If you can't stand the heat

Obviously the stokers are on strike here in the building because the heating has gone potty. As a result of problems with the boiler there has been intermittent heating for a few days and it almost has got to the point where office drones are sat hunched round their monitors watching their breath and wearing gloves with the fingers cut out. Luckily we’re quite an ugly and repulsive bunch which means there is no suggestion of hugging one another for warmth although people have clustered round hot PCs for warmth…either that or somebody has disabled the safeguards on their internet access and logged onto Ladbrooks again.

Having fixed the problem, office services are showing what they can do and it’s like Kew Gardens in here at the moment, parched drones stagger along and when you see somebody at the end of a long corridor they appear out of the heat haze like Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia. But without the camel.

Much more of this and we’re going to need care packages - soup for the days the heating is busted, de-odorant for the days they’ve set it to ‘Ice cold in Alex’.

Cough, splutter

When you’re a kmid, being sick means missing double maths, watching ‘crown court’ on the telly and sitting on the sofa feeling feverish, but smug and re-reading old comics.

When you’re a grown up, being sick means feeling like hell and, as you lurch towards middle age, and especially if you’re a bloke, being sick is a brush with your own mortality. Having been struck down by a virus that’s doing the rounds…

…and let’s discuss that for a second. I put it all down to skimmed milk. I’m never ill, except when I come off full fat milk. Which I did a couple of weeks ago. What was I thinking (I was thinking it’s cheaper to lose weight than buy new trousers) and bingo, sick as a PC without a firewall. Full fat milk is my virusguard and from now on I’m going to top it up with cream and butter.

Anyhoo…a virus is doing the rounds and the symptoms are basically a cold and a headache. This does not stop me thinking a) I have bird-flu strain HE1P! b) My headache is in fact a brain haemorrhage (comedy moment - would not a brain haemorrhage in my case manifest as a pain in the arse) and of course c) a bad mango is going to make me the only person in the northern hemisphere to die of Bora Bora Billabong disease.

Basically there’s nothing to do but drink lots of fluids, flick channels at such speed that it creates a strobe effect and wait to get better. This of course happened but only after I had downed enough medication to see off half of Jonestown and lapped up a LOT of bad telly. Still, now that I’m fighting fit again I can feel my interest in life piqued once more - meaning that I haven’t had a drink in a week and it’s a leaving do tonight. Cheers!

Oh, as well as milk, fruit is going to be my back-up virusguard. But who has time to peel and eat the stuff these days, which is why I’m blitzing everything in a blender and downing smoothies in single gulps. All five portions in a glass! It’s great. I wonder if I could adopt the same method to get my daily number of alcohol units although my problem to date has been that I manage a week’s worth in a few glasses in one evening.

Fine fare

Some evening, you just can’t face the cooker. You know you should take the fresh bunches of veg and do things with them that involve olive oil but…the days has been too long, the weather’s too cold and the best kebab shop in the village is open.

So, in I go and order up. As I wait for my favourite illegal immigrants to grill the hell out of whatever chicken they managed to get cheap because it had a nasty cough, I look around the place (it’s busy so all the Red Tops are taken) and am cheered to see that on the specials menu, among all the kebabs and various other treats, they have, for £2:50, ‘meat & chips’. Fantastic. I wonder if ‘named meat & chips’ is more expensive?

Obviously, one of these days, I have to order it. As Fat Andy said when I told him about it ‘what more do you need?’. Too true.

An almighty morning commute

It sometimes seems as though my world has shrunk to sleeping, gymming (or not), travelling by train, work and telly. This is not the stuff of great correspondence but occasionally things from the pick list above yield a moment of interest…for me anyway.

Boarding the carriage the other day on the ‘late’ train in my usually way, breathless and flustered after the 100 yard dash to catch the train, running like a tubby bitch with coat-tails flapping, I slumped down opposite a bloke in a hoodie.

I instantly made the normal assumptions, but didn’t have time to really get rolling on my prejudices because he left at the next station. He had gone - but lying on the table were two wee booklets he had, I think, left - titled ‘knowing God personally’.

I wondered if he had left them? I wondered if this was his style of spreading the word? I then wondered if those joining the train were going to think they were mine!

Best case scenario (the one that happened) is that everyone ignores them. Middle case is that somebody starts reading them and worst case is that somebody assumes they are mine, assumes that I am the sort of happy-clapper with a tambourine up my arse and a bible in each pocket that actually wants a conversation about mysticism before work and starts banging on about their conversion, church and personal view of God.

I was spared all this but did wonder, for a few moments, about the tremendous arrogance of anyone who titles a booklet ‘knowing God personally’. Does knowing God personally mean you can borrow a tenner off him until payday? Or lend him your lawnmower? The benefit would be that he makes for a really excellent job reference.

Unless, of course, whoever left them actually does know God personally. Note to self, keep eye out for commuters with black overcoats hiding wings.

One thing I left off of the list of activities is my gamecube. This is because there is not much to tell anyone about trying to beat level three of ‘Everything or nothing’ apart from it being very satisfying when you eventually do so - and that trying to rise after sitting cross legged in front of the telly for three hours is quite an interesting experience, as one shuffles around the place like an old crooked man alternately cursing, rubbing and hitting your legs as blood flows back into them and you get more pins and needles than a smack-head visiting his tailor.

Sport for all

I am starting to see why people get excited about sport.

I made a real effort to watch the Scotland/France Six Nations match on Sunday and managed to miss the first ten minutes. Driving like a loon on some Welsh stage of the WRC while trying to find Five fucking Live on the car radio, I managed to pick up that the Scots were, contrary to expectation, doing rather well.

On telly, it was a sight to see. Gladiatorial. There really should be more sports where 22 stone men knock the hell out of one another. It was when one of the players stood on an opponent’s head…in front of the ref…who told them to play one that you got the measure of the game.

It really was excellent stuff and by half time I was kicking myself for not getting my arse up to Murrayfield where, apparently, there were seats to be had.

Will have to see if I can seek out next Sunday’s game in a boozah, though am worried that local scrote contingent will instead be watching association football like the working class scum they are.

So back up plan is beer and ham sarnies. Indeed, reckon that might be front-up plan.

And as rough as rugby is, I am starting to get excited about the Winter Olympics. Ice skating aside, all the sports are sooooooooooooo dangerous they cannot fail to excite. Luge = tea tray, gravity, ice and insanity. Bobsleigh = same, except Death himself is the brakeman. And so on. Looks like a hoot.

Here comes the sun

Thank Christ the mornings are getting lighter again. For a week or two I was getting up in the dark and going home in the dark, it was like being a fucking miner except without the canary, Davey lamp and as much free nutty slag as you could fit down your trousers.

I don’t know if the bloke who invented central heating got a Nobel prize, but he certainly deserves it, even if he had to share it with the fellow that invented double glazing. The only problem is that in the morning when you part the curtains you can gauge just how cold it’s going to be by the amount of frost visible on the car roof and the number of foxes frozen to the front porch by their own excrement.

Okay, so that last is a little bit of an exaggeration. Indeed, since I tossed my fox-polluted doormat away (ever seen a wheelie bin pursued by hounds, it’s pretty funny) Mr Fox has not visited. Obviously the big attraction was the sensation of bristle on bum, meaning my fox went to Eton or is a LibDem.

No sunshine since December means that my morning carriage is populated by people that could, if they were not occasionally drinking coffee, be mistaken for Morlocks or albino cave dwellers. Even the suspiciously tanned are pale underneath their tan.

That’s how you tell a fake tan from the real thing. A fake tan is perfect, the colour of watered down HP sauce (budget St tropez method). The real thing is interrupted by two bands of white where the legs of the sunglasses sit and more importantly the owner of the tan has an inner smugness that suggests that, ‘fuck it, JoJo’s too stupid to get into Uni anyway and so we decided to spend her tuition on a week at Chamonix’.

This is the time of year when winter sun appeals. It’s also the time of year when you watch more telly. This means you are exposed to travel programmes but also news bulletins that, because there are so many teevee channels these days, pop up all over.

When did we start getting sixty second news bulletins sandwiched between programmes? Some perky presented, all teeth and hair, takes a breath and says ‘lotsofconflictmiddleeastproblemswitheconomylooniesprotestingbrakethroughdrugsnowboardingkittenehere’stheweather’ and then you’re on to a repeat of ‘game for a laugh’.

The problem with the whole news/travel/what the fuck am I watching is that you can be surfing, see somewhere lovely, start thinking ‘I wonder where that is?’ and then see a bloody big tank roll through it or, more likely, some idiot in a vest, a pair of suspect track suit bottoms and an AK47 blowing the crap out of the last chicken for 40 miles.

One thing’s for sure, holidays in conflict zones should be discounted. Always pack your factor 20 and your Kevlar.

It’s glossy brochure time alright. This has the twin effect of making one happy with the thought of foreign travel, the opportunity to sit on a new loo for three days, leaning to argue about the bill in a new language and try the local ‘beer’ - and yet worried at the prospect of being in a hotel room next to foreigners or even worse, Brits.