End Of Year Arse-Wipe

Like my natural propensity for forgiveness, blogging hasn’t come easy this year. I’ve struggled. Not so much with ideas or subject matter – there is always some kind of fat that my mind is chewing over – but with inclination; the desire to write and by writing, sharing. “I can’t be bothered,” are the 4 most common (non)spoken words that the little voice inside my soul has thrown out at me this year. Can’t be bothered. And if I did write something who would be bothered to read it? Is it worth my time and effort? Will anybody miss it if I don’t write about it. Will anyone miss me if I overdose on Yorkie bars right now and drive my metaphorical 18 wheeler off the petty minded cliff edge of social media?

This is a bit of a turn around. When I first started writing this blog back in the heady days of 2006 my answer to most of the above questions would have been, “of course no one will miss it if I don’t write about it; of course they won’t miss me, mad fools that they are; and no, no-one really will be bothered to read anything at all that I write BUT I don’t care, I want to write it so I shall – if nothing else it will entertain me.”

And therein lies the problem, I fear. I am no longer entertaining myself. But like a starving tramp scouring the floor for dropped popcorn I still feel a duty to turn up at the theatre just in case I find a hot dog.

To be honest the last half of 2014 has been so unremittingly crap I haven’t wanted to write. I haven’t wanted to engage with the stuff that has been happening. Couple that with an estranged relative who has quite viciously taken against me and this here blog and feels I have no right to write about things that directly affect me if they also happen to affect her and has basically condemned my outpourings here as a feeble minded attempt to garner sycophantic approval from a bunch of faceless, equally needy and nerdy peers and you have the recipe for a perfect storm. Or at least a very wet weekend which makes you not want to get out of bed or do anything very exciting at all.

If I was in any way consistent I would stop writing. I would stop this blog and disappear.

But I can’t. I can’t quite give in. Instead I fudge and mither. I seek a halfway house. I try and instigate a cotton-wool rebellion. Softly softly not quite catchy monkey. I throw a hand grenade but make sure nobody is around to get hurt before I pull out the pin. This is not the spirit in which this blog was bathed at its inauguration.

But there you go. Older and wiser and all that. Certainly a darn sight more tired.

And a darn sight more underhand. For a very brief rundown of current events do visit here (most of you who are regular readers will find you have the correct access rights)… the general hoi polloi, however, will be unable to follow.

Sorry for the cloak and dagger stuff but some of it is quite sensitive and I really don’t want to be dealing with the inevitable fall-out from Estranged Relative (who is like the Argentinian Government to my blog’s quite innocent car registration number*).

Not sure if that makes me Jeremy Clarkson or Richard Hammond. Probably more likely to be James May.

So, going into 2015 there is some major booty that needs kicking (or otherwise dealing with). In the midst of all that though there might be the off-chance of acquiring a flattering girdle which may offer an attractive backdrop to some of life’s more sombre moments. But, like helium, so much of it is up in the air at the moment that it’s just not worth buying the balloon until things become more definite.

I will, however, try and reinvest this blog with a little more spirit and vigour in 2015. I will try and reclaim it for myself and go hang the dissenters. Because, maybe, just maybe, life it too short not to.

*Or possibly even the Mel B to my chirpy Micky Flanagan...

Five Ring Circus

I’m not a fan of the Olympics.

Or any kind of televised sports thing really. I don’t particularly enjoy Wimbledon. Horse racing gets my goat. Motor racing just sounds like a bunch of kids shouting “eeeooow” into a biscuit tin. Football I absolutely loathe. And golf is just stupid: a stupid sport to play, a stupid sport to go and watch and an even more stupid sport to attempt to televise.

I don’t do sport. I really don’t.

I even hated it as a kid. I hated playing it at school. Football, rounders and, worst of all, cricket. I’d be one of the last to be picked for any team. I was always in the last 4 which is great if you’re a contestant on The Apprentice but not so great when you have all the cool kids lined up looking at you, trying to work out whether you’re more or less useless than the Buswell twins or Alan Winyard who would inevitably be the three other guys left waiting with me. To my dubious credit I’d be picked before these guys. I could catch a ball and, in football, had a dogged but ineffectual determination which made me ideal defender fodder. I was like a gnat worrying a bull a lot of the time. But at least I did something. I could be patronized with the best of them too – I made man of the match once for scoring a fluky goal. But even that success didn’t convert me.

I hated watching sport as a kid too. Sport on the telly meant no cartoons or James Bond film. It meant painfully long Saturday afternoons in the 70’s with Dicky Davies and World of Sport. It meant my father watching football, motocross, rugby and then the interminable hour of the football results through teatime. I consider it progress that my boys will never have to suffer the hell of “Plymouth Argyll 1, Queen’s Park Rangers 2” uttered in a TV voice drier than Barbara Woodhouse’s ashes.

So I will not be getting on board for Olympic fever. Up until now I haven’t even bothered myself to write about it. It’s felt like the recession. It’s there, we all know it’s there, why waste our breath talking about it? But this torch thing. It’s everywhere. It’s coming to my home town. It’s coming past the building where I work although I’m not allowed to talk about that here. Every day there are updates on the TV about where the torch is right now and which paraplegic bus conductor is currently carrying it another mile on its journey.

Stupidly I thought there was just one torch and, in the true nature of a relay, it would get given to the next runner, and the next. But no. Everyone gets a new torch. Seems a phenomenal waste of money to me but then what a perfect metaphor for the whole event. I believe some of the torch bearers are even selling their torches on eBay. I’m tempted. I really am. You’d get a helluva lot of ice cream in one of those cones.

I won’t be watching the Olympics this summer. Aside from the opening ceremony, that is. That might be worth a laugh. I’m hoping Boris Johnson will leap out of a double-decker bus, naked apart from a pair of Austin Powers glasses and some novelty sock suspenders. After that I’m switching off. I’ll be hitting my DVD boxed sets or, if push comes to shove, Dave. I’m deliberately not coming to the party or joining in.

I suspect it will just be me, the Buswell twins and Alan Winyard but you know what? For once I don’t care. I’m deliberately not picking myself for the Olympic team. I’m happy to be left out. Happy to be less useful than those of you who can throw a ball straight.

Sport always kicked me in the shins and made me feel less worthy. It took away my dignity and my self-confidence. It made everything a competition that only the biggest and the fastest could win.

So I am boycotting the Olympics; boycotting it in honour of all of us who were too knock-kneed and too pigeon-toed to be any good at sport. I’m doing it for the Buswells. I’m doing it for Alan Winyard.

And most of all I am doing it for the British Olympic team.

Go Team GB! Go!

I know you won’t let me down.

Mojo

I nearly lost it, I confess.

It kind of dropped away over December, went into a steep decline. A double dip vitality loss. I couldn’t even summon up the enthusiasm to feel unhappy about the prospect of losing it forever.

Was it worth the energy outlay? The continual dredging up of vigour? Why not just let it go? Take the path of least resistance? Learn to live without it?

Make do with it in absentia.

I mean, other people cope without it. Other people seem happy enough without it in their lives. Not everyone needs that particular spark in their continued existence. Other people don’t seem to see its absence as a loss at all.

But maybe they just don’t miss what they’ve never had?

See, that’s the problem with me. The stumbling block to letting go. I have had it in my life. Three times a week for the last 6 years. Sometimes it’s been a collaborative effort, other times I’ve gone solo. But regardless of the how and the why, I have indulged. I have pushed myself to indulge. It’s healthy apparently. It keeps things flowing. Keeps the pipes clean.

But this Christmas... I don’t know what it was. The culmination of a heavy year at work, money worries, the fresh completion of a novel that drove me too hard... I just lost my blogging mojo. Big time.

And other bloggers seemed to be dropping away. Dropping like flies. Output all over the blogosphere was falling away like share prices on the Ftse 100. It was like blogging had become yesterday’s news. Today’s kebab wrapping. It was like it didn’t matter anymore.

And so I thought why shouldn’t I join them? Why not go along with the zeitgeist? Who the hell would miss me? 15, maybe 16 people. I’ve hardly set the world alight. Why not snuff out my sarcastically whinging voice along with the dying of the light?

Who’s going to care?

I am.

Because I realized I’d miss being able to moan to a captive (if small) audience. I’d miss the camaraderie of my comments box. I’d miss exasperating and annoying people. Being the anally retentive bad penny blogger who just keeps turning up (even when no one has asked him to) and sending stuff out into the blogosphere.

Because basically, I just love getting on other people’s tit’s.

And once I realized that... well, the old mojo came back again with a vengeance.

Thank you all for your help.

To Sleep, Perchance To Dream

So I’m back at work.

I’m back up to my neck in petty bureaucracy, ropey plumbing and orang-utan arsed contractors.

The familiar smell of my workstation – Tipp-ex, chocolate, wood polish and cyanide (I will find a use for those capsules one day, I promise you) is not acting as a balm. One expects a little residual sourness when one returns to work after a holiday but the rising torrent of acid that is currently bubbling away in my gorge (oo-er) is alarming to say the least.

How am I keeping myself sane? You may very well ask.

Current favourite coping strategy is to indulge in a spot of dark fantasizing.

No. Not of that sort, you mucky minded lot...

I am not really a building supervisor for a local government authority.

I am a sleeper agent.

I am here to dismantle the system, the authoritarian regime that maintains law & order and regulates the price of DVDs in this capitalist nanny state. You see me sitting here, searching Google Maps for the nearest Jewson’s outlet, never realising that I am in fact subtlely interrogating Google Earth for the wherewithal to gain access to this country’s great edifices of power.

But I am not sure, at this point in time, what exactly those edifices are.

I thought it might be 10 Downing Street but mentally I have this confused with Billy Smart’s circus. My ‘controller’ is pushing me to apprehend the nerds that run Twitter but I suspect they might be a little out of my jurisdiction. Besides which, I use Twitter to further my own socialist manifesto so suspect my ‘controller’ might be a double agent. Or at the very least Ryan Giggs. Either way, not to be trusted.

However, the perks are pretty good. I have excellent ball control.

Unlike Ryan.

I am of course building a dirty bomb beneath my desk. My work colleagues no doubt think I am up to something seedy and unpalatable with a sheet of bubble wrap and an old copy of Hello magazine but really I am constructing a weapon of such awesome destructive power that Harold Camping has snapped his Casio pocket calculator clean in half and is currently sobbing into his Gideon’s Bible. Once I’ve inserted the last paperclip you’re all for it.

I am looking around the office. Taking careful note of the photocopier, the stationery cupboard, the water cooler. Noting their location.

‘Cos tomorrow they won’t be here. Instead their atomized remains will be spread across a 10 mile wide crater, at the centre of which will be the smoking remains of my desk and my sock suspenders.

I may bequeath my hole-punch to someone before it is too late.

Oh what the hell. It’s too good for any of them anyway.

Now, where was I?

Oh yes.

There’s dog poo outside the building.

By ‘eck, I needs must get me shovel.

It’s so nice to be back at work.

Tossing My Bionic Caber

I’m a cheapskate.

No, really. I am.

I drink water at work so I don’t have to contribute to the tea kitty. Not only that, I buy a 1ltr bottle of water from the local newsagent, drink it, and then hijack the water cooler in the staffroom (paid for by one of the other operators who share my work’s building) and refill it from there every day after.

I tell you this as a precursor to the main subject of my post.

Because yesterday, it occurred to me that it was time for me to buy a new bottle of water. Not so much for the water but for the bottle. Because mine was starting to look green around the rim. Not only that, despite emptying it out and refilling it, I noticed that there was precipitate in it.

Small furry occurrences of matter that hung in suspension around the mid-point of the bottle.

So I decided that my immune system had been exercised enough and trotted off to acquire a new bottle of aqua vitae (narrowly avoiding Cap’n Jack Sparrow in the queue at the newsagents).

I settled on a bottle of Highland Spring.

I took it back to the office whereupon I was so bored by my surroundings that I distracted myself by reading the label on the bottle.

“Drawn from Organic Land”.

That is what it said under the product’s name. It’s obviously a major selling point, this organic land.

But what exactly is it?

See, I figured that all land is organic by default. Or is this a subtle way of telling me that Highland Spring Ltd haven’t just collected up the run-off from a landfill site to the northwest of Birmingham and bottled up the resulting sump?

What is non-organic land? Concrete? Plastic? Bacofoil? The main arena at the NEC? Are there whole fields comprised of polyester and Kevlar that I have missed on my many travels around this (not so green and pleasant) land?

Do these places feature natural springs whose water might be confused with that drawn from real, mud and soil, land? You know; old school terra firma, made the old fashioned way by nature and the slow laws of geology?

Because, given a choice, I’d quite like to try some “bionic water” (my phrase and, yes, I am going to copyright it) drawn from non-organic land. It’s the type of thing that could well turn somebody into Spiderman or Swamp Thing provided it contained the right amount of genetically modified contaminates and unintentional ingredient X’s.

And that would be pretty cool, you must admit.

I could wreak havoc on the masses, not to mention the misses in my office. I’d have an excuse never to come into work again. I could become a crime fighter or even a master criminal. I could be on the telly every night.

Aqua vitae indeed.

It would also be a far more permanent and exciting way of alleviating my terminal boredom than by reading the label on a sodding water bottle.

On The Prowl

You’ve had the same meat, week in, week out for the last God knows how many years. The same meat cooked the same way, with the same sauce. Vanilla vanilla vanilla.

You get to the point where you fancy a change. Something a bit different. Something a bit spicy, perhaps. A bit exotic. Something that resurrects your old enthusiasm for the dish. Reminds you of when you were young and it was all fresh, new and exciting. Before the ennui set in. Before you became over-familiar. Bored. Before you had to fake it.

How was it for you, dear?

Yeah. Yeah. Great. Are we done? Good, ‘cos I really need to sleep now.

And you hit the z’s knowing full well you’ll have to go through the same charade again tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that.

Unless you do something. Unless you find, I don’t know, ingredient X. A new flame.

Well, I’m on the hunt for ingredient X. I’m on the prowl. And all offers will be welcomed, considered and one might even be accepted.

I’m not quite sure what ingredient X is but I know it has some of these components:

a) A better wage. No point making a change unless I get more money.
b) More kudos. That would be nice. No more poop-scooping or shoving buckets under leaky urinals.
c) Less crap responsibilities and more good responsibilities. Hell, we all want that but that doesn’t devalue the demand.
d) The ability to leave work at the office at the end of the day and not get rung at home, without fail, every holiday and 2 out of 3 weekends.
e) A better class of workmate. Could write oodles here but can’t, if you see what I mean.
f) I’m prepared to bargain-plea with most of the above but a) and e) are non-negotiable.

Trouble is, for all my hunting skills, my flint headed spears are finding scant prey to be launched at. New job opportunities are a bit thin on the ground.

I know that, in theory, this means I should turn back to the bony carcass of my existing job, make peace with it, cuddle up to it like we’re a couple of old spoons and be reconciled.

But. I. Just. Can’t. Do. It.

I’m sick of the same old bitter meat. The same old bitter meat topped with poisonous gravy.

I fancy an Indian. Or an Italian. Or a Chinese. Hell, even a vegetarian moussaka would do the trick. Anything.

Anything but this.

I’m shrivelling up. And I’m going to lose it if I don’t use it.

So I’m on the prowl.

On the prowl for something new. Something exciting.

I just need a decent shot at it.

Just one.

Pre-Ops Briefing

OK, soldier.

You better listen up and listen up good. You've had it easy so far. Trips to the beach. Trips to Birdland in Bourton-on-the-Water. Trips to Legoland. You've lived the high life and battered that ol' credit card pretty good.

But now it's payback time.

Here's where you start paying in sweat - and I ain't talking 'bout no dirty dancing with Irene Cara.

Tomorrow, you're going in. Behind enemy lines. Deep into enemy territory. You knew this day was coming. Hell, we knew this day was coming; that's why we cut you some slack. But the leash is back on now and yanked tighter than a nun's gusset.

Now, don't panic none, soldier. We're gonna get you kitted out with the finest hardware the military can buy.

I'm talkin' an assault action poker-face that you can don at any time. Any of those admin lovin' mofo's try to slide some red tape up your ass... well, you just don this and stare the suckers down. I guarantee they'll buckle and shit staples.

I'm talkin' ACME "couldn't give a shit" body armour. We got you the full body suit straight off the production line, son. You got balls to brain protection. Shoot, those tie-pin wearing nerd-busters can spend all day firing 'high responsibility' rounds at you and you ain't gonna feel nothin' but a pin-prick. You give them the finger and send them home to mama.

But most of all, I'm talkin' secret weapon. I'm talkin' something so ball-breakingly big and meaningful those mealy-mouthed sons and sonesses of bitches are gonna lactate pure devil-deep frustration. I'm talkin' life and drive and ambition for something way beyond that hell box they call the office.

And we're giving you that in spades.

So you dig deep, boy. You dig deep and tomorrow... you go back to work.

Guest Blog Post: Lord Sugar Speaks

First off, right, I’m sick of all this mouthiness that is infecting my blogging boardroom at present. If I wanted that kind of earache I’d spend more time at home wiv my missus and my kids. It’s like a bloody East End market at present wiv everyone giving it the ol’ rabbit and making out that their stall is better than everybody else’s when nobody, from what I can see, is flogging anyfin worthwhile.

Well, I don’t need that kind of aggro, right? You lot need to get wiv the programme and start working as a team. Together. Cos I don’t care who done what to whom or who said what to whoever. Bovvered I ain’t, you got that? I got bigger fish to fry. If I spent as much time as you lot did arguing the toss abaht who bullied who or who slagged off which slag I’d never have enough time to keep me beard in the tip top trimmed condition that you lot see it in every bleeding Wednesday night on your tellys.

It ain’t how I do business, you capiche? You gotta prioritize. That’s the first lesson I learned when I was hawking me barrow around Chigwell market when I were a young nipper no bigger’n knee high to a grasshopper gor blimey gov. You puts your stuff in your shop-winda and you sells it. You saves the argy-bargy for private when you’re at home or dahn the boozer when you can glass the odd chav wivout the rozzers jumping onto you the minute the claret hits the pavement. Take a tip from me, have a good getaway driver lined up wiv a towel and bowl of soapy water cos you’re gonna need it. DNA has tripped up even the best of businessmen these days. CSI Bloggosphere is the next big fing I’m telling yer.

So what else can you do abaht it?

Well, if you wants to keep your ‘ands clean, you comes to me to sort it aht in my capacity as a peacekeeping troubleshooting mediator. And that’s what’s happened here, see. This bloke, Steve What’s-is-face has come to me cap in hand like a good little Jewish boy even though he’s bleeding C of E, moaning about all the back biting and the conflicts that are currently doing the round in the blogging world. He’s harping on about the bloody Clone Wars or somefing, I don’t know, all I know is he’s given me a nice little back hander and said he’ll endorse me latest Amstrad gadget the iSugar (a nice little app to sack lightweights from the comfort of your raspberry or whatever they’re bleedin’ well called). Anyway, this Steve fella knows how fings works, see? You get your back scratched and then you get your fingernails dirty wiv someone else’s skin. It’s how it bleedin’ works, right?

But what-bleedin-ever. The point is I’ve ‘ad me stalwart assistants, Nick ‘Hewn From Rock’ Hewer and Karren ‘The Brady Bunch’ Brady, keepin’ a close eye on the activities of the two blogging teams out there – the pink mumsy bloggers and the bluesy everybody elses and I ain’t liking what I’m seein’. There’s a lot of posturin’ and a lot of scratchin’ and bitin’. But what profits are you lot showing? There’s a lot of hot air but no-one’s balloon is being floated up to the highest height if you get my meaning. It’s like everyone’s intent on knifing Caesar but nobody knows who Caesar bleedin’ well is.

Well, take it from me, I’m the only Caesar around ‘ere and no-one is sticking a Stanley knife between my unwaxed shoulder blades anytime soon.

So put up, shut up and get on wiv your business. Now bugger off back to the house.

Right. That’s that sorted then. Karren, get me a mug o’tea darlin’, one sugar please. Geddit? Did you see what I did there, Karren, luv? No? Well, you’re bleedin’ well fired then. Get aht!