Wind in the pillows

Good god, it was windy last night.  It still is today, as it happens.  When I turned in last night, it was quite pleasant, listening to the wind whistling through the blinds on the bedroom windows.  I drifted off imagining myself aboard a Spanish galleon in the mid 18th century, as things creaked and sang.  By 4am, however, the romantic associations had worn wafer-thin, and the noise was just that - noise.  I bunged in some earplugs and copped a deaf 'un.  Mrs O was kept awake by the tempest too.  That takes some doing, believe me.  It must have been a ferocious one.

The poor weather also meant that I overworked my already weakened right knee on the ride into work.  I suppose I should get the train in for a few days, but that feels like a defeat, and I don't need one of those at the moment.  My morale's at a season's best low as it is.

Stop Press: I've received a couple of unwelcome from the IT dunces at work, telling me I'm liable to be beaten with rhino-hide cosh if I use the Internet inappropriately.  They don't define appropriateness.  All this is because they got hacked a few months ago and are trying to divert attention from their own major professional shortcomings.

No-one likes a bully...you acne-ridden friendless 40-year-old virgins.  No-one.

In the British summertime

Well, it's official - summer's arrived.  The clocks in In-ger-land went forward to the tune of one hour on Sunday morning - so-called BST.  As much as I look forward to this occasion, it does play havoc with my flimsy physical and psychological defences.  My body clock isn't easily fooled and he wasn't happy having to pull down the shutters and fain sleep last evening at what he considered to be too early an hour.  And when the alarm clock started shrieking this morning at what to him was still 06.20 hours, well, he couldn't keep a civil tongue in his virtual head.  Most unpleasant it all was.

Of course the flip side of this is that the evenings are very bright, and it feels (at the moment at any rate) earlier than it is in strictly chronological sense.  So I've got a nice long evening ahead of me.  What to do?  Pub?  Yeah.

Pah-dee

I'm off to my niece's 16th birthday party this evening.  And it's a Friday!  This means I'll be able to neck fine wine (I'm off ale for Lent, as previously reported) all evening without a care for what the hour hand is doing.  I'm not certain how much niece #2 is looking forward to the shindig, but that is to miss the point.  The real point of this evening is to give the adult cohort of the family a rare and wafer-thin excuse to gather together and break bread.

I understand from my mother that the urchin will be having her actual birthday party tomorrow, i.e., the one with guests she likes and actually wishes to spend time with.  Suits me - I can't imagine a worse fate than sharing a house with two dozen frowning and sullen teenagers when I'm trying to get oiled.  It curdles the wine.

The event has got me to thinking about age, and its historically-specific nature.  When I was 16, I was a regular pub-goer.  This wasn't unusual either.  As soon as we hit 16, all my friends and I would gather in the beer garden of a yoot-friendly boozer close to home every Friday evening.  It was the done thing then.  Nowadays, it seems to me, 16 year olds are more like children than we were at their age.  They don't drink for the most part, and certainly wouldn't be seen dead in a pub.  Part of the reason for this of course is ID-fascism.  Young people cannot go anywhere or do anything without carrying their State-sanctioned bona fides.  This is horrifying to new wave English hippy like myself.

How, I wonder, are youngsters supposed to learn the pub etiquette, given the current set-up?  The rules of this environment are as unwritten as they are complex.  You have to serve your time in the pub is absorb it.  I do hope this doesn't mark the beginning of the end of the role of the pub in British society.  If youngsters aren't introduced to pub-life, chances are the culture will wither on the vine.  Instead we'll become a nation of bar-goers.  Sod that.  Bars have their place, i.e., inside hotels, but on the high street the pub is king.

The case for gun control

I am, I like to think anyhoos, a tolerant man.  I always try to think the best of people, and am forgiving of their minor foibles.  Of late though I've had my phlegm tested to its limits by overcrowing in my workplace and the annoying habits of some of my colleagues.

The office is undergoing a big reshuffle in order to accommodate an additional two dozen staff.  All the new bods are IT flavoured, which does rather beg the question why can't they work remotely?  But no, we have to squeeze them in here.  Clearly there isn't enough space.  If there were, we'd simply all budge up a bit.  Instead, cupboards, air con units and pedistals are being culled.  They're even giving us narrower desks.  I am being serious.

Like rats in a maze, this overcrowding is causing the inhabitants to turn on one another.  For example, I won't need much more provocation to bare my teeth at a chap who sits near me and who insists on drumming with his fingers on the desk edge as he reads emails.  It's a frantic and insistent rhythm that he keeps too.  I wouldn't mind so much if it were more latin and laid back.  But it's right on the beat.  Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.  It's driving me fcuking septic.  He'll have to go.

Also, the market and advertising teams seems to employ a disproportional number of guffawers.  They cannot and will not stop laughing.  One dizzy mare who works in ads was laughing the other day as she recounted a recent trip to the south of France.  She was simply narrating the material events of the journey - going to the airport, checking-in, the flight etc.  And yet she was in stitches.  It's clearly some sort of nervous tick.  She might need help and isolation.

Allergic to work...finally.

Something odd happened today.  It wasn't an interesting odd though; it was mildly terrifying.  I was sat at my desk at work, scowling, when my throat tightened up and I could barely breathe.  I made a dash for the lifts as I thought I might pass out.  This must have been the 'fight or flight' reflex kicking in.  Luckily, its instincts proved to be sound: as soon as I got out of the office, my symptoms lessened.

The cause of the attack was an allegen in the air conditioning.  This happens quite a lot, but never previously with the severity of today's episode.  Usually at about 9.30 of a morning, I will start with the streaming eyes and runny nose for about 10 minutes.  After that, it passes.  The chap who sits opposite me gets a sneezing fit in the middle of the afternoon.

I should have known something was up.  I've been on my knees for the last week or so.  Chronic fatigue is another symptom of allergic reaction.  Something's going on.  Unfortunately, my paranoia regarding large and powerful business concerns prevents me from kicking up a fuss.  I worry that if I do, someone will mark my card, and use his masonic power to destroy me and all I stand for.

Plane madness

There was a plane crash earlier today, in the Alps.  It was a German flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf.  There are not thought to be any survivors.  Aside from the obvious distress this tragedy might cause one, it has also prompted a tsunami of lamentable and ill-informed speculation from some of my less enlightened colleagues to add to one's woes.

What's particularly troubling is the self-assurance each demonstrates on subjects he can only realistically know precisely zero about.  For example, they were debating the likelihood of the aircraft's having been downed by a bomb earlier.  This scintillating dialogue was based solely on reports of the size of the crash site.  I'm guessing...no, hang on, that's what they were doing.  How many people do you suppose are actually qualified to speak on such an esoteric matter?  Not many I suspect.

The idiot debates aside, they also demonstrate an appalling lack of empathy for the victims.  It's as if they've just watched a circus clown come a cropper on a banana skin.  The general tone seems to be one of bemused mirth.  Very odd and most distasteful.

An appalling human tragedy reduced to the level of viral "entertainment". 

Hobby Kennedy

Well, I made good on my threat recently to try archery.  On Saturday morning last, I took myself off to London Bridge and spent 1.5 hours learning this noble art.

There's something very pleasing about firing a bow and arrow; it feels very organic and 'right'.  It feels as natural as running.  You also feel rather elegant doing it - well, I did at any rate.  I'll definitely be going back for more.

The action took place in a sports hall just south of the river, in Bermondsey.  There were about two dozen of in total learning the ways of the quiver.  There was a stag group.  They weren't the usual frightening semi-pissed cohort one might expect though.  They were a really nice bunch, their only concession to stag tradition being to insist the groom-to-be wear a Robin Hood hat for the duration.  Everyone was really friendly.  I've noticed this about people who participate in martial arts.  They're as nice a stratum of society as you're likely to meet.  I think the violence inherent in the pastime removes the requirement for passive-aggressive posturing in everyday social intercourse.  Either that of the fact that it costs £20 an hour plus to do keeps the riff-raff out.  It could have been that actually.

Twang.

Eclipse(d)

The was a partial solar eclipse today.  I say that, but I didn't witness it myself as the south east (of England) was blanketed in thick cloud this morning, so it was invisible.  Shame really.  As I write, a couple of hours later, there isn't a cee in the ess.

I have a poor track record when it comes to viewing eclipsi.  I charged down to west Cornwall in 1999 to spy one, and that was obliterated by cloud too.  I'm a cosmic Jonah.  I would like to see one in the raw before I keel over and die, but I'll need to get a jog on.  They're not frequent and I'm not 15 years old, although I do retain some teenage character traits for personal use only.

Yawn...

Cloak and dagger nuptials

Two friends of mine got married yesterday.  To one another.  Missus O and I were the only guests, which meant also that we acted as the official witnesses.  I've never understood the point of the witnesses.  They don't need to know the bride and groom, just vouchsafe that these two people, who purport to have legal use of the names they've set down on the paperwork, are in the same room as themselves and the registrar.  A video camera could do this.  Has does that help the State?  

According the bumf that I was given to read, the witnesses must be 18 years of age and 'credible'.  I ticked 'yes' to both boxes for this.  Am I credible?  I think I am, but that proves nothing.  If I am, I am, and if I'm not, I'm not.  Unless, that is, credibility stems entirely from the subject, like happiness.  No sane Englishman would challenge one's assertion of happiness.  Credibility, it seems, falls into the same category.  So what store can the authorities set by it in this context?  One man's credible witness is another's credulous, easily-led twat.

All that notwithstanding, I did my duty, and very jolly it was too.  Two good friends safely shepherded over the broom by yours truly.  Makes one proud.

Kraut-shock

Phew - I'm tired today.  We got back from Berlin yesterday afternoon and I've been in a coma since.  This is strange and unhelpful when you consider I've done nothing but eat and sleep well since touching down in Blighty.  We weren't late or anything.  We got home at 5pm.

I am really spent however.  I think it's a combination of physical fatigue and boredom.  I really really really am bored.  Screaming ab-dabs self-harm bored.  I know I am the master of my own ship and should apply my talents (such as they be) to changing matters for the better.  But I can't be our-souled.  So there.

I have another day off tomorrow.  Missus O and I have to attend to matters with a couple of friends of ours that I'm not at liberty to discuss until this time tomorrow.  The cloak-and-dagger miasma makes the whole episode sound vaguely sinister and sordid.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  It's a joyous and sober event.  You'll just have to read tomorrow's entry for full details.  Actually, I might not get the opportunity to scribble an entry tomorrow, but I will do soonest.

All I can think of at the moment is going home, curling up into a ball and sleeping like a lttle pigeon.  Not the stuff of which legends are made, is it?  I don't have the energy to argue the point.  Perhaps some modernist poetry would help?  No, I thought not either.

Getting organised

I've entered a little strait of calm water in my quest to find professional satisfaction.  I recently decided to fight fire with fire by actually being organised and diligent in the face of my daunting workload, and this seems to have helped.  I've taken to looking upon my duties as a personal slight and/or threat.  They challenge my well being and I won't have that.  So I set my chin against them and vow to do my utmost to destroy them.  This gives me energy and a motive to work.

History teaches me that this mood will pass and that ennui and inaction will creep back in, like the draught under a shit door.  No matter.  I shall enjoy it while it lasts.  I've always been cyclical like this.  Pointless fighting it now.

I'm home alone this evening.  The missus is away on business.  They're strange, nights alone like this.  I always look upon them as an opportunity to get shit loads done, but it never pans out like that.  I run out of inspiration when she's not around.  By the time I've hurled together an uninspiring supper, it's about midnight, so I turn in.  The funny thing is when I'm out for the night, she always goes to town on dinner, cooking elaborate dishes that require several saucepans and specialist ingredients.

Chicks huh?

This just in...

A short and glorious update today.  It's fairly frantic at work this week, and I'm the only man standing, so rambling time is at a premium.  Also, I'm supposed to be learning German - not all of it - ahead our trip to Berlin this weekend.  I thought I'd do some revising ahead of the grand depart, only to discover that I'd missed a shit load of lessons somehow.  Consequently, I've got to bone up furiously in German from now to Friday evening...not fun.

And it's mothers' day on Sunday.  My mammy lives in Ireland, which means I have to queue up in the Post Office for about 200 minutes to get air mail stickers and stamps.

So there you have it.  No time and scant energy.  Things will be better tomorrow.  I think we can all agree on that.

Auf.........no, it's gone.  Goodbye.

High pressure international jet-set what-have-you

I'm usually pretty good at keeping regular vides in my appointments diary.  I don't like being on the meter constantly, especially when I'm supposed to be enjoying myself.  Other people appear to love being ordered hither and yon in the name of leisure, but they, madam, are perverts.  I'll have no truck with it.

Having said all that, which I just have (see above), events do conspire from time to time to cause me to spread my considerable talents and charisma a bit thin.  The next week is a case in point.  I'm already up against it at work.  This our busy period.  On Friday I have to leave the office early in order to dash to Heathrow for a flight to Berlin.  We're in Germany until Monday.  Back to work Tuesday.  On Wednesday I witnessing the marriage of a friend.  Back to work Thursday, a day full of back-to-back meetings.  Work again on Friday.  An archery lesson on Saturday and we're collecting some hops as part of a local brewery scheme on Sunday morning.  Still, it's all good fun I suppose.

I might have mentioned before now that I've given up beer for Lent.  I will have to forgo this fast for the duration of our stay in Berlin though.  Germany produces some splendid beers, not the fizzy lager piss with which you're no doubt familiar, but proper beer.  I was particularly taken on our last trip there with a kraut jollop called "winterboch".  It's a dark, flavoursome ale they produce for the cold winter months.  It's super.  I cannot and will not not drink it.  Nein, nein und thrice nein.

What was I up to then?

Unusually for a Sunday, I went to bed early last night.  The missus and I met her parents, who were in town for the weekend, and had a slap-up lunch.  A couple of glasses of wine and two lovely courses left us both feeling replete and soporific.

We managed to stay awake long enough to pop out in the early evening for an additional brace of sherries, and that was that.  Come 10.30, I was flagging like an RAF ground crew member during the Berlin airlift, so I ran upstairs and  leapt into bed at speed, both feet off the ground, like Roy Keane in his pomp.  I was asleep in a heatbeat.  It was with some surprise and disappointment then that I awoke this mornng feeling shattered.  I had slept solidly for eight hours, which I consider to be my side of the bargain kept.  So what happened to the quality of my sleep during those many small hours?  I must have been thrashing about the whole time, like a giant confused fish.  Perhaps it was the mushy peas that set me off?

Today is a trying day, work-wise, which has added to my woes.  I'm alone in the office and there's loads of exacting, mission-critical work to wade through.  The upshot is a tired, gittery self.  I'm not at my best when T&G, not even close.  Expansive and loquacious is my metier.  And that is thin on the ground this afternoon.

Star In A Reasonably-Priced Siatica

My sister rang me the other evening.  She wanted my sage advice about sciatica, specifically how to cure it.  The reason she rang me is because I have a bit of previous when it comes to this oh-so debilitating condition.  The funny (peculiar, not ha-ha, definitely not ha-ha) thing is I too was suffering from the same malady.  It took me about twenty minutes to hobble to the phone because of it.

I first succumbed to it several years ago after hurting my back.  It manifested itself by freezing up my right calf (it was like a lump of granite) and sending shooting pains down my right hamstring - well, one of them anyway.  It sounds quite minor, jotted down like that, but, believe me, it's anything but.  It's excruciating when it's acute, and extremely dispiriting.

After this episode, it came back to haunt me periodically - never, thankfully, as severely as the first time.  And being something of an autodidact, I set about reading all the available literature on alleviating the symptoms.  Some of it (a lot of it actually) is twaddle.  But I have managed to cherry pick some gems over the years, and it from this arsenal that I was able to help out the sib.

World Book Day Of The Jackel

I suspect this will go down badly, but chocks away nonetheless.  It's World Book Day.  What's not to like?  I, myself, am something of a bibliophile.  I read constantly, and I do tend to fetishize books I esteem highly.  I have a large collection of the buggers at home to illustrate this fact.  Too many, as it happens.  When in a new town, I always seek out the nearest bookshop, and there I can spend hours, simply flicking through the tomes.  I, I think it fair to say, like books more than the man on the Clapham omnibus.  Unless that man is Melvyn Bragg.  But I take issue with WBD.  Why?  Because it's a classic example of avoidance behaviour.

Parents these days, with their usual manic overreactions to events such as this, go to enormous lengths to dress their wretched progeny up as characters from their favourite books.  But how much reading are these same children doing, both at school and extra-murally?  Surely, that should be purpose of WBD.

I dare say parents and woolly educationalists will point to a nebulous connection that's been teased out by some PhD. student somewhere, suggesting that dressing up as Stig of the Dump increases a child's aggregate career earnings by 25% or something.  Actually, there probably is a correlation, but that's only because the whole thing is so class-driven.  Middle class parents in this country go passive-aggressive bourgeois ape-shit for this stuff.  You can tell they're absolutely frantic that their child will simply not be dressed like the rest of the herd, and also that his or her costume will bespeak an elegant, effortless and forensic intelligence.  This is easier said than done of course, which is why they all have minor stress-induced strokes trying to select and then construct a suitable outfit.

It's at times like this that I wish I had children.  I'd dress the offspring as one of Henry Chinaski's slattern pissed-up girlfriends from "Women" or "Post Office".  This would present the teachers with a problem because Bukowski is a serious artist, so it's a valid choice.  And yet there's a 10-year-old boy in the class who looks like a drunk Bette Middler tribute act.  What would the school do?  Send the child home?  I'd make mince of them in the local paper if they did.  No, he's staying.  What do you mean you haven't read it?  Spent too long dressing-up instead?  I thought as much.

Arrows by any other name

I had a rush of bee to the aitch yesterday and booked myself onto an archery taster course.  I've always hankered after trying archery.  It's one of those things that I ear-marked out years ago as potentially fun and therefore something to do later in life (whenever that is), along with yachting, fencing, bodybuilding, mescaline and sake.  As is par for the course with me, having made the commitment to do it was sufficient for my unconscious brain to assume we had in fact done it in reality.  I realised a couple of weeks ago that we hadn't; hence, the decisive action.

I don't know why I vacillate like this.  It's ridiculous really.  I suspect it's to do with my inability to appreciate that time changes one and one's material circs.  I always bank on things staying just the way they have been for the last 20 years or so, i.e. my being realitively wealthy and relatively fit.  That's also why I struggle when I'm injured.  My mind just cannot compute that it's a symptom of aging.  But I am aging.  I'm also probably at the high water mark of my career earnings.  That's a depressing thought.  So, I need to act in this charmed window, and act I have.  I'm not too sure about the mescaline now.  I can't do hangovers any more.

Nostalgia

I hooked up with an old friend on Facebook earlier today.  So far - so ordinaire.  I say friend, but in reality we were part of a large cohort of then recent graduates who worked for the University of London Exam Board for a time in  the mid-nineties.  

It was a joyous time for all concerned.  The weather was good; the pop music was good.  And all of us knew we had a long and carefree summer ahead of us, our last in all probability, before the po-faced and sober realities of middle-class adult life kicked-in.  Michelle, my new FB pal, was part of that golden generation, as was I.  We weren't particularly close, but she was a really kind and good companion to have during those weeks and months - funny, generous and wise.  So when I saw her name on a mutual friend's FB timeline, I had a Proustian swell of happy memories.  I spoke to her a few moments ago.  She lives in Exeter, like an grown up might.

I really dislike nostalgia.  I gives me the yips.  I find it difficult to stop the flow of thought and images once I've given in to a bout of mental-over-shoulder-peerage.  It's like my brain is struggling to process all the data I've asked it to dredge up at once, like Excel having a spazz when you exceed a million rows or something.

Gorge North

Well, we had a simply splendid weekend in YERK-shuh.  The weather was pretty good too - better than forecast anyways.  We rolled in to York Station at 9.30 Friday evening, immediately stopped at the pub in the station, which is lovely, and had a sharpener.  Thence to the hotel.  Bags dumped, and off to a pub nearby that we hadn't previously patronised.  It, like every pub I've ever sought shelter in in York, was super - cosy and with a great range of ales.

On Saturday, we caught the trans-Pennine train to Hebden Bridge.  HB is to lesbians what Brighton is to gay men.  It a glorious town, nestling in the cleavage of The Calder Valley.  We mooched around there for a few hours, browsing and eating cake.  Lovely.

Saturday night back in York was greatest hits tour of pubs we knew and some virgin ones that Mrs O had specced-out.  We ended the night with a splendid curry.  The more I see of Yorkshire, the more I like it.  Like Steve Bushemi.