Silly Season

There was almost literally nothing to watch or listen to in England last evening.  Radio 4 had a gob on and broadcast back-to-back bleak documentaries.  They kicked-off with some wretched paean to business, presented by former CBI chief Digby Jones.  This scintillating hour consisted of the Digster gadding about the Black Country (on expenses one supposes) , talking to self-important Tory-voting yammies about why business is a force for good on Earth and not simply a necessary evil, which is what most of us, rightly, believe.  People who take extreme positions on business, or the market, or whatever are collosal arseholes, and need to be shunned by polite society.  They, both left and right, should be sent to Rockall to establish who's right once and for all.  That should lighten the load for the rest of us.

After this, they broadcast a white-knuckle piece of reportage that set out to convince me I was probably suffering from an overabundance of iron in the system, and/or paranoid schizophrenia.  I'm actually only mildly neurotic.  This manifests itself in a minor case OCD that only rears its nut when I'm  washing-up.  I'm quite slovenly by nature in most matters, but when it comes to cleaning crockery and the like, I go mental, like an impoverished cockney Howard Hughes.

Beeb, see me.  Must do better.

Posh Eastenders

I was delighted to note the other day that Radio 4 are broadcasting yet another Elizabeth Jane Howard adaptation.  As tradition, and latterly legislation, requires, it was narrated by Penelope Wilton, the thinking-man's vocal dominatrix of choice.

If you're not familiar with EJH's oeuvre, her prose concerns itself with the dramatic comings and goings of a cadre of oh-so-posh English men and women, who seem to gad about the place with scant regard for the historical epoch each was born into.  

The style is sufficiently literary to convince one that something significant is going on.  This effect is bolstered in the radio dramatisations by Penny W's fruity hectoring vowels.  But actually, when you scrutinise the (ahem) action, Lizzie's stories seem to consist of nothing more than people eating and drinking.

In last night's instalment, for example, one of the identikit ingenues made cheese on toast.  (Phew)  Later she, or possibly one of the others, was forced to ingest a heavy meal at a fraught dinner party, the subsequent indigestion providing the chapter's gripping denouement.

I suspect that Penny's voice could make the most prosaic tale sound compelling.  Ideally I'd like her to read a passage in which Billingsgate Fish Market porters drink snakebites and light and lagers in Browns in Shoreditch.  This should make or break the hypothesis.

What's the biscuit situation?

I'm working from home today, by which I mean of course I'm at home whilst being paid.  For form's sake, I've had to fire off a few emails over the course of the morning.  The joy of WFH is that you can sit in your jimjams and drink tea, but pretend to yourself that you're aiding the country's balance of payments deficit, or something.

I particularly enjoy being at home during the school day because I'm good at it.  I have the mentality of a pensioner.  I fill my day with domestic tasks, and complete them religiously whilst Radio 4 blares in the background.  By lunchtime I always feel as if I've really achieved something, the exact inverse is true of my time in the workplace, which is filled with nebulous meetings and middle-management brouhaha.