A homage to loading screens.
Or, noting an irony
Just a short note today: in the midst of a newspaper article on proposals to give the Prime Minister his own private airliner, one interesting snippet of information. Can you guess which government minister has one of the highest air-travel mileages of the Cabinet, spewing out carbon dioxide by the ton? Yes, of course, it’s the Environment Secretary! Hurrah!
In which things get dark
This is the time of year when the black moods usually hit. I’ve heard of SAD, and maybe it’s that. I don’t know. Maybe it’s that the things I’m scared of, when I think back, all seem to have happened at this time of year too. When it gets back round to November again, the dark fears all start to come back.
The Mother has been in a dark mood lately too. She doesn’t like to talk about it, but I know she’s always had depression, and has always tried to hide it and pretend it’s not a problem. I can tell she’s having a bad time too; so maybe it is all about the season.
Or, someone has a plan to improve my love live
Colleague M has a cunning plan. A cunning plan to help me get a date.
This cunning plan is based around M’s theory that people suddenly get a lot more attractive when they’re unavailable. Bluntly put, if someone’s already taken, you’re much more likely to start crushing on them.
So, to help me look more attractive, M has invited me out for the day. “It’s not a date,” I was immediately told, “and I’m not going to snog you.” But, once word surreptitiously gets around the office,* however much we say “we’re just friends” noone will actually believe us. Therefore, everyone will think I’m taken, and will therefore be more likely to try to pull me when they get drunk at the Christmas party next month.
I’m not entirely convinced that this is going to work. If it does, though, I’ll keep you posted.
* And, indeed, it already has. It hasn’t even happened yet, and people are already raising eyebrows and saying things like: “have a good weekend, you two“.
In which I am accosted
Popping into town at lunchtime, ambling down a side street, I passed a dirty-looking one-legged man in a wheelchair.
“‘Scuse me, mate,” he said.
“Yes…?” I replied, warily. I couldn’t see this conversation going well.
“Are you from here?”
“Yes.”
“Have you got any ten-pees?”
“No,” I replied. I had no idea if I had or not, but I definitely couldn’t see this conversation getting any better.
“Have you got any money at all, mate?”
“Not much,” I answered. “Why?”
“I’m from Doncaster, and I need to get back home. I need another £4.50 for the train fare.”
“Really,” I said, trying my best to sound unbelieving. I’ve never had beggars try to pull this trick on me since I moved here, so it made a change to hear it again. I also noticed that his accent was nothing like a Doncaster one.
“I’m a diabetic,” he said, pulling a hypodermic from a pocket of his dirty cardigan. “Look. Diabetic. I need to get back to Doncaster.”
If I was quicker at thinking, I might have said something meaningful and concerned, like: isn’t it convenient for you that you can wheel straight off the train into the street when you get to Doncaster?* If I was more violent, I might have just grabbed the handles of his chair, kidnapped him, and wheeled him onto the next Doncaster-bound train, with instructions to the guard to definitely make sure he got off at the right stop. Being me, I just started walking onwards.
“I’VE GOT NO LEGS, MATE!” he shouted at me as I walked away. I felt like turning round and replying: look, I can at least count to one.
* For people lucky enough never to have to go there, or change trains there: if you are in a wheelchair, there are no public routes to, from or between the platforms at Doncaster station. The only thing you can do is to ask the staff to put you in the parcels-trolley lift.
In which people want to leave
After we had one office leaving party at the weekend, it seems everyone now is trying to do the same thing. People are updating their CVs on their lunchbreak, and flicking through the job pages of the local paper. My manager has been asking why Big Dave has been leaving early so much lately. I have no idea, and I told him so. Privately, I assume our manager has been going through the same thoughts as me: is he leaving early to go off to interviews? I don’t blame him if he is, because he doesn’t exactly look happy in his current place.
Or, getting ill in a topical way
In today’s news, top scientists have discovered that being a bit chilly does indeed help you catch colds. For me, it’s a timely discovery; on Saturday I started to feel a bit wobbly at the edges, and I spent most of Sunday in bed, sneezing, sinuses blocked, hoping my fuzzy headache would clear itself. I’m blaming the rather ill-planned heating arrangements in my office. It does have a radiator, but at the far end of the room to my desk, which may as well be 1,000 miles further north as far as I can tell. Every ten minutes I have to walk to the far end of the room to warm my numb fingers, so I can keep typing.
The Mother was pleased by the news: “Look! See! Mothers are right when they tell you things!” I tried to point out that she had always said the exact opposite when I was small. If I looked at all sniffly on the day of a PE lesson, I’d be told: “getting out there on the field will do you good – the cold will kill all the bugs off.”
In which we have trouble reading a catalogue
This week’s Book I Haven’t Managed To Finish Reading is something I don’t actually have a copy of myself. I bought it for my dad, a few years back, as a birthday present. He didn’t manage to finish it. I tried myself, and didn’t manage either. This week’s book is *Revolution In The Head: The Beatles’ Records And The Sixties* by Ian MacDonald.
My dad turned 18 in 1970; being of that generation, he’s always liked the Beatles. He’s not really much of a music fan, but he does like listening to a lot of bands from his teenage days, so I thought, naturally, that he’d enjoy this book. What stumped both of us, though, was its structure. Rather than being a normal biography, it lists every song the band ever recorded, in chronological order, with a few paragraphs about each one. There’s a great wealth of information, and I’m glad he’s now got a copy on the shelf as a reference book, but it’s not something that’s an easy or a light read. I might be a bit of a music geek sometimes, but, when you come right down to it it’s really just a list of songs. And even I’m not that geeky.
In which we’re reminded why we don’t go out much
It’s not often that I go for nights out around here. Sometimes, though, you have to, just to remind yourself why.
There was a good reason for it: a work leaving do. So, we all went off for a meal, before going to one of those horrible crowded town-centre bars that wants to be a nightclub. It doesn’t want to be a nightclub all the time, though, so it ends up being the worst of both worlds: a big, shedlike bar with plenty of tables and chairs so they can serve food in the daytime, a tiny little dancefloor, and loud loud cheesy dance music.
As it was far too loud to talk apart from by shouting right in someone’s ear, I spent some time just standing and watching the crowd. Being Friday, the place was packed, with a strange mixture of college students and 30-somethings. All the men had velvet-short shaved heads;* and all the girls had shoulder-length layers and tiny denim skirts. Everybody in the place had been stamped off the same production-line; everybody in the place had bought their clothes from the same handful of shops in the shopping centre.
A random stranger came up to Big Dave, and spent a good ten minutes chatting to him – well, I mean, they spent ten minutes shouting in each others’ ears. I assumed he was an old friend, or something like that.
“God, some people,” said Big Dave when the man finally left. “The last time I saw that bloke, I beat the shit out of him.” I’m glad Big Dave and I get along, because I’d be quite scared if we didn’t.
* the older men – the fortyish ones – all seemed to have porn moustaches too
Or, being kept awake by the cat
I’m getting that Friday afternoon sleepy feeling yet again. I wonder if I can get away with hiding in my office for the rest of the day.
I didn’t sleep well last night, which didn’t help. The cat, too, didn’t sleep well. He was trying to snooze at the foot of my bed; but every so often the sound of cats fighting outside would come through the window; and immediately he would jump up, run to the window-ledge, and prowl back and forth trying to see what was going on.
In which we annoy someone
I’m not always the most popular person at work, but sometimes I feel less popular than others.
A branch manager called me with a problem. It wasn’t particularly serious, but he seemed to think it was. His computer had been frozen solid for half an hour – or, rather, his computer had frozen solid half an hour ago, and he’d ignored it, so that he could phone up and say how terrible it was that he hadn’t been able to do anything for that long.
I told him to push some keys, and it sprang back into life.
“You have to admit that this isn’t really acceptable,” he said.
I tried to point out that if he, too, had pushed that same keystroke, then he, too, could have had a responsive computer immediately.
He said I was raising my voice at him.
“No, I’m sorry, I wasn’t raising my…”
And with that, he started to shout and swear at me, before slamming the phone down. Lovely. Maybe there’s a reason why he’s managerial material and I’m not.
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