‘Straining

Time was, years ago, I was training averse.

Far from seeing training as the free-lunch-supplied-jolly of corporate tradition I saw training as a stodgy corporate attempt to mentally and emotionally waterboard the prevailing corporate ethos into my captive psyche over the course of a working day (with a few egg mayo sandwiches thrown in for free).

A boxed set of The Office had also indelibly marked my intellectual flux capacitors with images of David Brent jerking his moobs to Tina Turner’s “Simply The Best” and thus the mere mention of ‘training’ transported me psychologically through time to the worst excesses of both the 1980s and the 1990s and, really, no egg mayo sandwich, no matter how good, was ever going to compensate for that kind of spiritual trauma.

So I gave training a wide berth.

And as a consequence I stayed sane but also remained in a state of career undevelopment.

Not anymore.

The last few months have seen a sea-change.

Not sure why – possibly the promotion has re-engaged me and helped me slough off the mantle of stagnation and disenchantment – but suddenly I’m up for all the training I can get. Even Health & Safety stuff. Yeah. That’s how switched on I have become.

Of course, there might also be a survival instinct kicking in here. People in my sector are losing their job, subsisting on crap pay that is forever losing the race with inflation, a job for life seems about as realistic as living on the moon in 2020… training suddenly seems a quick way to arm myself with the knowledge needed to make me seem a viable prospective employee or an employee worth retaining. 

So I’m putting my name down for everything. Grievance and Disciplinary. Data Protection. Institute of Occupational Safety & Health. Fish Thinking. Mind Gym. Cresting The Curve. Killing With Papier Mâché.

Only one of those is made up.

I’m becoming a sound-bite hoover. A corporate cyborg. It is becoming ideologically impossible to waterboard me because my mouth and mind is always receptive and I can drink faster than they can pour.

I am, in short, becoming simply the best.

Fear me.

The creature I am becoming would give Mary Shelley the willies.

Mad Max Beyond Blunderdome

Monday night I think it was, the 9.0 watershed had arrived and with it a complete dirth of anything worthy to watch on TV... so I did the only thing a sane man can do in such a situation. I spurned all thought of improving myself with a good book and channel hopped my way out of boredom.

This may say something about the state of my mind at the time but I settled for Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome showing on one of ITV's alternative cable channels. Admittedly I only watched about an hour of it before sleep overcame me but I have say, hand on heart, despite the awfully dated eighties soundtrack and production values I quite enjoyed what I saw. I'm sure most of my enjoyment came from a sense of nostalgia - I remember going to see this film at the cinema with my mate Tris sometime after we left Art College.

Looking back on it now I'm astonished at how camp the film is, how subliminally homo-erotic. Men everywhere oiled up and dressed in bizarre cut-away leather costumes that would have been far too provocative for Priscilla Queen Of The Desert. Dirt, grime and sweat beading every curved and rounded bicep. And through it all Mel Gibson staring out at the camera with that knowing look that says my eyes are bluer than anybody elses and that's why the ladies love me.

It's strange to reappraise Tina Turner's performance too now that the obstacle of her music career is all but removed. She's not bad. Not bad at all. She has real presence and charisma. I remember not really liking her in the film at the time. I think everytime she duck waddled on the screen I kept having flashbacks to Nutbush City Limits... and let's be honest, when a woman old enough to be your granny is on a huge screen before you wearing a skirt shorter than the BNP's MP list the last thing you want to be thinking about is Nutbush.

Anyway, the film seemed rather apt for these modern politically grey times. All is in disarray. Nobody knows what they want or how to get it. They just know what they don't want. They don't want another hero. They just want life beyond Thunderdome.

As I type I am having visions of Nick Clegg sitting astride David Cameron's shoulders in some bizarre homage to Master-Blaster. But does that make Gordon Brown Mad Max? And who the hell is going to be our Auntie? Is our little Barter Town going to be run forever on pig shit?

I don't know. All I know is today I am breaking out the leathers and walking around talking with an Australian accent. There's got to be a better world out there beyond the desert. There's just got to be.

Care to help me find it?