Frost at midnight

Laudanum loving scribe Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a fabulous poem titled 'Frost at midnight' which begins with the enchanting phrase 'The frost performs its secret ministry'. It goes on to describe how his son will have opportunities that Coleridge never had when he himself was growing up, such as looking up at a clear sky, and, presumably, ready access to laudanum, very much the calpol of the romantic era, but concludes once more with a reference to the ministry of frost.

If there were a Ministry of Frost, one imagines that it would have been busy earlier in the year, when a succession of hard frosts resulted in a number of sporting fixtures being called off. Horse racing is always being called off when the going shifts from 'firm' to 'iron'. It's a dangerous sport at the best of times but on a frosty morn the only way to make it more dangerous would be to actually jump the horses into the intake of a roaring jet engine. Football too suffers cancellations, both in the Premiershit, and at a more local level, as evidenced by the sight of an optimistic but disconsolate boy returning from the park where Little League had been abandoned that morning, sullenly booting a plastic bottle along the pavement.

If one were to work in the public sector, currently it seems subject to more strikes than championship evening at 'Lanes of Glory Bowlarama', then the Ministry of Frost seems like a pretty good place to do so. It conjures the image of a government department that was originally established to officially declare the Thames safe for a frost fair (done by driving a horse and cart across the river - history does not record what happened to the 'looks like it needs another day' attempts but one suspects that they did not result in a short but harrowing public information film advising children not to drive horses and carts across rivers) and later went on to approve the frost patterns that would be etched across windows, which is still housed in a magnificent Victorian building and where the staff have very little to do during May to September, unless they are attached to the Scottish office.

The secret Ministry is also strongly evocative of John Steed turning up for work and foiling an enemy plot using nothing more than charm and a super-vixen side kick specialising in mixed martial arts. Because while queues grow at Heathrow and people wait for up to three hours to enter Britain, it's still true that while the public sector has of late got a bit bolshie and struck, there are still certain roles that one simply cannot imagine the private sector undertaking. Spying is one of them, if James Bond worked for Group 4 the world would be a glowing cinder ruled by a nutter in the sole remaining undersea volcano base.

As for queues at Heathrow, anyone who has queued for one of the more popular rides at Alton Towers will know that three hours is a doddle, and at Alton Towers you are actually queuing to get on a ride that will throw you about, instil genuine terror, make you wonder about the safety of the thing and leave you feeling sweaty with anxiety, at least at Heathrow you have just got off something that left you like that and you can have a drink and a weep in the queue. Other airports are available although 'Cardiff, gateway to the Games' is a bit of a stretch.

Other fabulous private sector queuing experiences include Clinton Cards. While the last thing anyone needs is another high street chain going under, one does have to wonder about a business model that appeared to consist of having two bored teens talk to one another at the till while studiously ignoring the queue of customers to the extent that it provokes an existential crisis in the more insecure. Possibly the source of apparent indifference is bitterness based around selling thousands of valentine's cards but never receiving one, because Cupid would need an aim like Robin bloody Hood and shoot rohypnol tipped arrows to make the average Clinton's shop assistant a romantic object.

Personal what?

Back in the nineteen eighties, right wing newspapers reported that left wing councils were inventing jobs, or rather, inventing non-jobs, to give work to those who would otherwise be cluttering up dole offices and local unemployment statistics. The example I recall (probably the only reason I saw it was that it was on page two of The Sun) was that Liverpool City Council, at that time the sort of left wing regime more commonly associated with places that had just had a revolution, appointed a couple of chaps to be lamp-post counters.

This is very sensible for three reasons. Firstly, it gets people off the dole and into employment, with all the benefits that brings, including giving people public money in the form of taxable wages instead of benefits. Secondly, why shouldn't a council audit their assets - with metal theft so common now that 'signal problems in the Bingly area' no longer means engineering incompetence but is more likely to indicate that some scrote is even now legging it along the trackside with a few hundred yards of copper cable looped over his shoulder - knowing that you still have lamp posts and not chainsawed stumps along the length of Alma Road seems a pretty bloody good idea to me. Finally, just what the hell is a 'non-job' anyway and just who is the media to judge?

Looking back on royal appointments of centuries ago, we wonder just what the keeper of the King's quimsy did, although we can have our horrible suspicions. Might we not look back in future years and wonder exactly what an Executive Director of Resources does? I'm not all that sure that the Executive Director of Resources could tell you now, although I bet lots of other people in the organisation could, and that job description would include the words 'fuck' and 'all'.

Non jobs are an extraordinary feature of life at a certain salary level. The working classes have no such issue, you are either the guy that uses the lathe, the guy that cleans the lathe or the guy that drives the van and delivers lathed products to the place where they are bolted together into weapons. The middle classes have a bit more of a problem, but even there there are clear job descriptions to be found, you are the nurse that cleans up the lathe related injury, or the charity worker trying to stop the export of expertly lathed land mines to areas that have lots of schools nearby, campaigning instead for their safe disposal. But the is no doubt that among the middle and upper classes there are people who occupy salaried positions where it's not clear what they do, a conundrum muddied when it's reported that they still got a huge bonus even though their company performed badly, went bust or was closed down after what is now known as the 'Dorset dairy farm land mine dump horror'.

Surely the king of the non-jobs must be the role of 'personal shopper'. Why? Why does one need a personal shopper. This is, as I understand it, somebody whose job it is to help you shop. Who the hell needs help to shop? Here's the thing, if you need help to shop, you don't need to be in that shop. I am not talking about shop assistants, who are able for instance to tell you what a fridge does, or if a particular telly is the right one for you, which essentially boils down to 'if you want it now, how big is the car you are going to take it home in? A van you say? Excellent, let me introduce you to 'the mamothchav 8000!', no, I mean people employed by the store to help you pick the right cashmere scarf that you don't need.

If I wander into a model shop, I do not need to be told that I am going to go straight to the airfix kits for a Spitfire and I certainly don't need help in a bookstore. This is why real shops, like green grocers, don't have personal shoppers, because people do not need help purchasing carrots, they do not even need help purchasing kale. Can you imagine the reaction if somebody ponced over to you and suggested going for the organic cucumber instead of the one you were considering. You'd call the management, or the police. Yet it is apparently acceptable to tolerate this when purchasing a frock.

No, no its not.

Why would you even need a personal shopper in a clothes shop, to give you an honest opinion? Who wants that. If you want somebody to encourage you to buy those skinny cut jeans, then take a friend, your friend will tell you you look fabulous, immediately text 'OMG Judy has lost the plot' and, with luck, that will be forwarded to Judy before she has peeled herself out of the jeans that are cutting off the circulation to her feet.

Ok, maybe I can see why stores wouldn't go for that but surely, to drive the economy upwards, what we need are really crap personal shoppers, we need somebody who can't give an informed opinion about whether the blue or the red snood is the sight one for you, shrugs and just concludes 'get both'.

Or better still, your personal bartender. Booze in shops. Bringing all the fun and irresponsibility of going onto Amazon drunk, but in real life. It's long been rumoured that the next big development in computing will be a breathalyser with a USB attachment so that you won't be allowed on eBay if your blood alcohol level is at a certain level, say the one that leads you to think that paying a tenner for a slightly scuffed plastic 'Star Wars' pencil case is a good idea.

'Relaxed' shopping. It's the way forward.