Severance

How shoddy is this? I believe that I will be leaving my job at the end of next week, but I'm still not sure. Ol' Blue Eyes hasn't seen fit to reply to an email confirming this, and it has been suggested that I might be asked to provide cover till the end of the year and beyond. It is, I must admit, a rather odd position to be in, though it has meant that I have been able to expand my Twitter activity considerably, even as the thing morphs from its old 'what are you doing...?' ethos to a 'how much are you making...?' one. Even Biz's profile pic has gone from a soy latte slurping hippy to a tight polo neck wearing silicon valley warrior. Ah well, everything's a pitch these days.

The hardest thing, I'm finding, is how to tell people I'm leaving. It's difficult enough not knowing whether I'm actually confirmed as out the door, but coupled with the inevitable follow-up questions of 'Oh, where are you going?' etc., to which I have to answer with replies such as; 'Oh, keeping my options open...' and other such banalities. It's all a bit of a chore.

I am seeking solace in a planned trip back to Os in a couple of weeks, if I can somehow get round upsetting the kids by not appearing at their drama school presentation. Curses curses curses! Should that fail, I aim to achieve 10,000 hits on this blog by the end of the year. Currently, I'm running at around 9,500, so any contributions will be gladly received. I also aim to significantly ramp up my hours on the bike, and to take photos when I arrive wherever I'm cycling to. I have plans to shoot and edit a fun Christmas movie before the end of December. I won't give away any of my ideas. You'll just have to wait until it is released. Also, to provide some extra maths help for the kids as I don't want them to be numerophobic as I was when in school. The memory of Mrs Jones the maths teacher still makes my blood run cold. Oh, and perhaps I might find a job.

I cannot, I'm sure, rely on Man City giving me any kind of fillip, and I fear another Liverpool defeat today at Anfield.

Jonah

Wherever I've worked, I always seem to have been haunted by some issue or other. A problem without a satisfactory resolution.



When I was at Channel 4, it was a noisy air-con unit which used to cause the occupants of the floor it serviced to complain daily. We could not - despite throwing inordinate amounts of time and money at it - seem to make it stop. I even resorted to working among the complaining group to see if I could pin-point the cause of the problem. But to no avail. As far as I'm aware, the unit is still screeching away now, and the good folk of Legal Administration (or whatever the fuck department it was) are still phoning in daily to moan about it.

Prior to this, there were a couple of things during my reign at Disney which made my life a living hell. One was a scenic lift. It persistently intermittently and inexplicably broke down, occasionally with some high-flying (no pun intended) executive or other trapped in it. I can look back on this sorry tale now and laugh (unlike the poor claustrophobic executive, sad to say) but at the time I suffered many a sleepless night over it, I have to tell you.



Worse than that - far worse - was a cracked window. It may not seem a huge deal, but this window was gigantic. Approximately 8ft square, located on the 8th floor, above the Hammersmith flyover. JG Ballard could have written my CV if anything had gone wrong with replacing that damned thing, and it took an absolute age to get it done. I remember that there were quite a number of broken windows in the building, and great efforts were expended to find out what had caused this odd fracturing, though there was some hesitation when it came to committing to the huge sums of money necessary in order to (possibly) resolve it.

I can recall an expert who came to look at the problem with me. He and I were looking at one particular office with a broken window. There was a female manager sitting there at that time, but she was not at her desk when we arrived. We deliberated, digested and cogitated for a few moments, with the requisite amount of chin stroking and inside jokes. And then she walked in.

"Hi Carol." I said (for it was she)

"Oh, hello," said my erstwhile companion. "We've just been admiring your cra..."

I have one or two extant situations for the final bizarre couple of weeks remaining at my current place of employment, mostly involving pigeons and leaks, but the biggest bloody sea bird adorning my neck, Flavor Flav style, is a lazer blue bastard, draped around there from an early age, and hanging around like a bad smell ever since.

Waster

I've just spent a day (more or less) sitting in a room listening to bullshit. I needed that like a hole in the blooming fuselage, let me tell ya. Anyway, the primary aim of the day was to work out how to make a couple of people do less 'work' than the negligible amount they already get paid a fortune for, er, doing. What's worse: these two people had (I suspect) orchestrated the day in the first place, but also had the brass neck to sit there whilst everyone (in between the coffees and the egg sandwiches) worked out how to take away even more of their pointless and overpaid existence, leaving them free to... Something.



Clearly, nobody could understand why these (state funded, I feel I must add) worthies should be bothered with the mundanities of everyday life, concerned as they are with the fundamental and vital issues of relationship management.

I don't rile easily, but my tether was stretched by one of them (tightly-curled redhead, incidentally) I have to admit. I struggled to empathise with her complaints of dealing with idiots who fail to understand just how things should be done. I was too far away from the Powerpoint and flipcharts to see clearly the baby blues of my boss as he effortlessly segued into consultation gags at the same time as tossing put-downs over his shoulder, too concerned with the doodle on my notepad and the filth on the window to actually give a shit.

It's strange to be betwixt and between.

Stung

A bit of a multi-rant to see out September, if you will forgive me. After yet another rebuke from my manager for 'not handling' something well, I have been fuming for the entire weekend. Honestly, he's a hard man to please, but he does have such piercing blue eyes. If I didn't despise him, I would surely love him. The way things are going, it will probably do no harm to elucidate a little on the latest bullshit emanating from the 'centre' and give you a flavour of where I'm coming from.

We have been severely criticised for costs being on a - get this - high trajectory, with overtime costs particularly bad. I know, as do most of the people in the office, that there is one particular section whose claims are more egregious than others, and so we have decided to challenge these claims - for example, 4 people to deliver newspapers every morning, and one full hour each day to check over vehicles. Needless to say, our efforts have been met with some resistance, as we expected, and the inevitable negotiation has begun. The poor put-upon grafters have taken it upon themselves to raise this with their union representatives, and I have been attacked for the way it has been done. I have been aware, of course, but have largely left the detailed discussions to my managers, who should after all be capable of dealing with such an issue. If they are not, then they should not be managers. Am I right?

Well, the long and the short of it is that I am in trouble, and will have to explain myself tomorrow. It's all so bloody boring, and especially ironic as I've always seen myself as sitting somewhere to the left of Che Guevara when it comes to politics. The sooner I can get away from this crap the better.

But that's a side issue. What I really wanted to vent about was Sting. Gordon Sumner. Not only is he guilty of the old Orson Welles Life In Reverse thing, with all memories of his early good stuff eclipsed by the irritating wank he now produces, but he also has to be one of these stars with a conscience, with his rainforest burbling and his supercilious wife, flying in the cook from thousands of miles away before sacking her. Bastard.

All this is old news of course, but he of the brown and yellow jumper has been on my mind recently. I have started reading American Prometheus, a (highly recommended, btw) biography of J Robert Oppenheimer, and the lyrics of the song Russians keep popping up. When you read about Oppenheimer, his opposition to the arms race, and his subsequent destruction by the American establishment for his pacifist stance, it's particularly galling that some Geordie secondary school teacher (no offence meant to either group) with an over-inflated ego could dare to throw his inane drivel into the ring.

Oppenheimer's Deadly Toy? Fuck you Sting!

The Back Teeth

Today, in a very odd way, it was at last confirmed that I will be switching my role to a non-operational one, starting in just a matter of weeks. Notwithstanding the way it was communicated - which was while I was present at a meeting to which I was only invited just as it started - I don't feel quite so energised by the prospect as I did way back in March. The main reason is that it's too fucking late now, innit? I am fairly confident that I will be around till the end of the year (god willing) and there could be a lot of opportunities arising from whatever the hell happens over the next three months. At the same time of course, I can see a slow bleed. A Gordon Brown style death by a thousand cuts as I am forced to explain (during a handover process) exactly what I have screwed up so royally over the past year and a half.

I will not be downtrodden, however, and will strive to make the most of the short future which lies ahead of me. I am starting with a project to re-align the twenty million or so job titles and descriptions which are currently in use as we strive to streamline and rationalise our service offering to meet the needs of the client. When I was first given the task my mind wandered, as it tends to do, onto a whimsical little folly of giving people in my team military ranks commensurate with their characters. Of course, none of the names will mean anything to anyone who doesn't know those I work with, but I chuckled merrily to myself (at least) while compiling the list as I watched Ray Mears using a lighter and a strip of inner tube (boy, have standards slipped there!) in the Amazon jungle the other night. Here, for no-one's benefit other than my own, is a selection of some of my favourites:


Major Wood
Colonel Murray
Bombardier Bailey
Gunner French (Spike Milligan has to be referenced. I do not refer to It Ain't Half Hot Mum. In case you're wondering)
General Leigh
Lance-Corporal Lakis
Sergeant-Major Rees (Welsh Guards)
Colour Sergeant Dutton
Wing Commander Wayne
Brigadier _______ (too much of an unusual name to give away)

It might be fun to think about your own colleagues and have a go yourself at giving them military ranks. Why don't you give it a try?

Cloth eared bint

This subject is a favourite bugbear of a friend of mine, and it has never been so apparent as it is for me now.

It is the startling inability of people to actually listen to others. I have been, for reasons I won’t go into too much detail about here (lest I begin an unseemly and undignified rant which is likely to run into several thousand words. See, I’ve started already!) made to realise the glaring truth of this statement over the past week or so.

Please forgive the following sub-Charlie Brooker phrasing, but it is incredible that there are certain situations and certain people where you may as well be repeatedly saying ‘wibble’ to a pile of breeze blocks as actually making intelligible speech with a cogent argument. Not that I actually do that very often, you understand.

I realise that there are often self-serving reasons for people not listening, that it is occasionally not advisable to remove the cloth from our ears. It can even be beneficial (as I'm sure some of my readers will confirm) to feign deafness on a selective basis. There is also of course the normal human condition of self-interest. Despite most of us being painfully shy, we are surprisingly arrogant when we have actually managed to strike up a conversation with someone else. We only endure the tedium of listening to others' woes/jokes/love lives/work gripes* so that we can get around to telling them about the much more interesting subject of our own.

But I'm not talking about that stuff. I'm referring to the sheer bloody-minded stubbornness of someone who refuses to listen. Your face may be blue, your sinews straining with the effort of getting across (I assure you) a perfectly reasonable and valid point, but still... nothing. There is only so much of this a man can take, let me tell you.

Frustration is not an adequate word to describe it. Fuck people and their fucking shit.

* Delete as necessary.

Golfing with sharks

On the eve of a trip to Shropshire (Mum duties, as Mother's Day stuff didn't arrive - sigh) and then Cheshire (40th birthday celebration for a certain donkey driver) as part of an extended sanity-restoring Easter break, I am taking stock of where I stand, work-wise.

I don't know if anyone who reads this has ever played the sublime Super Mario Bros 3, but if you do, you'll know about the block on which you land - in World 1, Level 2, I think - after jumping on and then booting the tortoise shell and watching it bork back and forth beneath your feet. If you're not careful, the action you instigated will cause your own downfall as the shell destroys the block and you slip dim-wittedly into its path, tumbling backwards feet up with a stupid grin before floating slowly down off the bottom of the screen. Well, that sort of sums it up.

If you have never played the game, and have no intention of doing so, then I guess you will just have to try and imagine the allegorical illustration.

I'm reluctant to go into too much detail, but I always dreaded needing to know anything more about golf than was strictly necessary, and I now feel that this may be a requirement. Ringing in my ears is the 2 and a half hour conference call from this afternoon, and burned into my mind's eye are so many sharp suited fellas with 3G cards worshipping at the altar of commercial service delivery. And an old lady. Crying.

Hurly-Burly

I look around.

"It's only March and we're already sick of Twitter..." Jenson Button getting amorous with his model girlfriend on the massage table in Melbourne. Robinho on the beach banging his bongos. Mum's got trouble with her computer, but she doesn't want the neighbours to find out.

Jacqui Smith and her husband. A dreadfully tenuous London Paper connection to 'have you ever caught your other half watching porn?' and Tony McNulty persistently pictured leaving his house in Hammersmith (or wherever) while GB touts his ludicrous political fantasies around South America.

Pete Doherty's good again and The Fall are playing Koko. Jade's dead, but we're not allowed to be beastly about that, and James Corden is a really nice guy. Adam Woodyat is posting pictures of his non-Twittering Eastenders cast member friends to TwitPic.

Someone at work had a stroke, but it wasn't a stroke after all. Or was it?



Did you promise something by 5 o'clock today? Holdall thrown to the platform with force and a 'STAY OUT OF MY FUCKING FACE!' Wayne Rooney should be the next United captain. Strauss is making a good fist of England captain.

One daughter committed suicide, the other is autistic. That's why she ran away from Adelaide. Now, aloof and alone, she gnaws away at her soul, ignored by those whose approval she seeks most. Everyone is wearing blinkers and WILL NOT look beyond their narrow horizons.

Should I stay or should I go? Alan McGhee goes swimming and Helen goes to Waterloo. The kids dance, Sunny can't work out her new camera and my dad's B&B in Tunbridge Wells (not Tonbridge) stinks. Bloody 3G card doesn't work. They keep missing Lakis off the lists and he keeps smiling, though really he's scared. "I just want you to know that, though the formal relationship is changing, you can still talk to me..." Dunfermline is next to Gordon Brown and will be allowed to go down. All is quiet at the Large Hadron Collider.

I look around.

La La La

(And... Here we go with a pre-cursor to a Sunday lunchtime hammering by the Smilers, but it was fun while it lasted. Not saying anything against SWP BTW, but I seriously thought that Daddy Dick deserved man of the match tonight)

As I have suddenly got to prepare for an 'interview' tomorrow, and as the 'interview' is for an as yet (to me anyway) undefined job, meaning that I will have to ditch the usual Friday clobber and dress UP even MORE than usual, inviting the inevitable questions about why I'm wearing a tie on a Friday, or else stuffing a change of clothes into my bag and lugging it across town, and will have to try and prepare for... Christ knows what, I thought it was high time for a musical post. The days of new albums seem so far distant, yet brought to life by the jogging of scents, that I marvel at how far we have travelled, and at how I would now no more consider buying a CD than I would a fine pony.



Like many other things in this crazy world, my relationship with music has changed beyond all recognition. Time was (and what a time it was) that TOTP was the pivot of the week. Not anymore. This change in perception is not solely down to ageing, as the total absence of the show from the TV schedules, and - more tellingly - the recent impasse between the mighty Google and the PRS, clearly demonstrates. Is there a music chart these days (that was a rhetorical question, by the way) and who is at Number 1 (that was a genuine question...)?

I have, like millions before me, trodden the path of:

the sudden realisation that music can be digitized, sent across the intarwebs and downloaded buckshee on to one's home computer (though via a dial-up connection, it was a labour of love, I'm sure you'll agree) through the ownership of an MP3 player, to Bluetoothing tracks between mobiles, to an iPod, through the Hype Machine and onward into the nirvana of Limewire on a broadband connection (though this relationship has turned sour with the release of the latest version and its incompatibility with the faithful old Mac Mini, with its Power PC chip, on whose wheezing torso I am beating out the tattoo of the very letters which appear before you) On to nuTsie, on which I have blogged before. It was irritating in its own special way - based on online versions of the tracks in your library, and often bowdlerised versions at that, but it was a great goodness to grok for a time. I haven't bothered with it since I don't know when.

Then came BlipFM via Twitter, with which I have been - largely - enamoured despite its occasional foibles on search. I like the 'props' idea and enjoy discovering tracks that I would not otherwise have heard about.

The final note in the scale has been Spotify. Ah, it is a beautiful thing, rich in its musical and visual tapestry. But, and you know what I mean, I was desperately seeking God. By Mr Lennon. And it was nowhere to be found. My curiosity pricked, I reached my tendrils towards Julia, and she was not there either, only her plain sister with a vile karaoke dress on.

So there we have it. Up to date as far as that goes. In an echo of modern working practices, I am happy to be rootless, head in the clouds, accessing the treasure trove of whatever takes my fancy. Until the cloud breaks and I don't have any music any more.