Workplace of heroes

‘Netflix’ is astonishing.  Looking at the billboards across town advertising the US remake of ‘House of Cards’ you would think that Netflix is all about original (or nearly original) high-quality programming.  And it is, the US remake of ‘House of cards’ is so glossy that if it were a magazine, the ads would be so incredibly discreet that you would be left wondering if they were for mineral water of watches.  Of course, Netflix has no ads, just a monthly subscription charge.  And one of the selling points of ‘House of cards’ was that all episodes for a season were released on-line in one go.

Because original programming aside, Netfix is actually all about the binge watching.

How to describe Netflix?  Simple.  It’s like somebody driving a warehouse of box sets up to your front door.

It’s a binge bonanza and ideally suited to those with no real discipline (‘OK, just one more episode before bed’) and real patience (‘OK, apparently it only starts getting good half way through season two, but you have to watch the whole first season to really appreciate it’) and real time to indulge, or a real ability to ignore a very real need to do anything that involves going outside.

It also allows you to rediscover shows that you stopped watching because either they were on too late or you just missed them or because, at the time, you thought they were a bit shit.  Because thanks to the internet many a cancelled show has been reappraised and it turns out there wasn’t a problem with the show, but rather it was those jerks at the network who didn’t give it enough of a chance, or kept moving the timeslot and killed it off.  Also, since you’re paying for it anyway, you may as well give it a try, because the internet says I should like it and the internet is hardly ever wrong about cultural stuff.

The odd thing is, you’re more likely to dip back into something you stopped watching than you are to start watching something new.  It’s telly, it’s nostalgia, it’s instant, it’s more fun than jet-washing the patio, what more do you want?

It also let’s you determine consistent themes that appear across different shows.

A few years ago, there used to be a programme on teevee called ‘Reaper’.  It was about a seemingly ordinary bloke who worked at a huge DIY store called the ‘Work Bench’ but who turned out to be a bounty hunter for Satan, with responsibility not just for flogging automatic toilet roll dispensers or whatever, but also for dragging escaped souls back to Hell.

Then there was ‘Chuck’.  Chuck worked in an enormous electrical store called the ‘Buy More’.  Chuck wasn’t just a guy who could sell you a digital toilet roll dispenser or whatever, he was also the unwilling repository of ‘the intersect’, which sees all of the American government’s most secret secrets implanted in his head, yadda yadda yadda.

Obviously, there’s a format here.  If you want to cast an unlikely hero in an everyman occupation, it needs to be something that requires him to wear and apron and a name tag.  Buy not a hair net, as fry guy at maccydees was obviously an invitation to litigation, and so peon at huge store was the occupation of choice.

That much makes sense, as it would explain why there is never anybody around in the fucking timber section at my local DIYosausous to help you out when you need something cut to size, that size being short enough to fit lengthwise in your car so that you don’t have to transport a fencepost home vertically, which can result in your driving under some low electric cables and transforming your car into an enormous, impromptu, spontaneous dodgem, or under a bridge, transforming it into an impromptu convertible.

So far, so sustainable.  What doesn’t ring true is that in both cases, insanely hot, but also charming, women work with our heroes.  In the Reaper’s case, in the store and in Chuck’s case, at the sausage shack next door, in the same retail park.

Now, I am the last person to make personal comments about the sort of people who work at B&Q/Homebase/Retail Park ‘Restaurants’, but if pressed, I’d remark that in terms of looks I think you’re less likely to think ‘hottie’ and more likely to think ‘somewhere, there’s a bridge unattended with goats just skipping on over it’.

‘Reaper’ actually makes quite a decent fist of locating their extraordinary Joe in such a mundane location and to be honest, the lovable misfits goofing around in the store is a lot more enjoyable than the segments when he is forced to do battle with budget CGI effects.  ‘Chuck’ is more of a straightforward spy thriller but you get the sense that the fan base for both of these shows were the sort of men who have a job involving a name badge.  No doubt knowledge of this demographic emerging had something to do with no season three onwards being available for either series.

Commuting with nature

It’s becoming obvious that commuters have not got the sense that God gave a goldfish and that their memory span must be about the same as that apocryphally attributed to that piscine pet.

I base this deduction on two incidences of observed behaviour.

First, the carriage crowd.  This is the little knot of people that form on the platform at the point where, once the train has stopped, the carriage door will open.  This allows them to spring lithely from platform to carriage and thence to seat, the better to spread their enormous, pale, office chair shaped arse cheeks onto a vacant seat rather than what must, given their imperative to do this, be the alternative – finding themselves standing at a point equidistant to two carriage doors and, unable to decide which one will offer the better chance of getting a seat, scuttling crab-like from side to side until the doors close leaving them on the platform in a lather of indecision.

It’s fascinating and alarming that the crowd can remember, every morning, at which point on the platform the carriage doors will open but cannot remember, every morning, that people will be wanting to get off the train.

If you are on the train and getting off at any station short of the train’s destination, you will be faced with a wall of people.  It is the closest an unfamous person will ever get to exiting the stage door and finding a crowd there, except they don’t want either your autograph, or their money back, they just want to get on.

The carriage crowd are not, let me be clear, wholly without an understanding for the needs of the emerging passenger.  They do grudgingly leave a gap narrow enough for you to pass through, if you can convert yourself into a stream of anorexic particles, or a Rizzla paper.  Your alternatives are to slather yourself in Vaseline and apologetically slither your way out, or do what I do and stick your leg out and then follow it with the entire weight of your body, just like Indiana Jones does when he takes the ‘leap of faith’ in ‘Last Crusade’.

The second type of behaviour exhibited is when the carriage crowd try to get on an already full carriage.  If you fill a glass with water, and then very very carefully slightly overfill it, then surface tension will mean that you can have a few micrometres of water above the level of the glass.  That’s how full commuter carriages get, but that doesn’t stop people trying to join them.

This is achieved by two methods.  The first is waiting until the breathing of everyone in the carriage is synchronised and everyone is breathing in, before flinging yourself on and hoping that the carriage doors shut before everyone breaths out and you are catapulted back onto the platform.  If the doors close, you are mashed against the glass like the world’s ugliest Garfield doll but hey, at least you’ll be at your desk on time.  The second is to bellow ‘can you move down please’ because fuck, yea, the people wallowing in all that prairie-like space wouldn’t think of doing that themselves.

What’s amazing is that nobody bellows back ‘no, can you not just get the next train?’ but instead everyone collectively shuffles a micron and makes room.

This is the twenty first century.  Let’s put aside that by now, by rights, we should be commuting by jet pack.  The commute should be relaxed, ideally completed sitting at a table while you are served a hot breakfast that concludes with a cigarette, coffee and an early morning digestif to take the edge off.  At least, given the price of the fucking fares, that’s what I think commuters should be entitled to.

Perhaps the commuters are not to blame after all and what is happening here is the suppression of uncomfortable memories, but on a daily basis rather than those adults who can’t watch one of those clip shows about seventies television without getting an unexplained twinge in their bottom.  It would explain an awful lot, starting with why they never think that getting an earlier train might be an idea.

Professionals

Visiting a different part of the city, it’s increasingly obvious that different areas are home to different tribes.  For instance, in the City itself, you get an awful lot of people and bicycles.  This is not, I suspect, because they can’t afford the bus fare.  Looking at the bikes and the freshness of the lycra that these people sport as they pass in a day-glo swoosh, this is a two-wheeled tribe that have decided that public transport is simply not for them, possibly because they do not wish to become contaminated with poor.

Then there are men who look normal, except on their feet they have trainers in clown-shoe colours with soles of a thickness that would not look out of place in the glam rock era.  That’s right.  Men.  Wearing trainers to work.  What next, lip balm and hair conditioner?

The City is home to Professionals, making their way to work with the same sort of purposeful intent you see insects exhibiting in nature documentaries. 

Traditionally the definition of a professional is somebody who gets paid for what they do but lately I’ve been thinking that there’s more to it than that.  A mini-cab driver is paid for their work, but so is Lewis Hamilton and I know which of the two better defines the term ‘professional driver’.  Of course, this does not mean that you would want Lewis Hamilton as your mini-cab driver, as his habit of stopping for new tyres three times every trip might prove inconvenient, as might his habit of grabbing his fare’s bottle of fizz, shaking it up and spraying it all over the place every time he dropped somebody off at a party.

Roughly, only 3% of people who get paid to do something are expert enough in it to be called ‘professional’ in the true sense of the word.  Normally, the deficiencies of the remaining 97% go unnoticed because they work in HR, or B&Q, or somewhere else with initials instead of a name.

Hence, I propose that the definition for professional be: somebody who earns enough to afford a pool and a hot partner, or can change a fucking till roll unaided.

Lawyers are a good example of multi-tiered professionalism.  For reasons far too dull to go into I’ve been wandering past the Old Bailey on a regular basis recently and, because the only thing I dislike more than huge corporations are bloody protestors trying to tell me where to drink my coffee, I’ve been popping into Starbucks for my java and really, really, enjoying it (secret recipe: full fat milk, one shot of Big Coffee and a pinch of guilt).

Obviously, there is the standard issue Man With A Beard writing something on his Apple Mac but in the Starbucks near the Old Bailey you also get trios of lawyers clustered round those little tables the size of mushrooms.  One has a laptop, one has a file, one has a mobile, all three have worried expressions and no wonder, in twenty minutes they are due in court and this is their prep.  There is evidence of muffin consumption.

Meanwhile, and example of the REAL professional was already standing outside the Court.  She has adopted the ‘pissed off raven’ look that all successful female barristers acquire when they reach the tipping point of assurance in their profession, with wig, gown and black tights it’s a look they lifted from Patricia Hodge in ‘Rumpole’ but have made their own with the simple addition of a fag.  Yes, while the boys and girls are in Starbucks drinking latte and green tea, the real deal is having their breakfast Benson & Hedges without even smirching the slash of red lipstick that proves they can be a successful lawyer and a woman too. 

This then is the lawyer you want if you’re in a tight spot.  The Starbucks Three are not the team you want defending you if you are facing a ten stretch being banged up in a cell with someone they call ‘The Fairy With The Enormous Cock’.  If you’re in trouble, you want your lawyers at the very least to be a) pounding fags and espresso or b) from off telly.

The Pope - one year on

A year ago the Pope shocked the world by being just about the only world leader not to use Twitter to make an important announcement – he’s off!

Pope news!  The Pope announced he is to retire.  This came as something of a shocking surprise for, well, absolutely everybody, as the firm belief held by all was that Popes were supposed to expire rather than retire.  Following the announcement there was a lot of speculation about why the Pope had taken this unusual red-shoed step.  The common reason; being able to spend more time with your grandchildren, does not apply in this case and, if that is the real reason, is unlikely to form part of any official press release from the Vatican.

The announcement allowed the media to do what they increasingly love to do most of all, which is look up the entry for the subject they are reporting on Wikipedia so that we don’t have to, rephrase it to avoid copyright infringement, don’t bother with a fact check because in this case the more outlandlish the reported fact the more likely it is to be true, and then broadcast it.  There was also  endless speculation, especially about who the new Pope will be.  Let’s be clear, speculation is simply gossip distributed by people wearing ties.

The most intense speculation was about whether the new Pope will be ‘non European’.  ‘Non European’ means coming from either Africa or South America and is possibly newspeak for ‘Black’.  One could tell from the way the newsreaders said the phrase that they were not sure about it, is it a racial slur, or just a quick way to describe somebody not of European heritage?  Safe bet is that if it is the latter, then it’s the former too but hey, who’s got the time to say ‘from Africa or South America’ and, if you do, is it ‘Africa or South America’ or ‘South America or Africa’?  Better to just say ‘foreign’ and nod meaningfully, like you would if you were in a pub in the home counties.

An African or South American Pope would, apparently, have been a big deal, but hardly a surprise.  Whilst Europe has lurched towards secularism, mostly as a result of smirking smart-arses writing the word ‘Jedi’ next to ‘Religion?’ on their census form and thinking themselves positively Wildeian, Roman Catholicism is very much a strong force in the emerging religious markets of Africa and South America (or South America or Africa depending on your geographical bias).  This is because they are both full of developing countries where the promise of a better afterlife, possibly including meat for dinner three times a week and a whole month going by without some ghastly ethnic violence or natural disaster, is very attractive.  No wonder these places like religion, it’s just like the old testament.

Of course, the real reason that the Pope decided to step down was probably connected to Twitter.  It’s one thing to get a news report, every day, that another person in your organisation is a peado, it’s quite another to have to face it when you fire up Twitter because you just have to retweet that link to a hilarious Youhootube clip of an squirrel and a row of vodka shots, and find that are the subject of quite a number of messages referring to you as ‘kiddifiddler in chief’.  

When you’re Pope and find out that in addition to having fewer followers than Stephen Fry you get droves of unfollowers every time another peadopriest is exposed, it can get a bit wearing.  

For any figure of authority, Twitter should be treated like a toxic substance, that it is the source of a cavalcade of condemnation is the polite way to put it.  The reality is that if you attract the ire of Twitter, a river of shit meets a tide of abuse and, accordingly, surfing is unpleasant.

Being Pope is, I suspect, something of a thankless task.  It’s something that you take on once you are past retirement age (like a job at B&Q but without the benefit of nicking stuff to supplement your wages) and you get the blame for everything and the credit for nothing.  It’s unfair, and unkind, to expect somebody to work until they drop, not even B&Q do that, officially.  

The art of the loaf

The art of loafing is nothing to do with twisting some seeds into your dough, calling the result ‘rustic’ and charging three quid for it, rather, it is dedication to relaxation.

Not that I have anything against work, industry and achievement, as long as it’s done properly, for instance the production of traction engines rather than the industrialisation of penguin genocide.

Don’t worry, this is not going to be another bloody post extolling the virtues of the shed.  But I will just point out that, generally, anything produced in a shed is likely to improve the world.  Brass clockwork novelty delights are made in sheds.  Destructive ideologies are not.  They, like bummers, are made in prison cells or public schools.  Workshops too turn out useful components and a number of workshops combined can turn out, for instance, charming cars.

Things start to go wrong when you industrialise on a factory scale, because not long after you get fed up with all the whinging and move production somewhere with a far more relaxed attitude to the minimum wage, where quality control can be enforced through the occasional execution.  The downside to this is that your workers will occasionally either try to smuggle themselves out of the country in the boot of the car they have just built, or record an impassioned plea for better conditions on the ‘phone they are boxing up.

The British Empire was, of course, founded on outsourcing and foreign labour.  We exported the British brand, and the pox, around the world and imported all sorts in return, like a lingering sense of entitlement and assumption that everyone should speak English.

Actual work can be measured thusly: do you start with a task that has measurable goals?  Do you end with a sense of a job well done and a well deserved pint?  Then that’s work.  Anything else is just dicking around.

In the twenty first century, it’s getting harder to relax.  Otherwise, why would there be a whole industry dedicated to helping us do so?  Time was, relaxing was easy.  You toiled until you were shaky with fatigue then drank cider until you were lying down.  Uncomplicated. 

Now, we think we are relaxing when we are in fact not.  For instance, sitting in front of the television might be considered by some to be a form of relaxation.  And it is, if you are watching a DVD of; a flickering fire, a lady playing the harp or a blank screen.  Anything else is too much stimulation.  Soaps now frequently end not just with a drum roll and an actor holding an expression in a manner unencountered in real life outside of anyone pictured straining for a shit, but with a help line for people affected by issues.  And ‘documentaries’ that are ostensively intended to make us feel better about ourselves by chronicling the dysfunctional lives of those with for instance amusing mental health issues, an addiction to biscuits, being fucking clueless about how to organise a wedding, a predilection for acts of self pollution involving Pot Noodle or just being chavs, simply result in the viewer being made to feel simultaneously uncomfortable and sad.

Mobile ‘phones have put an end to the micro-loaf, those few minutes where one might reasonably be expected to not think about very much at all.  No bugger looks out of train windows any more, they are all either playing games or updating their status to from ‘on platform’ to ‘on train’.

Loafing takes effort.  First off, you need a free afternoon in the week.  Then, you need to get into your pyjama trousers AND to be comfortable answering the door in them if required.  Then, you need find somewhere comfortable to lie horizontally that is not a bed.  Finally, you need to go through all the tedious things you should be doing instead, and realise that they are either not that urgent, not that important, or will be so much better achieved after a rest.

After a while, you will wake up.  With luck, the light will have drained from the sky meaning a) your attire is socially acceptable and b) you can now uncork dinner and move to phase two: unwinding.

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.

Desks equal dignity

We have gone to hot-desking in the office. This has gone better than expected – nobody has tried to kill anyone yet, but as everyone was expecting it to be tremendously shit, our expectations have been met.

There are a couple of issues. The first is the ‘you snooze, you lose’ principle that sees early birds rewarded with the pick of the desks, while latecomers have to wander the floor like the flying Dutchman, forever seeking port, or sherry or any kind of fortified wine.

The other issue is that we have been issued with lockers. Not the sort you might get in a gym or have seen many a hapless teen pushed into in an American comedy film. Rather, these are lockers such as you might expect to give to a primary school child. I fully expect that our next initiative will result in our being allocated our own peg, possibly shaped like the face of an animal.

I am strongly tempted to decorate my locker, both outside and in. For the outside, some sort of sticker I think, ‘I’ve urinated in the Grand Canyon’ or something. For the inside there can only be one decoration; porn.

And not just any porn, no, I want the stuff you used to see in garages. Soft core with the young lady in question possibly sitting on a tub of swarfega. I think that sets the right tone.

Either that or I’m going to turn my locker into a mini-bar! Alternatives that spring to mind include putting a golden light source inside so that when you open it there appears to be some fabulous treasure in there when viewed from the side. Or maybe a white strobe light, dry ice and a ‘wooshing’ sound effect, leaving one to mutter about ‘bloody dimensional portals’ every time you open one.

Or a simple ram’s skull and black candles.

Surely there’s scope for mischief making here too, would it be fun to start spreading the urban myth about a locker being haunted? Or cursed? ‘Hey, you’ve got 318? That used to be Geoff’s, terrible what happened. Still, I’m sure that what they say can’t be true…you’re not superstitious are you?’

Or, I can just keep loads o’ crap in there. That’s what everyone else seems to do.

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.

Working from home

I am working from home today (it’s the first really beautiful winter morning of the season this morning. Actually, that may not be quite true, but it’s certainly the first one I have seen. I was up rather early this morning, roused desperately early from a deep slumber by a twanging, banging hangover so grim that I originally thought of writing an article for ‘The Lancet’ about it but have now decided that it is actually worthy of its own book, as Chapter 1 alone would be barely sufficient to deal with what appears to have happened to my tongue overnight. Upon further consideration, maybe non-fiction is not the best way to describe all the effects, possibly an Opera would be more fitting, I wonder if Philip Glass is available? I am trying to abate the symptoms through an arsenal of remedies varying from the traditional; ‘chalkie friends’ AKA ‘two para’ AKA a couple of paracetamol, through the sensible; tomato juice, and finally the desperate; a tea that is described as ‘blended to recover’ and would appear to contain most of the contents of an English hedgerow except a sleeping hedgehog and a Tesco carrier bag impaled on a bush, and I’m not too sure about the hedgehog judging by the aftertaste. This is truly a desperate measure as I can assure you I am the sort of chap who views any tea other than ‘English breakfast’ with deep and I would say justified suspicion. At my place of business one has to share a tea point with others who are broader in their tastes and I am aware that people drink fruit teas. What’s the point? It’s simply a cup of hot squash. The women who drink fruit teas are invariably the sort of thin that is achieved not through diet, self denial and exercise, but because they are the sorts who lack the foresight when buying a sausage roll for lunch to purchase a second to eat on the way back from Greggs, so satisfying any hunger pangs and allowing you to really enjoy the explosion of hot fat and gristle wrapped in pastry that makes a sausage roll a sausage roll. That and the amphetamine suppositories they bought off the internet from some country that ends in ‘-istan’ and is unlikely to get EU membership while more of their citizens live in caravans than houses because they like it that way. The men who drink fruit teas are either homosexulists or closet homosexulists who are doing it to impress the limp women. One thing is true for both sexes, there is some sort of link between fruit teas and limp, lifeless, greasy hair. I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s because deprived of a proper brew, hair lacks the energy to fulfil its main purpose in life; get tangled in brushes and consume a disproportionate amount of disposable income in care and styling products. No? Just me then. But my point is that a tea blended to recover sounds like borderline voodoo, what’s the next step? Catholicism? I’m currently caught in LaGrange point of the hangover where I’d really like something to eat but the thought repulses me. There’s a jar of cockles sitting in the fridge. This has, of late, become a dirty habit of mine, consumption of cooked cockles sold in a jar of, essentially, brine. Yet they do something to them that makes them taste goooooood. They are also something of an immoral treat (hence all the tastier) as there’s a whiff of gangmasters and illegal immigrants forced to do dangerous digging on tidal flats about the whole cockle industry. At least when you buy them from a stall in Norfolk you can rest assured that the guy selling it obtained them the traditional way, by getting his young kids up before dawn and out there on the beach, sobbing in the rain and darkness while digging away feverishly while the rising tide laps at their ankles, or facing the threat of a bloody good slap. Traditional you see?) and my levels of procrastination have reached such heights that I’m even side-tracking myself from writing a blog entry about it.

Proper jobs

Trades come and go. During the industrial revolution one of the best trades to be in was being a child. A qualified child could pretty much turn their hand to anything, from working long hours in brutal conditions in a mill, to working long hours in brutal conditions down a mine, right up to understudy for Santa. These days, traditional work for children in England is pretty much restricted to thieving and being injured for the amusement of others on ‘you’ve been maimed’, although it would appear that exciting new prospects are opening up in the fields of lurking, being sullen in public and moaning. Traditional employment for children in textiles, mining and so on are still available in the developing world apparently but, frankly, that’s a hell of a commute.

Have I got a proper job? You’d have to ask somebody else.

But I do occasionally wonder if I might be better off doing something proper. Not important, Christ, I hope I’m self aware enough to realise that I can’t be trusted with the responsibility of anything that actually matters. Not even glamorous, I look terrible in sequins.

But I do think I’d make quite a good explorer.

All of the signs are there but principally my love of maps coupled with my inability to ask for directions and the absolute conviction that if you just keep going long enough you are bound to arrive at your destination or more probably something even more interesting. This, as far as I can understand it, is how most of the great discoveries of foreign parts were made, either sailors were looking for a quick route from A to B or merchants were trying to deliver silks and spices without so much wear and tear on the camels.

Most compelling of all though is my utter inability to travel light. Something tells me that a train of bearers would finally see an end to my ‘oh did I remember to pack?’ episodes part way through a journey. Yes, yes you did remember to pack it, because all that is left at home is a vague outline of a house in your garden. In fact your patio and shed are being erected for the night over there.

I’ve got a swiss army knife and a compass. Quite a good start I think. My long term aim is, of course, to have a country named after me but I have a sneaking suspicion that they have all been discovered. So either I have to be the first on the spot when the ice cap melts and there’s some rock, some dinosaurs and so on underneath, or I’ll just have to settle for a plateau.

While what I do might not be exciting, might in fact lead me to fantasise about being an explorer (always polar, never jungle), at least it’s better than being a clown. This, I’m pretty sure, has to be the lowest form of employment, because people who do it are generally doing it because they find it gratifying and, and this is the scary bit, they think others will too.

I mean, even a crack addict whore listlessly gobbling the cock of an overweight businessman in a car park is probably not thinking ‘this is a great performance’. I’d imagine he’s thinking ‘I hope this guy doesn’t realise I’m a man’ and possibly ‘Wow, I’d really like some crack’. Plenty has been written about clowns being more sinister than funny. I’d go further than that, I’d say they are so tragically unfunny that they kill any emotion in anyone watching, even fear. My proof? Why are there no clowns on youtube? If clowns were so frickin’ hilarious then why is the number one youtube video, week after week after week, not clown related? Having said that, clown in an industrial accident, fuck yea, five stars. But a clown doing his act on youtube, Jesus, how creepy would that be? Booked a clown for your kid’s party? No? then just watch this clip, with luck, it’s the one where the clown falls into a threshing machine. That’s why Mr Giggles can’t be here today kids.

That, and he’s a peado.

So, this is 2008 then?

The back-to-work blues did not really strike today until about fifteen minutes ago. It was the time of day when, for the last week or so, I’d start the afternoon with a fortifying glass of wine, or a glass of fortified wine, depending on my mood. My fridge at home still contains the odd treat, a mince pie hiding behind something wrapped in tin foil and so on, not to mention a few bottles of something friskafrolic.

By contrast, the fridge at the tea point here contains labelled pints of milk. Luckily it does not contain strychnine.

Actually the journey in wasn’t bad this morning, the trains being mostly empty as people stretch out their festive holidays. Waiting on the platform gave me time to observe the empty cans and bottles decorating the flat roof of one of the station buildings – in the middle of the debris is one miraculously preserved pint glass.

It’s actually been there for a few weeks now and makes you wonder not so much about the mentality of somebody who punted the thing onto the roof in the first place (‘pissed’ should just about cover it) but how it’s managed to remain intact for so long.

Being back at work is, to say the least, not as much fun as watching the ‘Top Gear’ polar special on the BBCi player. That programme has to be the single greatest piece of television ever made. Man on the moon? OK. Thatcher crying leaving office – fine. But for sheer entertainment nothing can beat two middle aged men drinking gin and tonic and driving to the North Pole. Inspirational.