Magical thinking
Conference this morning, where my presentation might as well have been titled 'our friend cardboard' for all the enthusiasm it generated. Still, I stuck around for a couple of following presentations and it was good to see that nobody missed an opportunity to mock, taunt and generally put the boot in. I didn't stay for lunch.
There were a couple of interesting points. The conference was held in the Strand Palace Hotel, meaning that I had to counter every instinct and walk past Marco's instead of going in and drinking a lot of Peroni. The hotel was your typical grand pile outside and art deco inside.
The most striking thing about them was the gents. I mean, this is how a toilet should be. The urinals were not some piss-poor excuse for a margarine-pot sized bowl full of fag butts stapled to the wall but rather a sheer wall of several tonnes of porcelain propped up against the wall with a trough the size of the Manchester ship canal. As for the stalls - the seats were from a hardwood you can't even buy anymore.
Did have one moment in the loo though, on walking out I stepped on a tile slightly slicker than its neighbours and I was overcome with the sensation that if I did not put my other foot down, something terrible would happen. By this time I had already left and was making my way to the lobby.
Instead of the fantasy receding, as I got further from the gents the sensation got stronger, but so too did the rational thought that this sort of magical thinking is pure crap. It's a form, I guess, of obsessive compulsive disorder and the sort of thing that Channel 4 make documentaries about, showing otherwise ordinary looking people organising fluff by size colour or moistness.
Odd really, and one of those things that make you think 'am I the only person who thinks like this?' Answer is either yes and everyone else really is well-adjusted (apart from their own little mental tics) or no, and everyone else is actually a seething bag of neuroses but better at hiding it.
Then, of course, there are people who are just nutters.
The reality is that the population of the world probably operates on a sliding scale of mental instability, it would certainly explain a hell of a lot.
There were a couple of interesting points. The conference was held in the Strand Palace Hotel, meaning that I had to counter every instinct and walk past Marco's instead of going in and drinking a lot of Peroni. The hotel was your typical grand pile outside and art deco inside.
The most striking thing about them was the gents. I mean, this is how a toilet should be. The urinals were not some piss-poor excuse for a margarine-pot sized bowl full of fag butts stapled to the wall but rather a sheer wall of several tonnes of porcelain propped up against the wall with a trough the size of the Manchester ship canal. As for the stalls - the seats were from a hardwood you can't even buy anymore.
Did have one moment in the loo though, on walking out I stepped on a tile slightly slicker than its neighbours and I was overcome with the sensation that if I did not put my other foot down, something terrible would happen. By this time I had already left and was making my way to the lobby.
Instead of the fantasy receding, as I got further from the gents the sensation got stronger, but so too did the rational thought that this sort of magical thinking is pure crap. It's a form, I guess, of obsessive compulsive disorder and the sort of thing that Channel 4 make documentaries about, showing otherwise ordinary looking people organising fluff by size colour or moistness.
Odd really, and one of those things that make you think 'am I the only person who thinks like this?' Answer is either yes and everyone else really is well-adjusted (apart from their own little mental tics) or no, and everyone else is actually a seething bag of neuroses but better at hiding it.
Then, of course, there are people who are just nutters.
The reality is that the population of the world probably operates on a sliding scale of mental instability, it would certainly explain a hell of a lot.
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