Symbolic Forest

As I mentioned the other day, Colleague M isn’t Colleague M any more. She’s now Ex-Colleague M.

Her contract was coming to an end, and her manager was being suspiciously non-commital about its renewal. So, rather than wait to find she was out of a job, she jumped.

Secretly, I was hoping that she was going to leave in a dramatic, destructive way, and reveal all the little secrets of the colleagues she didn’t get along with. Which of them are the most two-faced and hypocritical, for example, or which ones use the work computers to download porn. Unfortunately – as M is slightly more sensible and rational than I am – she decided not to. Bah. I’ll let you know how her job-hunting goes.

Keyword noise: career, Colleague M, colleagues, resignation.

Being a normal, well-adjusted, modern person, I sometimes forget how bigoted and backwards other people tend to be around here.

Today, I was over at one of our branch offices in Another Part Of The Forest for a few hours. Whilst I was there, one of the staff popped across the road to the local chip shop to get us all dinner. She came back, and we tucked in.

“These are good fishcakes,” said the branch manager. He’s in his mid-30s, he knows how to cook well and dress well, and I assume he’s fairly intelligent.^* “You wouldn’t think they were made by a couple of gayboys.” I choked on my coffee, but managed not to say anything. We get on badly enough already.

* Well, his writing is barely functional – I’ve received memos from him, and they’re very badly written, bad enough to be very hard to understand sometimes. But, if you manage to become a branch manager, you can’t be too stupid.

Keyword noise: bigotry, colleagues, homophobia, management, stupidity, Scunthorpe.

The current craze at the office – among the handful of single people, at least – seems to be online dating. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve got an online personal advert, which decided that my perfect partner in the whole country was someone who is already a good friend. Now, other people are apparently doing the same thing.

Well, a couple of people at least. One of the co-workers thought she’d celebrate her divorce by meeting some new people, so she signed up on a dating website. However, she soon came across the same problem as me. The site she used easily found her a nearby match. Unfortunately, rather too nearby – a manager down the corridor, known to almost all in the building as Annoying Tosser. News of his personal ad rapidly spread round the building.^* However, I’m not completely sure if it’s spread as far as his girlfriend yet. That should be interesting.

*** Although, of course, none of us have actually seen it, because the woman who found it doesn’t want to risk us finding hers too, so won’t tell us where she found it.

Keyword noise: colleagues, dating, personal ads.

Almost anyone you ask will tell you: they hate the sound of their own voice. I have a similar relationship with my own face.

This is at the top of my mind, because I received an email today, with a couple of photos of myself in it.^* They look horrible, I have to say. No fault of the photographer, just that I look terrible anyway.

The common connection with the sound of your own voice is that just as you rarely hear your own voice as other people do, you rarely see your own face that way either. When I see myself in the mirror in the morning, it somehow doesn’t register, because it doesn’t look anywhere near as bad in my mind as it does in photographs. I’m convinced I’m not the only person who thinks this way, though. I’m sure there are relatively few people who are pleased with the appearance of their own face.

It makes me wonder about artists: specifically, artists who produce a lot of self-portraiture. What drives them to do it? Is it a narcissistic obsession with their own appearance? Or, as I’d prefer to think, is it instead more the reverse, an obsession with controlling their appearance because they’re never satisfied with it.

* And lots of other people too, of course – from when we all went out on Boxing Day.

Keyword noise: art, artists, narcissism, portrait, self-portrait.

At the office, the main conversation-starter today was: “so, what did you do on New Year’s Eve?” I felt slightly sheepish having to say: “um, I was ill.” It might only have been a cold, but even so the headache and constant sneezing were enough to send me to bed well before midnight.

At least, staying in, I avoided being beaten up, glassed, stabbed, shot, etc. New Year’s Eve in our local town was so … well, active, that it made the national press. As I get scared at the slightest sign of any sort of violence, I’m rather glad that I was nowhere near any of it.

Keyword noise: drinking, Grimsby, New Years Eve, Hogmanay, Lincolnshire, North East Lincolnshire, violence.

Well, this year has started with sneezing fits and blocked sinuses. I have an awful cold, the sort that makes me feel as if my brain has been packed in grey cotton-wool.

Someone at work once told me she didn’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions. “If you want to do something,” she said, “you should just go out and do it, and never mind what the date is.” Regardless of that, though, this is what I’m going to do this year:

• Get this site running on WordPress 2^*
• Update the site every day, if it’s practicable
• Lose weight^**
• Spend more time with friends, especially ones I haven’t seen for years
• Try not to worry so much about the impression other people have of me Make an effort to meet more people – if it results in meaningful relationships, either friend or lover, then so much the better^***
• Take up writing again

* It’s important to have at least one resolution that has a definite chance of happening. So, I made sure to put one in that I should have knocked off by the end of the month.

** As I don’t know how much I weigh – and have no intention of finding out – this one might be tricky. I’ve definitely started putting a bit of flab on in the past few months, though.

*** I’m still not giving you the address of my online personal ad, though.

Keyword noise: 2006, new year, resolutions.

Unlike the first half of the year, there is one big stand-out memory from the second half of 2005. The start of my second business trip to London. Getting off the train at Kings Cross and walking down Platform 4 trying not to start crying. I was worried because someone I knew – even though I’d not seen her for a few years – had, like many other people, been missing for three days. She’d last been seen at Kings Cross, changing trains. I held myself together until my taxi was driving away from the station, onto Euston Road. As we passed the ambulance standing at the station entrance, waiting to take another run to the mortuary, I burst into tears. This was on Sunday, July 10th. Half an hour later, a Lancaster bomber flew noisily over my hotel-room window.

There are a few more significant memories from the past six months. I’m not sure if more really has happened compared to the start of the year, or if it’s just more memorable because it’s more recent. In August, I visited London again, to see W and his boyfriend, go to a party at their house, and take lots of pictures. At the party, I met the month-old daughter of my friends John and Jen, at that point just named “Piglet”. She’s since been given a proper name, Jaime, after another old friend who was at the same party.

Coming back home, I started up this website – in fact, I thought up the name whilst changing trains^* on the way home. After that, nothing very striking has happened – but I’ve made new friends, and got back in touch with some old ones. Another friend was suddenly lost, but more are always being born. Last year ended with Jen announcing she was pregnant; this year ended with W and his boyfriend announcing their engagement. The cycle of the newspaper announcements column marches on.

* Changing between delayed trains, of course.

Keyword noise: 2005, End Of The Year, marriage, memories, wedding.

I was planning to write two whole posts about all the great things that had happened to me this year; but then, I realised I couldn’t actually remember many.

To be honest, I can’t remember much at all about the first half of the year. I went camping. Um, that was about it. So, the first thing on the list for Things To Do Next Year will be: try and be more memorable! Aside from one camping trip and one trip to London, all I can say about the first half of 2005 is that I went to work every day.^*

The defining memory of the first half of the year: sitting in the restaurant of a bargain-price London hotel,^** at breakfast, not being entirely sure what to do, because it was the first time I’d stayed in a hotel. That was at Easter, roughly.

* Well, five out of every seven at least.

** at least, I was assured that £85 per night is a bargain price for a London hotel. As it was on expenses, I wasn’t particularly bothered. I did, of course, take every opportunity to use the phrase “don’t worry, I’m on expenses” even though I hardly dared actually put anything onto my bill.

Keyword noise: 2005, camping, End Of The Year, holiday, memories.

Driving in snow isn’t something I’ve ever done before, as far as I can remember. Today, I had to shovel a couple of inches off the windscreen before slowly trundling off towards the office.

I forgot, of course, to shovel it off the bonnet too, so was stuck peering around a large pile of snow as I drove along. Fortunately, everyone else was going just as slowly as I was, so I didn’t have to worry about getting in everybody else’s way. Sticking to my own tentative pace, wary of slipping or skidding, I gently rolled to work.

It’s strange how much noise a load of snow on your roof will make. The journey was filled with gentle creaks as the snow settled and moved. I felt like a passenger onboard a wooden sailing ship. Today’s trip to work was my very own Franklin expedition.

Keyword noise: driving, hazard, snow, weather, winter.

This Christmas, I have received:

• Some of the CDs and DVDs that I couldn’t be bothered to buy during the year
• A new denim jacket, with a nice warm fleecy lining
• Vodka
• A cunning device to tell you when your parking meter is about to run out.

The parents have received, from me:

• One of those car navigation gadgets
• A fossilised fish.^*

Well, at least neither of them was going to guess a present like that before they opened it. It is now sitting on top of the TV, in stony silence.

Naturally, we all gathered around the telly last night to watch Doctor Who. The episode could have been better, the plotline felt rather thin, but when the Doctor woke up and swung into action he was marvellous indeed. The main gripe I had with the plot was: the Doctor shouldn’t just be a deus ex machina, but in this story that’s effectively all he was. Still, at least Russell T Davies does know how to write a running joke.^**

* Actually, there are two fish in the slab I gave, but one is faint and difficult to see. I didn’t spot it myself until after it was unwrapped and on display.

** and the Douglas Adams reference was a nice touch too.

Keyword noise: Yuletide, Christmas, criticism, David Tennant, Doctor Who, gifts, giving, presents, Russell T Davies, television, BBC.