Sorry seems to be the hardest word

In the unlikely event that the young woman I almost trod on when getting off the train the other morning is reading this – apologies for almost treading on you.

I did say ‘sorry’ at the time, honestly. It’s just that it was early in the morning and my voice, rather rusty from several hours of not being used and several hours of red wine abuse prior to that, turned a cheery, apologetic ‘sorry’ into a growl that even scared me – so I’m not in the least surprised that you gave a ‘no problem’ smile but there was a flicker of apprehension in your eyes.

I am not at my best in the morning. To be honest, I am frequently not at my best but mornings are a particularly bad time in that the undertaking of normal social exchanges, like the one above, result in my coming off like a loon. This is, I think, in part because of the media. Before crime shows dominated the telly schedule, I looked like an inoffensive, gangly bispected bloke. Thanks to CSI etc. the world now knows that the gangly bispected bloke is the one with the lock-up full of dead cheerleaders. Thanks television.

So, AM social interaction best avoided I think. Apart from picking up my coffee and doughnut from Krispy Kreme, which is always a pleasure. This is because as I wait behind somebody buying their double dozen I occasionally run through what Hollywood calls the ‘cute meet’ scenario in my head. The ‘cute meet’ is when a couple are thrown together by a shared experience, for instance reaching for the same last doughnut and then getting into a ‘you have it, no you have it’ before the doughnut guy chops it in two and they pair bond over their doughnut and waddle off to have fat wheezy sex.

The reality is, at best, the bloke would say ‘you have it’ and the woman would say ‘thanks’ and that would be it, because I have learned that you do not get between a woman and doughnut. Or, more likely, it’s a hair-pulling, scratching rollaround fight over the last original glazed. Which is, of course, a ridiculous exaggeration…nobody would get into a fight over an original glazed. A custard filled chocolate coated though?

Word up

In a telly programme he did some time ago the TV critic (he writes about television, he doesn't wear dresses. Actually he might do, but I've never seen it. Anyway...) Charlie Brooker was explaining that he had seen a programme so terrible it had moved beyond the dictionary's ability to describe it, and suggested that two words be combined to try and imply the level of awfulness. With his usual scatological style he described it as 'shittifying'.

This notion, of mashing up who words with negative meaning to somehow create a word describing negativity squared, appeals greatly. This week I was asked to describe how something had gone and, to be honest: 'shitastrophic' was the only thing that fitted the bill.

This tickled colleagues so much that I have heard somebody use the term ‘shitastrophy’ to describe a recent incident, unfortunately I think it might have been in reference to something I had done.

The expansion of the lexicon is not restricted to negative things; certainly one of my favourite terms is ‘geekgasm’; used to describe a successful shopping trip to a comics or gaming shop, or a particularly excellent episode of Doctor Who. In fact you can prefix ‘gasm’ with just about anything to describe a rushing gushing feeling of joy at experiencing something rather lovely ‘bookgasm’, ‘foodgasm’, ‘decentpintgasm, although the last one might be stretching it.

I am expecting to see more mashed up words appearing in the media. The first place you will see them is in weather forecasts. This is because weather forecast presenters have that sort of psudo-science aura that allows them to use terms that sound made up, but are actually true, like ‘occluded’. Having shot their bolt and exhausting the thesaurus so early in the year trying to find frightening words to describe snow, they are going to have to invent new climate terms.

Until new terms to describe things we should be afraid of or outraged by are coined, newscasters will have to rely on using the existing vocabulary, but delivering them in increasingly emotive terms. Fox news is leading the field in this, rightly concluding that their viewers do not want to see a rational, measured explanation of what’s happening in the world delivered at a reasonable volume but instead want to watch the sort of rant that’s a combination of a toddler throwing a tantrum, an evangelical preacher and a maniac with tin foil wrapped round his head standing on the street corner screaming abuse at cats.

Things

BBC radio and the British Museum (could there be a more thoroughly proper combination of bodies? you can practically taste the tea) have combined to bring the listener 'the history of the world in 100 objects'. Essentially this does exactly what it says on the tin (object 74) and attempts to link the evolution of humanity from two million years ago to now to the objects that man has created and used to help this evolution.

This achieves three essential functions, it finally confirms my theory that things are important and can make you happy - geeks everywhere can celebrate that they might not have a girlfriend but they do have an XBox and the latter is more likely to be featured in this series than the object of their impotent lust: the girl who works behind the counter at the newsagents, resulting in a frequency of visits that is borderline stalking and leads to the accumulation of a vast number of unwanted magazines about, for instance, carp fishing (panic buy in desperate attempt to kick start conversation after eighth visit of the weekend).

Secondly, it is one in the eye for creationists. The British Museum is home to a two million year old hand axe, the earliest tool known to man (not counting the ones that do the breakfast show on local radio), excavated from deserts and so on by scientist types. Creationist museums are, if I recall correctly, home to lots of waxworks of bible scenes and pop-eyed loons.

Finally, it delivers the cheery message that we are still evolving. This is not immediately obvious. There's a pretty compelling argument that human regulation peaked in 1974, with space travel and supersonic passenger flight. People in 1974 were actually living in our future (this explains why the sweets were so brightly coloured, now thanks to nanny-knows-best laws about food colouring chemicals, sweets are essentially the same colour as dung. Well, compared to the arrhythmia inducing pallet of the 70s they are).

The objects chosen so far have been a stone cutting tool and a hand axe (described as the Swiss army knife of the stone age and something of an exaggeration, as there is no corkscrew on it) and one of the modern objects later in the series is an Arab credit card. So, essentially, we have evolved from using a rock to chop up antelope meat to using a plastic wafer to chop up lines of coke in a Knightsbridge night club.

The one hundredth object is the subject of a public search and I have no doubt that there will be plenty of nominations. You'll get your environmentalists (or just mentalists) suggesting things that will take forever to decompose in a landfill, like plastic bags, styrofoam burger cartons or Jordan. You'll get organised campaigns to elect some sort of joke object (inevitably, this will involve a facebook campaign. The inventors of facebook must be the most conflicted people on the planet, on the one hand their invention is hugely successful, on the other hand, all the users appear to be enormous gits with too much time on their hands), like anal beads...only to discover these are not a modern invention and were first discovered up some pharaoh (known as 'the smiling mummy') buried three thousand years ago.

There will be many worthy suggestions and I've no doubt that the trend will be modern; somebody will have that 'hey, who could live without one of these' moments and nominate the hat, or the lawnmower or the cricket bail or something.

Me? I'm nominating the ex. In particular the ex you broke up with because, until you found out the meaning of 'passive/aggressive', you simply thought they were immensely irritating. Maybe not an object, but bloody objectionable. And the best thing is, you just know that two million years ago, in a cave in Africa, this conversation took place:
'You're not eating your antelope?'
'I'm not hungry.'
'Oh, OK.'
'OK? OK? That's all you've got so say. You don't care about me at all do you? You don't care about my feelings, what I want.
(Confused) 'I thought you wanted antelope for tea?'
'Oh shut up.'
Thinks: the sooner we evolve beyond this, the better.

Or maybe I'll just nominate the lawnmower.

Snow business

The recent extreme weather event that swept Britain (snow in winter) provoked a curious reaction from the workforce. The majority of office drones took one look at a white landscape and decided, as one, to take the day off. In some cases this was a good decision because the roads were full of people who had decided to ‘struggle in’. This sort of person thinks they are indispensable to the workings of whatever company they are part of, the sad truth is that, unless they are responsible for opening up the office first thing, or are a council gritter, one day off will not make that much difference. What they did do was made the roads; already ‘treacherous’ thanks to snow, ice and the bloke who has the key to the grit depot not being at work yet, perilous.

Certainly those who did struggle to get to work have an exaggerated sense of their own importance or, you know, a job that actually matters, as opposed to being in sales, marketing or one thousand and one other occupations that take longer than ten seconds to describe.

At least those that got in were kept warm by their own smugness. During the cold snap it was discovered that our office, which is mainly window, was cold. Cold to the extent that colleagues were actually wearing scarves and, believe me when I say this, not for fashion related motives. Rather, they looked like modern Bob Cratchett’s (although I think he had a ‘comforter’ which, until I learned that this was a Victorian word for scarf, thought was a mid-morning shot of gin).

Because we are supposed to care about polar bears, we’re not allowed portable heaters because that would upset the air con and hence bugger the environmentally friendly nature of the building. Sod being environmentally friendly, all the planet has ever tried to do is kill me in a variety of increasingly inventive ways. Nature can be vindictive and has many weapons in its arsenal, gravity being chief among them. Alcohol being another.

What you are allowed at your desk is a thermometer. Not so you can go home when the temperature plunges like a starlets neck line, but so I can play my favourite game: ‘it’s now the same temperature as it is in…’
(fires up internet) ‘Wesconsin!’
‘Is that good?’
‘Can’t be!’.

It’s a plastic digital job and while I don’t doubt that it’s accurate I do doubt that it’s impressive enough to be taken seriously. That’s why I want three climate stations on my desk. The modern one would be stainless steel and feature flashing lights and one of those wind measuring things that look like a device for taking three scoops of ice-cream in one go.

The second one would be made mostly of brass and banned chemicals, feature dials and be housed in a glass-fronted mahogany case. As certain temperatures a buzzer would sound and it would dispense hot tea or cold Pimms.

Finally I want a rustic one. This is essentially a length of shed attached to which would be a length of seaweed, a pine cone and an old man with a gyppy knee. Also, possibly, an onion. Can you predict the weather using an onion? Given the trouble that the recent cold weather caused root vegetable farmers, I’m guessing not. But if you did come up with an onion based weather prediction system, I bet somebody would bring out the related iPhone app shortly after.

The Biggish Dump

Is that it? Three sodding inches? Given the media hysteria I was expecting to wake up to yetis. I think, to be fair, that my little corner of the world has gotten off lightly. Naturally, we had the usual issues – barely had a flake fallen when all the trains lost traction and all the schools closed. This meant that all the kids had to stay at home but that’s okay because the parents can’t get to work because no trains are running and the council has run out of grit.

In truth, it wasn’t the snow that was a problem, it was the freezing temperatures. The snow fell, then turned to ice. Which English people do not know how to drive on – moving over the ice with about the same level of style and confidence as a sobbing fat kid in a sequined jump suit a confidence building course, about to attempt a triple axle in front of the entire school.

The snow reveals a new landscape. Like Narnia with litter. It also reveals that after a week of snow last year, people still don’t prepare for the weather. Or, rather, the public appear to break down into two groups. There are those that go out dressed in the gear they bought for camping/walking or skiing holidays. The ones that spent a fortune on gear for a skiing holiday don’t look smug, they just look bloody grateful to finally get a chance to wear their expensive skiing jacket, because they can’t afford to go on the skiing holiday after the sterling exchange rate went down faster than a chubby girl on a black diamond run.

The rest fall into two sub-categories. There are those who take the sensible approach that layers of normal clothes are the way forward. This has two results, the first is that everyone is wearing so many layers of wool, gloves and scarves that they are only one top hat and case of rickets away from looking like the front of a Victorian Christmas card, the second is that they are well padded when the inevitable slip and slide occurs.

The second sub-group is teenagers. Presumably the shame of being seen outside enjoying themselves rather than hanging around in their bedrooms being sullen keeps them toasty, because leggings, a track suit top and ugg boots sure as hell is not going to do the trick.

Could the Government do more to prepare the population? Well, I reckon that they should hand out vouchers for pasta meals so that people can put on some winter weight and lower their centre of gravity for safety on the snow and ice (fat people are looking smug in this cold weather, it’s payback for all that sweating they do in August). Personally, I’m eating chips until the crisis passes. In addition, there needs to be a Government approved reading list; starting with ‘to build a fire’ by Jack London (does your spit crackle and freeze before it hits the ground? No, then stop whining). Also on the list – ‘Commando’ war picture library stories for boys; which regularly show plucky paratroopers making their way through the white stuff fortified with nothing more than Bovril, then laying waste to some Nazis.

The one group of people who really come out of this well are the weather broadcasters. People look at their telly screens during the weather bulletins like stone age man looking at the shaman making his way through chicken entrails, hanging on their every wise pronouncement. ‘More snow’ is a pretty safe bet at the moment. I don’t know what they use at the Met Office to forecast the weather, a supercomputer or a KFC family bucket, but for once they can do no wrong. It’s an old wise-mans’ trick; forecast doom and gloom and if only doom, or only gloom, or if neither doom or gloom arrive, nobody minds that much.

Except maybe those who were hoping for another day ‘working from home’. This allows you to do several things, including having a bottle of red with lunch and fortifying yourself with a snooze in the afternoon before knocking off early to get in some tobogganing before the light fades.

Anticipating the Big Dump

England is bracing for the Big Dump. The news and weather shows us that a band of snow is moving inexorably southwards, sweeping down from the north like the glaciers did. The pictures coming in from Scotland are grim, and not the usual grim of social depravation and the sort of dental hygiene only a lifetime of abusing irn-bru can bring. No, the news has decided to ease off on the pictures of jolly people enjoying snowball fights, people swimming in pools and seas where the temperature makes your testicles retract into the roof of your mouth (not somebody else’s, that’s the plot of ‘frozen fun V’) and have instead gone with pictures of people trying to dig their car out of a snowdrift, dig their house out of a snowdrift or, if they are anything like me, dig a path to the shed where the leftover Christmas booze has been stashed.

Danger arriving from the north has obviously sparked some sort of ancestral memory. On the way home from work I stopped at my local mini-mart (a soulless Sainsbury’s that, two weeks after opening, had managed to ensure that the excellent Budgens in the high street closed, leaving us with a much narrower selection of crisps and other corn based snacks. Indeed the only plus point of the store is the ridiculously cheery staff, who always ask how you are and how you day has been – this is a bloody high risk strategy as I always have to remind myself that the chap on the till does not necessarily want to hear a forty minute monologue on the inequities of my train operating system, my constant battle with fuckwittage (some of which, admittedly, is my own) and the million petty miseries and triumphs that make up modern life. Hence, I always answer ‘not bad, how are things with you?’ and, to be fair, he always gives a cheery answer although I am braced for the day when he either says ‘I need a hug’ or says something that sounded like ‘great, I killed a fox with a hairbrush last night’, leading one to have to make an instant decision about whether to ask for clarification or just nod, say ‘great’ and hope that he actually said ‘great, I booked my holiday for summer last night’, because otherwise the next time you see him he’s going to want to talk about bludgeoning garden pests again.) to try and buy some anchovies.

It looked as though the hoards of Gengis Khan had been through the place. The shelves were bare of stock and I expected to hear ‘pony poo clean up on aisle five’ coming from the tannoy at any moment. With no fresh food on the shelves and no anchovies to be had, I panic bought red wine and headed home.

Panic buying is, I think, a very English thing. Foreigners have a different system, they just oil and load their guns and start to figure out which of their neighbours is the weakest and has the best stocked larder. The Scots are able to forage in the wild, in the highlands this means stalking a deer (which does not mean trying to befriend it on facebook) while in the cities it’s rather more along the lines of shuffling to the nearest pie or chip shop. This means living on chips. This is normal. The Welsh, of course can live off their own body fat for weeks and failing that the body fat of any English tourists they have waylaid.

I think in part it’s due to supermarkets now being open twenty four hours a day. People go into some sort of meltdown at the prospect of not being able to visit the shops at three in the morning to by aubergines, or an X Box.

Luckily, I still have a selection of food (and some back-up booze) left over from Christmas. It does present a challenge trying to pull together a meal from what is basically a cheeseboard, pork pies and some nuts, but I find that if you eat all that while pondering what to have for dinner, the urge to cook something vanishes.

Now awaiting the snow.