheelchair carves a moist furrow in a particularly fetid looking dollop. There are now new shite trails beginning to spread out everywhere.
We get the cleaner. Bless her, she dons her marigolds with the stern expression of a vet about to remove a breach calf from the back end of a cow and gets to work. The clean-up operation has begun.
In the meantime a quick look of the CCTV cameras reveals a lost, confused, heavily bearded man wearing a woollen bobble hat despite the summer heat leaving the loos and wandering across to the library at the right time. Even with the dodgy quality of the CCTV footage you can clearly see that he’s not “all there” (indeed, a lot of him is spread across our floors). The phrase “care in the community” comes to mind. I.E. nobody cares and he’s been left to his own devices.
The cleaner reports that the loos are a bombsite (bum site?). Faeces and toilet paper in all the loos and all over the sinks. It’s going to be a big job (no pun intended).
*Sigh*
And that is how Monday began and – you know what? – the work week hasn’t got any better than that.
Like I said.
A shit sandwich.
There’s too much to go into here. Too much to discuss that would get me into trouble with my employers were I to share it openly – and you all know how I actively seek to avoid trouble of that nature. So let me satisfy external analysis by providing – for your delectation – one small vignette that not only began this week of work-based woe but also rather neatly sums it up.
Monday morning. We have just opened to the public. The foyer area is sparkling and smelling of pine fresh disinfectant. A contractor turns up to meet me. We exchange pleasantries and head back through the foyer to look at the faulty doors he has come to repair.
There is shit everywhere. Human shit. A trail of man-poo that slithers from the public toilets across the foyer to the library, across their cool blue carpet tiles, back out across the foyer towards the entrance doors and, yes, when I check, leads off across the parkland outside. Without any effort at all I bet I could follow the perpetrator all the way home.
The trail reminds me for some reason of the blood trail left after a seal has been clubbed and dragged back to a fur trading ship. Somebody has obviously clubbed a seal to death with an elephant sized turd.
I am gobsmacked. In fact I smack my gob and keep my hand there to prevent myself from inhaling the ripe aroma of freshly ejected effluvia that floats up from ground level like marsh gas.
In the space of a few brief seconds some scrote has – unfathomably – left the public toilets whilst soiling himself at a constant rate of one plop every third footfall.
Why? How?
How can you do this and not know you are doing it? ‘Cos I’m assuming it was an accident and not deliberate. Or am I wrong? Has the guy in question cut a hole in his trouser pockets like a POW in the Great Escape and carefully and surreptitiously dropped his load in the hope that the Nazi prison guards wouldn't notice what he was doing?
He’s failed. It sticks out a mile. And it smells. And – oh God – other customers are coming into the building and walking through it. As I watch, the wheel of a wheelchair carves a moist furrow in a particularly fetid looking dollop. There are now new shite trails beginning to spread out everywhere.
We get the cleaner. Bless her, she dons her marigolds with the stern expression of a vet about to remove a breach calf from the back end of a cow and gets to work. The clean-up operation has begun.
In the meantime a quick look of the CCTV cameras reveals a lost, confused, heavily bearded man wearing a woollen bobble hat despite the summer heat leaving the loos and wandering across to the library at the right time. Even with the dodgy quality of the CCTV footage you can clearly see that he’s not “all there” (indeed, a lot of him is spread across our floors). The phrase “care in the community” comes to mind. I.E. nobody cares and he’s been left to his own devices.
The cleaner reports that the loos are a bombsite (bum site?). Faeces and toilet paper in all the loos and all over the sinks. It’s going to be a big job (no pun intended).
*Sigh*
And that is how Monday began and – you know what? – the work week hasn’t got any better than that.
Like I said.
A shit sandwich.
Monday, July 12, 2010
It’s MY Bloody Bin!
My workstation is a curious thing. When I clock-on on a Monday morning I greet it with a mixture of spleen, bleak acceptance and an odd proprietorial sense of comfort. It’s mine. I might not like the thought of another week at work doing tasks that nature never intended me for but while I’m here by God I’ll make sure my presence is writ large. Me and my desk are as one.
I own it.
Pens. Pencils. PC. Prittstick.
All mine. They may strictly speaking belong to my employer but they’ve been supplied for my use and my use alone and woe betide anyone who borrows my stapler and doesn’t bring it back. Blood has been shed for less.
This sense of ownership extends to my bin.
It’s mine. For my use. For my waste.
And few things irritate me more than arriving at work of a morning, feeling hound-dog miserable that another week will pass without me being employed as a script writer for the BBC, to find that someone – some lazy so-and-so with their own bin – has tossed their detritus into the hallowed plastic bag lined maw of my own personal trash receptacle.
My desk is right near the office door, see. It’s the last workstation people pass on their way to freedom.
So you can see how it happens. Someone scoffs a banana on their way to the door, or takes a last slug on a bottle of tequila, or maybe quaffs down a Müller Crunch Corner that they didn’t quite get round to at lunchtime and, with an arm action worthy of the Harlem Globe Trotters, the offending banana skin / Tequila bottle complete with maggot / yoghurt pot ends up in my bin.
Foodstuffs that I have not had the pleasure of consuming. Foodstuffs that have energized and nourished people other than me.
Their germs and their lipstick – maybe even a few stray nasal hairs – are still around the edges of their cast-off comestibles.
In my bin.
Great. Now the cleaner will think they are mine. Will think that I am the sort of person who discards banana skins in a way that leaves yellow stringy bits decorating the sides of my bin like a cheap Christmas decoration. That I am alcoholic. Worse. That I besmirch the holy temple of my body with a Müller Crunch Corner.
It’s the worst kind of identity theft there is (well, perhaps not as bad as having your credit cards cloned, houses bought in your name, debts run up on your accounts and your family killed by the identity thief and the blame put on you so you have to be investigated by Keeley Hawes – though I can see some positives in that. Note to self: amend that last sentence before the wife reads it).
It’s identity defamation. It’s identity libel.
Or identity... something.
Look. I don’t know what it is OK? It’s just annoying. And I’m fed up with it. And it’s Monday morning. And it’s MY bloody bin!
I own it.
Pens. Pencils. PC. Prittstick.
All mine. They may strictly speaking belong to my employer but they’ve been supplied for my use and my use alone and woe betide anyone who borrows my stapler and doesn’t bring it back. Blood has been shed for less.
This sense of ownership extends to my bin.
It’s mine. For my use. For my waste.
And few things irritate me more than arriving at work of a morning, feeling hound-dog miserable that another week will pass without me being employed as a script writer for the BBC, to find that someone – some lazy so-and-so with their own bin – has tossed their detritus into the hallowed plastic bag lined maw of my own personal trash receptacle.
My desk is right near the office door, see. It’s the last workstation people pass on their way to freedom.
So you can see how it happens. Someone scoffs a banana on their way to the door, or takes a last slug on a bottle of tequila, or maybe quaffs down a Müller Crunch Corner that they didn’t quite get round to at lunchtime and, with an arm action worthy of the Harlem Globe Trotters, the offending banana skin / Tequila bottle complete with maggot / yoghurt pot ends up in my bin.
Foodstuffs that I have not had the pleasure of consuming. Foodstuffs that have energized and nourished people other than me.
Their germs and their lipstick – maybe even a few stray nasal hairs – are still around the edges of their cast-off comestibles.
In my bin.
Great. Now the cleaner will think they are mine. Will think that I am the sort of person who discards banana skins in a way that leaves yellow stringy bits decorating the sides of my bin like a cheap Christmas decoration. That I am alcoholic. Worse. That I besmirch the holy temple of my body with a Müller Crunch Corner.
It’s the worst kind of identity theft there is (well, perhaps not as bad as having your credit cards cloned, houses bought in your name, debts run up on your accounts and your family killed by the identity thief and the blame put on you so you have to be investigated by Keeley Hawes – though I can see some positives in that. Note to self: amend that last sentence before the wife reads it).
It’s identity defamation. It’s identity libel.
Or identity... something.
Look. I don’t know what it is OK? It’s just annoying. And I’m fed up with it. And it’s Monday morning. And it’s MY bloody bin!
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Ingland Expects
Except when I feel the need the moan about the World Cup.
See, what annoys me about the World Cup (apart from those stupid flags that everyone is prittsticking to the side windows of their cars - do read Rol's excellent It's Coming Home post to discover what to do about them) is this tacit expectation that everyone - especially if you're male - is going to be "into" the World Cup.
Suddenly it is the topic of conversation. And you're expected to have an opinion. You're expected to support a team. You're expected to care. You're even expected to face the "so are you watching the World Cup or are you going to be a World Cup free household?" question.
It has to be yes or no. Black or white. One or the other. The absence of the World Cup defined by its very existence.
But I don't care about the World Cup. I really don't. I don't even know the score of last night's match. I'm not bothered about knowing. I know it would be the easiest thing in the world to look it up online but I just can't be bothered. I'd rather be here writing about not caring to know. And please don't tell me the score. It's useless information. What am I going to do with it? Go outside and talk to someone about the match? I didn't watch it. Who won and who lost are so far outside my sphere of worries and concerns the match may as well have been played on Alpha Centauri. [If only.]
My world does not revolve around the World Cup. It is unimportant. It is a money-making, media blitzing, marketeer's wet-dream that benefits only the very few.
But that's fine. If you're into it, if you enjoy it, I'm pleased for you.
Just don't foist it onto me.
And, worse still, don't look at me like I'm a criminal / insane / deliberately perverse just because I'm not into it. There is nothing deliberate about my disinterest.
I have just never liked football. Not watching it or playing it. It doesn't make me unpatriotic just because I am not supporting England in the World Cup. I am supporting nobody in the World Cup. Nobody at all.
I don't care about any of them. Really.
Which is why this blog is going to be a World Cup free zone.
OK?
Saturday, March 27, 2010
No, Don’t Talk To Me, I Haven’t Landed Yet
Mine is not being allowed to get to my desk when I first arrive at work in the morning.
I don’t ask for much. Just that I be allowed to come in – I’ll say “good morning” if I have to – get to my desk, sit down, turn on my PC and check my emails.
That’s it.
I want to be left alone until all that is done.
I don’t want to come in and find things – other people’s post, mysterious objects that have broken off bits of machinery or the building itself, old newspapers, miscellaneous keys and a smorgasbord of post-it notes all containing complaints – scattered all over my desk and keyboard like the dead at Ypres. I hate that.
More than anything though I don’t want a protracted conversation. Once I’ve checked my emails – fine. I’ll talk the day away quite happily. But first thing in the morning, no... I need to land. Connect with the work place. Commune with my PC. Be forewarned if there is any electronic maliciousness infecting the internet airwaves.
The worst thing is when people talk – relentlessly and regardlessly – at me. Regale me with tales of their adventures the night before. And out of the corner of my eye I can see my email client loading on my PC. And – it’s terribly antisocial of me, I know (I ought to be damned grateful that anybody wants to talk to me at all, ever) – I can feel my body, my mind, my very soul yearning to turn my face away from the speaker so I can scan my In-box. And I nod and I hmm and I give non-committal replies... searching, straining to find the very first break in the conversation that presents itself so I can switch my attention back to my PC monitor.
Talk to the hand. I got mail.
I’m rude. I know I am. Rude and ungrateful. But... *shrugs* It’s just the way I am. I need that time to lower my landing gear, taxi up the runway, disembark a few troublesome passengers and perform my after flight checks. After that my inner hostess can come out, all big teeth and smiles, and I’m all set for work.
The emergency exits are here, here and here.
Sorted.
Good. We’re all clear. Now sit down, shut up and enjoy the flight.
Thank you for flying Steve Airways.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)