Some much to do, so little...well, you know the rest

It's Friday, and as luck would have it I've just discovered that the micro-brewery that lives around the corner from home has opened a bar on its premises.  Mrs O and I are going to scud round this evening and bury a few.  The trouble is I'm absolutely shattered after 4-days paper-shuffling and general office-twattery.

This evening could go one of two ways then: either my head will be lolling around like a bladder on a stick as soon as I get a sniff of the barmaid's apron, or I'll spring into life the moment I lay eyes on a brown bottle.  Let's hope it's the latter.  There's nothing more frustrating that a thirsty brain and floppy chassis.

In other news, today is yet another disappointment meteorological-speaking.  All week the weathermen and women have been rattling on about how warm it is in the south east (of England).  Trouble is, it isn't.  I don't doubt they've got some scientific explanation for why it is actually warm and only appears to be freezing, but frankly they can talk to the hand.  Chilly is as chilly does.

Tell the D.A I need 24 hours, goddamit

Thursdays are rich with meetings and intrigue in the office where I work.  Put enough men in a meeting room together, give them an agenda and plenty of coffee, and watch them go.  The nervous energy that gets shed here in the pursuit of trivial arguments most Thursdays would power sub-Saharan Africa for a one-thousand years.

I generally drift off after the initial sparring and verbal foreplay is done.  The rest of my colleagues, on the other hand, really get into it at this stage, brow-beating each other and trying to get the upper hand.  If it were accepted business practice to take off your shirt and beat your naked chest, most would.  Try minuting that.

I used to worry that my inability to join in the brouhaha was a failing, a sign of testosterone-deficiency or something.  But now I realise that whatever its cause, I'd sooner set fire to myself that take this stuff seriously.  I should resign and become a child.

My length of shrift I give to office blather has shortened rather of late as I'm currently reading Robert Grave's experiences in the Great War, "Good-bye To All That".  What strikes one most about RG's grimly comic memories of the trench warfare is the blasé attitude of the professional soldier to the mediaeval conditions and brutality he experienced.

Graves enlisted before it became the mandatory draft, and the career soldiery were dismissive of  newly-minted officers like him.  When one "copped it", then, they hardly missed a beat, stepping over the fallen unfortunate like someone avoiding the cracks in a pavement.  Also, the strict seniority of regiments in the British Army was religiously upheld at the time.  Men would blithely walk into certain death in order to uphold the reputation of their regiments.  Madness.

I'd give my right arm for a Bruce Rioch

Well, World Cup fever is building up aplenty, n'est-ce-pas?  No, perhaps you're right.  It's so very autumnal around these parts currently that staging a World Cup in a fortnight's time seems implausible and a touch distasteful.  A bit like washing your hair in the toilet.

I was reading some old guff on the BBC web site earlier about men in their 30s and 40s collecting Panini stickers during football tournaments.  It's all the rage.  I did try this once a few years ago, but it was rubbish.  When I was a boy, I thought if I had all the money in the world to spend on stickers, I'd find contentment.  I know that now to be untrue.  I did throw money at the sticker problem as a grown up, but just felt more and more frustrated.  In the end I gave up.

I shouldn't have been surprised by this; I've read enough philosophy over the years to wallpaper an oil rig.  And it all reaches the same conclusion: material things make you unhappy.  And yet I still harboured dreams of buying my way to happiness.

Those wrong-headed notions were shattered by Panini (thanks, fellas).  I no longer buy lottery tickets, thanks to them.  What's the point?  I'd just be a miserable millionaire.  "Why can't I afford a platinum submersible?"

What price Bob Latchford?

Summer lovin'

Another bank holiday here in dot-coe-dot-you-kay yesterday, and another hosing-down from the gods.  We're in that difficult transition period between "it's been a shit spring" to "it's being a shit summer".  No-one's quite sure where the cusp lies.  It's like Easter; only the Vatican seems on top of that sheight.  All we do know is that it's close.

The point of this equinox of course is that one must abandon hope if it can be shown we've passed it.  Summers in this country and short and brutal, like a spell in a young offenders' institute.  If we've missed even a week of the summer season to poor weather, then statistically-speaking it cannot be saved.

As Bill Shankly or Buddha would no doubt have averred: it's the hope that kills you.

This spell of appalling weather has come at the end of a very trying weekend too.  On Sunday my beloved Orient were beaten in the League One play-off final at Wembley.   I've seen Orient lose more play-offs than I can shake a stick at, but this one hurt particularly  

I was stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the same cohort of people I was in the 80s when Orient went up against Wrexham, and we've been there for every major game since.  The difference this time is that if we needed 13 years to reach another Wembley final (the gap since our last play-off final), would the club even exist?  It was this thought that played on my mind on the interminable tube journey home.

If West Ham get Olympic Stadium, I fear we're screwed.  The children of Walthamstow, Leyton, Leytonstone etc. will grow up to be Hammers.  You can't blame them; I would have done the same.  The idea of Orient not outliving me is hugely troubling.  I've got football existential angst.  I wonder if my GP will sign me off work?  He is an Os fan after all.

Get Fresher for the Weekend

Here's a thought: what about a two-day working week, punctuated by a five-day weekend?  Yes, yes, we can all see the obvious, licentious advantages.  But think a little deeper.  The main advantage of a two-day working week, it seems to me, would be to clarify the mind of all the protagonists.

I contend that most of the (ahem) work in the modern office environment is obfuscation.  It's not productive or intelligent; it's simply process.  Process was invented by unimaginative office-Johnnies who have too much time on their mitts.  What better way to fill the void than with empty-headed meetings?  The clichéd apotheosis of this type of person is of course the career civil servant - Terri Coverley from "The Thick of It" for example.

But, somehow over the years, process broke free of its chains and started to wag the dog.  And as process is divorced from actual productive work, it engenders ennui.  A little is easy to deal with, as long as it is tempered with actual productive work.  However, when the balance gets out of cock, the subject is overwhelmed with feelings of intense discomfort.  Consider for example how many times you've found yourself in the executive washroom, grimacing and rubbing your eyes like an over-tired 3-year-old.  Hmm...a lot, isn't it?

If we were limited to a two-day working week, all the flim-flam would fall by the wayside.  There simply wouldn't be time for it.  We'd all be full-on, trying to get the in tray denuded before Sunday evening.  You wouldn't attend a meeting unless your life depended on it.  And even then, it would last ten minutes, tops.  There'd be no coffee and biscuits, that's fo shizzle.

Yes, it would be intense and pressured.  But as the work would be productive and the fruits of your labours patent to you, there would be enormous satisfaction also.  The boredom and associated fatigue would dissipate.  That strange feeling you get at work currently that you ascribe to chronic fatigue is nothing of the sort; that's why it magically disappears when you leave the office.  It's chronic tedium.  Imagine your life without it.  You would be truly alive.

Friday evenings would be a little glum; we'd all sit around at home watching "Last of the Summer Wine", wishing it was Sunday.  But that's a small price to pay.

I say we go for it.  Anyone?

Bonjour tristesse

So, back to work.  I've been charged with doing just two days' work this week.  Two days - that's all.  And yet I am struggling after 6 hours of day one.  Jaysus wept, it's hard.  I can't concentrate at all.  It's not clear why this should be; I slept well last night.  Oh, I know what it is: I'm bored incontinent.  

And while that sounds like an overstatement, it isn't.  Scientists have irrefutable proof that tedium is detrimental to the health, and can in fact kill.  Firstly it causes alpha-wave state, like being hypnotised or super-pissed.  Then the subject lapses into a persistent vegetative state (like an under-achieving turnip), and finally the heart beats so slowly that it loses internal pressure and flops over like a squid on an escalator.  Then you've had it.  Medical fact.

The trouble with tiresome work is that the temptation is to take one's slapped-arse expression home with one.  Then you have a miserable evening, notwithstanding the fact that you're not actually at work.  Great Scott!  Then all is lost.  You might as well fill your socks with Blu-Tack and leap off Beachy Head if you get to this stage.

The thing to do is to nip it in the knackers, as Malcolm Tucker so memorably put it.  Speed home and perform some trivial domestic chore to the best of your abilities.  It really works, this.  Why not iron your pants for example?  It's probably as well to remove them first.

I feel inspired all of a sudden.

Get orf of my in-laws' lahnd

Mrs O and I have just returned from a few days in darkest Cornwall.  I do mean darkest too, the bit right down the business end at Land's End, not the wan Devon-lite Londoners' plaything up on the north coast.  It was so dark in fact that I couldn't update the old blog.  The dial-up connection suffered a greenstick fracture when I tried to upload a holiday snap, and that was that.

It wasn't enlightening, being without the Internet, incidentally.  It was shite.  People who bang-on about the liberating effect of selling their televisions are psychotic.  You wouldn't cut yourself off the electric, would you?  Quite so.  It's 2014.  Suck it up and move on.  The Edwardians didn't eschew electric light because it was making their kids lazy.  They embraced it.  We should do likewise.

...God, I'm in a good mood...

A Plate Accompli

My dad has a significant birthday looming soon.  To mark the event I asked an old friend, who's a ceramicist, to produce a tankard.  This she's decorated with photos I took of places from the auld fella's past that have especial meaning for him.  It's a particularly nice gift as my potter friend's parents lived three doors down from mine when we were children, so her making the thing will be a surprise and a delight in and of itself.

I'm normally pretty good at coming-up with gift ideas, but I sweated cheddar over this one.  I could not think what to buy him.  The problem is that I usually just fire over a sporting biography to him in the post.  The low-key nature of the thought and the relative inexpense of the gift doesn't trouble either party; we're men.  Also, I know he will genuinely enjoy it.  But a book, even a hardback one, wouldn't suffice for this major life event.

But when the idea crystallised, the whole thing came together remarkably easily.  Until today that is.  I've been asked to come up with a pithy and moving legend for the base of the tankard - ten words, tops.  My temptation is these circs is to be profane, but you need to consider the object's future.  It  might well end-up in the hands of one of his great-grandchildren in 50 years' time.  And by then, no doubt, the legend "Goodnight, goodnight and eat me shite" might have lost some of its currency and charm.

The second notion was to have a stab at profound.  But profundity descends into sentiment if not very carefully rendered, and no-one wants that.  Furthermore, I don't think my relationship with my father could be said to be profound in-any-way-at-all.  Close, yes, but not profound.  I could just picture his rictus grin as he read my cack-handed pensée for the first time, his eyes mouthing the words What the feck is that supposed to mean?  No, that would not do.

I shall probably just end-up plagiarising one of his maxims.  He's got more catchphrases than Bruce Forsyth, my old man.  They have the twin benefits of brevity and a vaguely-scatological sledgehammer charm.  And what says "happy birthday" more than that winning combination?  My thoughts exactly.

Hark at Mister Grumpy

I rather rashly decided to take some leave next week.  This means of course that I'm catastrophically busy clearing the decks before the off.  I don't ever remember work being like this previously.  In days of yore, one's duties could go hang for a few days unless you were Foreign Minister or something.  Now it's impossible to fetch a jaffa cake from the canteen without someone phoning you, demanding to know your whereabouts.

People bleat about how sad it is that children aren't allowed to gallivant in the streets unchaperoned by adults in the modern age.  But they fail to behold the beam in their own grown-up eyes first.  Most adults are constantly wired into the grid these days, and willingly so it seems.  When my Dad was my age I dare say he could have hidden in the factory toilet for 4-5 hours a day without anyone batting an eyelid.  Their generation must look upon ours and shudder.  I would.

As Blur quite rightly averred: modern life is rubbish.  I wouldn't mind if my job were actually that important, but it's trivia in a suit, like all modern jobs.  Why people get so het up about these matters is beyond me.  Relax and have a choc-ice whydontcha?  Unless a flaming asteroid hurtles into Mother Earth over the weekend, I can deal with that next week.  And even if I didn't, so-what?  I'm sure the fates, or God, or the prime mover or whatever couldn't give a shite either way.  Yes, perhaps I'll bugger off to Cornwall with the inbox still groaning.  That'll show 'em.  Grrr...

Be still, my beating ar5e

Well, that was an intense evening.  I jollied along to Orient last night for the second leg of the League One play-offs.  All went as planned and Orient prevailed.  It did remind me, though, of why I don't attend football matches.  It was two hours of nerve-shredding confusion and anxiety.

I have, even if I say so myself, a "footballing brain" as it's termed.  I see the game well, its territorial aspects etc.  A lot of schoolboy footballers, while technically adept, have no feel for the sport.  They look at their feet, the ball and about 20 feet of turf in front of them.  And their reaction to receiving the ball is always the same: running with it.  You'll never develop into a useful footballer with that world view.  One needs to look up and assess the situation.  You only pin back your lugs and give it the full Forest Gump if the lie of the land demands it.

Despite my sang-foid on the pitch, when spectating, I'm a gibbering wreck.  It's just a blur of colours and sounds.  All I can do is tremble and swear.  I cannot follow the game at all.  It's like trying to watch a production of The Cherry Orchard from a roller coaster.  The see the action, but it doesn't really sink in; the nuances are lost.

Unfortunately, my torment isn't over.  We're off to Wembley en bloc on Sunday week for the final.  For everyone else this will be like a works outing, full of drunken laughter and tears.  But for me it's the emotional equivalent of Cain carrying a burning-hot cauldron in the opening credits of "Kung Fu".  If you're under 80, you might need to Google that neo-classical reference.

I'll try to maintain a phlegmatic expression, but the beads of sweat on my brow and quivering lips will tell their own story.  - I come in peace...up, The Os.

My trouble is I care too much

I'm off to a football match this evening.  That's a rare occurrence for me.  I used to go regularly, not often, but regularly.  But as real life has increasingly encroached upon childish pursuits, I've rather left the beautiful game behind.  This trend was exacerbated by most of my friends moving away from the area we grew up in.

I did go alone once, but it was an horrific experience for all concerned.  I ended-up sitting in the family enclosure, and was surrounded by 12-year-olds and their mothers, all in scarves and rosettes.  In any other circumstance this would present no problems; I'm a polite well brought up sort.  Unfortunately, when it comes to football, the veneer of civility slips away rapidly.  As soon as the referee gets proceedings underway, yours truly starts swearing like a docker - one who's just stubbed his toe on a red-hot javelin.

The reason for this is nerves.  I get really het up at football.  I hate it in all honesty.  It's the one arena in which I do let the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune get to me.  I look upon it as a personal slight when an opposition team of journeymen professionals contrives to beat my beloved Orient.  It's like someone having a pop at your family.

I know this makes me sound like a nutter, but I'm really not.  I wouldn't categorise myself as much of a supporter at all.  I don't slavishly follow the club's news, or pour over match reports.  I don't even really care that much for the game anymore.  I used to, as a boy, but now I've bigger cultural fish to fry.

The reason I can get upset to such an unseemly degree is that for me football is territorial.  The club is a reflection of what and who I am.  That's why I could never support a team with which I had no geographical or cultural link.  What would be the point?

The club is akin to a river for me.  I was brought up on its banks, and so it belongs to me.  I care not a jot for the players in the squad at any given time.  I appreciate what they do for the club, but they are not the club - no more than the water is the river.  The river's quiddity transcends its individual temporary elements.  And that is why I eff and blind all the way through the game.  Yes - including the halftime break.  QED.

That was the weekend that was

Ah, the mini-break.  Mrs O and I spent this weekend in Belfast, watching The Tour of Italy bike race kick-off.  We flew out of Heathrow on Friday evening and returned Sunday afternoon.  A fleeting visit, then, but even so, you always return to the homestead with the batteries fully-charged after a weekend away like this.

Belfast has changed so much over the last few years.  I first visited the North in 1997, on honeymoon.  That's how you keep the nuptial magic alive, incidentally: take your newly-minted bride to a war zone for two weeks.  In fairness, Mrs O does hail from Ulster originally, so it wasn't the wanton act of cruelty it might otherwise appear.

On that first visit we drove up from the Republic, and I remember the real fear crossing the border engendered in me.  In those days, you had to be searched and then cross 500 yards of no-man's-land to enter the North.  And this no-man's-land was straight out of Le Carré: armed observation towers, razor wire and armoured personnel carriers.  I covered the terrain at walking pace as I genuinely feared being bazooka-ed for driving too fast and being mistaken for a dangerous insurgent.

And when we reached NI, things didn't improve much.  Each village and small town we drove through was staunchly Loyalist or Nationalist, the flags and coloured paving stones left you in no doubt about that.  As we drove into each new conubation (again at 8 miles an hour), my mind would be doing cartwheels trying to work out how we might go down with the locals.

The reason for the mental contortions was that we are a heady and contradictory mix, Mrs O and I, at least in Ulster we are.  She's a protestant from the North, and I am a London Irish catholic.  I have a very Irish (for which read very catholic) surname.  I have an Irish passport, and she a British one.  And we were driving a British registered car.  We'd left no sectarian offence stone unturned.

Everything, but everything in the North in those days was hugely symbolic and significant: where you went to school, where you went on holiday, your name etc.  Unfortunately, we were screwing with the religion gardar, which made us suspect to both sides of the divide.  Eventually we settled on staying only in the large town and cities, which are mixed and therefore tolerable.

We've been back to Belfast several times over the years since then, and every time you visit, it seems more relaxed and normal than it did before.  The scars are still there of course, but they have an historical feel about them now.  It doesn't feel like the place could tip back into madness (I pray to God - the Catholic one - that I won't have occasion to eat those words).  There's a generation of young adults in Northern Ireland now that has only known peace.  You'd hope they look upon the actions of their forebears and think Just what the fuck was all that about then?

I suspect they will.  Northern Ireland - it's the future.

That would be an ecumenical matter

Mrs O and I are off to Belfast this evening.  We're off to another bike race, the Tour of Italy this time.  The organisers traditionally kick-off il giro outside Italy and get the riders to thunder into the boot, so to speak, after a day or two abroad.  To be honest, though, Northern Ireland's probably pushing the tradition a little far.

Having a stage in Belgium or The Netherlands is one thing; the people there are familiar with bike racing at least.  But the inhabitants of NI are about as familiar with road racing as they are with kabaddi or that Basque version of squash you play carrying what looks like a wicker bidet.  Consequently some of the publicity bumf is pitched at the cycling semi-literate.  No harm in that of course; they can't help it.

The problem with hosting races in countries with no sense of the sport is that the spectalcle is wasted on the herd.  Road-racing is rich with intrigue, plots, bluff and bravura.  That's why the Italians are good at it, and why the public there loves it so much.  All these atributes are considered admirable in Italian manhood.

The one aspect of the sport that separates it from all other endurance events is the premium placed on maintaining one's aplomb and deportment whilst suffering like a dog.  Athletes look fairly ragged when they're charging around the track in their vests and ill-fitting shorts.  Vests, for Christ's Sake.  But even the world's most medicre pro-cyclist will refuse to start a race until he looks a million dollars: bike and kit spotless, legs shaved and oiled and sunglasses in situ irrespective of the weather.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why it's the greatest sport in the world.

Fashion dissonance

As I was legging it to the executive washroom earlier, I passed-by a chap in the corridor.  He was making a phone call, and would have escaped my notice entirely were he not wearing the world's most outrageous shirt.

It wasn't one of those kak-handed hysterically-coloured "Behold - I'm unconventional" ones that certain men sport in offices.  Oh, no - it was made of flannel, and had large ugly embroidered roses all over it.  It reminded me of the kind of material your grandmother would have had best tablecloth rendered in - not the everyday tablecloth, just the best one.

At first I thought he must have got changed in the dark, or been sick on himself en route to work and had had to duck into SCOPE for a replacement chemise.  But he had a certain swagger about him, this fellow, so it can't have been that.  We've all, I'm sure, pitched-up chez work looking a little shabby from time-to-time.  Christ alone knows I have.

When I was young and foolish, any dishevelment was generally due to my having been out on the pop the night before.  I'd always make a point of doing the ironing before retiring to bed, no matter how King Knuted I was - better that than do it with a hangover the following morning.  The trouble is of course that one's technique goes to cock in a handcart when pissed, so I always turned-up looking like I'd attempted to iron my shirt with a freezing-cold corrugated cheese grater.

A friend of mine was so impoverished as a student that he owned only one shirt, and had to wash it every night while he was temping during the holidays .  He was also notoriously thirsty and would stagger in of an evening only when the pubs shut.  He'd then have to wash his shirt in the kitchen sink before turning-in.  Luckily, the shirt was made exclusively of petrochemicals and repelled water like a two-stone Canada Goose, so it was always dry enough to wear the following morning.

Now I'm longer of tooth, I only turn-up to work looking like I've been hauled through a hedge fund backwards if there's been a consumer-durable failure at home.  Occasionally the iron gets its own back by spraying my strides with rusty water, and if I fail to spot the blemish, off I trot to work with it in full view.  Other than that, I'm pristine.  That's what age does to one.  Shocking really.

Living in the now, then

I think I might be undergoing une crise d'emploi, as we say on the riviera.  I'm absolutely bereft of concentration when at my place of work.  For the last couple of months or so my mind refuses to knuckle down and whittle away at the in-tray.  One always goes through peaks and troughs of application of course, but I don't think this is one of those.  It's more deep-seated than that.  I've basically fallen out of love with my job, not that I ever really fancied it that much, if I'm honest.  I just needed somewhere to lay my hat during the day.

And it's a vicious circle too, this inability to silence the voices and actually to type up the minutes of last Thursday's uneventful meetings, because as the time ticks by, one becomes ever more disheartened by the increasing pile of trivial tasks at hand.  This increases the inertia, and the problem grows at an exponential rate.

The problem is that I've mentally washed my hands of my current duties, but can't be bothered to end it.  It's like being locked in a loveless marriage.  I need the other party to force me out of the nuptial home because I'm too lily-livered to pull the trigger myself.  So I keep taking liberties in the hope that matters come to a head.  

In fact, a good old row with the job would help a lot.  Some hysterical screaming from yours truly along the lines of "You've changed.  There's no excitement any more.  I can't honestly say I love you at this stage in our relationship.", followed by some plate-hurling might do the trick.  Perhaps it is possible to save this car crash of a relationship after all.  Mind you, I have found myself trawling the web sites of employment agencies rather a lot of late, and furtively too.  Whenever anyone in the office catches me, I have to shut down the browser quickly and pretend I've been browsing classic 80s porn sites.  I generally don't like deceit, except when it makes for an easy life.  For me, I mean.

And...collapse

So, the first day back at work after a busy and vee-enjoyable bank-holiday weekend, and don't I know it.  I slept like a corpse last night.  Usually, it takes me at least three hours to drop off, but last night I genuinely don't remember a thing between kicking off the memory-foam slippers en route to the mattress and the alarm clock screaming its tits off at 7.20 this morning.  The bedside lamp was still on when I woke up, implying that I must have fainted rather than fallen asleep in the traditional manner.

Despite all the shut-eye, I was super knackered right from the bully-off.  I managed to get through the rituals of breakfast and dressing myself on instinct and caffeine alone, but quickly ran out of juice.  I even had to have a lie down before leaving the house.  I'm no general practitioner, but that cannot be right, can it?  I really should have 'phoned work and told them to sod off, but that's not the kind of attitude that gets you on the Apollo Program, is it?

I am no stranger to chronic fatigue.  I blame my bio-rhythms, which are all-to-cock when compared with polite society.  When they're preparing for bed, I'm settling down in front of an episode of Kenneth Clark's "Civilisation" with a half a bottle of rioja and a bag of monkey nuts for company.  I've always been like this.

When I was boy, we had a cat called Tibby.  I remember heading-off for school one morning.  There was snow on the ground, and as I mooched forlornly off I spotted the Tibster curled-up in front of the gas fire in the front room, utterly oblivious.  "You jammy get," I remember thinking.  I could have wept.

 In fact cats have a rare old time of matters generally, don't they?  The favourable shift-patterns notwithstanding, they are the masters of their own ships in every conceivable way.  I sometimes look at dogs, and feel sorry for them.  They're like children: they go out when they're told to; they're always accompanied by an adult, and they can't feed themselves.  I often look at my friends' chocolate Labrador and sense her thinking "I could absolutely murder a sausage."  She's got more chance of flapping her ears and taking off, the poor cow.

Your cat, on the other hand, is like an undergraduate: he comes and goes as he pleases, sleeps 14 hours a day and eats when and what he wants.  If a cat wakes up hungry and it's several hours before the Whiskas gets an airing, he simply leaps out window and bags himself a pigeon or a tit.

The ballad of reading gaol

Due to bad planning, I found myself without a book the other lunchtime.  This caused some panic to old mister brain.  The idea of an hour stranded in Canary Wharf without literary diversion?  No, thank-you.  CW is an cultural desert - there, I've said it.  The shops are boring unless you like Ugg boots and sunglasses.  So there's nuttin' to do.  This causes introspection, and before you know it the river police are fishing you out of The Thames before sedating you and wrapping your quivering form in a foil blanket.

No, we can't have that, so I had to run off and buy a book.  I have developed rather an addiction to reading, generally fiction.  Most people look upon this as an admirable trait, but I see it just as another mania, and something that needs to be kept in check.  Yes, one should read regularly and actively; it's good for the noggin.  But if you find yourself getting the yips and trembling like a 15-year-old Pekingese because you've mislaid your copy of The Day of The Jeckal, then perhaps you need to cut down.

It's funny how class-riven matters like this are (in England too!)  Reading is middle-class and is therefore always beneficial, the logic has it.  But when you distill it down, literature is simply distracting oneself by reading a lot of pretendy words.  How is that more worthy than watching John Craven's Newsround or Top Gear, say, or drinking fine wines for that matter?  I contend it isn't, your honour.

Despite my reservations regarding its inherent merit, I ended-up studying literature at college.  Luckily lit crit at undergraduate level dispenses with plot obsession - the colour of Mr Micawber's socks, for example - and is actually more akin to cultural studies, or social anthropology.  The upshot of this is that I don't remember much about specific books, but know much more about the authors.  It always brings people up short that a literature graduate can't remember the name of Pip's sister in Great Expectations, but there it is.

Pip, pip!

Keeping out of your own way

I'll be honest with you - I have a tendency to over think matters.  I like to amass as much data about a subject as I can and sift it for about 14 years before committing to a course of action.  Also, having a basic working knowledge of a subject allows one to fool oneself into believing one has some control over this capricious circus turn we call life.  Usual fanciful male guff.

In some regards, this completist mindset is a boon.  Knowing how to fix a bicycle has come to my rescue at the roadside many many times over the years for example.  But it quickly and unhelpfully spills over into paranoid inaction.  One vacillates until aficionado status has been attained, but by then the decision horse has bolted to Poland.

As I've reported in these pages recently, I'm "under the physio".  My knee (my good one, mind you) has been giving me gyp.  The physio gave me some exercises to perform, and the errant joint is little-by-little pulling its socks up.  But as it gets better, I've grown bored with blind faith in the physio's regime and have started reading-up about this fascinating joint.  (Yeah, I know).

And it is a fascinating subject.  I know I'm wielding the weak anthropic principle with abandon here, but indulge me for a mo.  It's so elegantly and effortlessly fit for purpose, the human knee.  It really is  a triumph.  Forget your Dyson cheese grater or your iPhone, the knee knocks them both into a cocked hat.  And you've got two knees dangling out the bottom of your underpants.  (Apologies to those of you who have less than the usual complement of legs.  No offence intended.)

But there's a problem.  As one's knowledge of the workings of the knee increases, one becomes dangerously self-conscious while using them.  This is bad.  I find myself constantly assessing the biomechanics of my gait as I mince across the office to the printer.  This over-analysis causes me to walk like Godzilla in desert boots.  Not a good look for your middling office Johnny, comme moi.

How on earth do physios cope?