An evening on the tiles...

I had a rare night out on the pop last night.  It was to commemorate and commiserate with my former boss, who has been unceremoniously bumped from his job after 20 years' service.  I used to look forward to these affairs, but these days I eye them with dread.  I simply cannot stick away six pints and not feel the consequences.  That implies I used not to notice the damage; that isn't true.  But I was better at ignoring it when I was younger.  Also I had fewer qualms about turning up to work in an unfit state.  These days, I feel bad if I arrive at the office bright green and trembling.

I left them to it at about 10 o'clock.  My former boss, who was visibly in his cups when I arrived at 7pm, was still draining the bitter cup when I left.  I imagine the inside of his nut resembles the Somme today.

[update]: I got an email from him a few moments ago.  He was so "confused" upon reaching home that climbing the stairs seemed a Herculean task, so he slept downstairs with the cat instead.

What else has been happening?  Oh, yes, I know - Sainsbury's has unveiled its Christmas advert, which is a dramatisation of the famous Christmas truce during the Great War when British and German troops met in no-man's land to play football.  It's a beautifully realised, subtle and sweetly poignant film, and about the most offensive thing I've ever laid eyes on.

I'm staggered that not absolutely everyone in the country isn't horrified by this cynical, heartless and brutally calculating piece of marketing.  Let's think about it for a moment.  A supermarket is using the First World War to hawk its pickled onions and y-fronts.  If, as some people argue, it's fine to to invoke an historical event in which thousands tragically died, then why not go the whole hog next year and base the entire yuletide campaign on 9/11?  The reason they won't is because people would, quite rightly, hit the fucking roof.

But the principle is exactly the same.  Or are we to conclude that an event that killed 37 million people...err...yonks ago is fair game, but one that killed three and a half thousand and happened within living memory is off limits as to use it to market Pot Noodles might, just might, be considered to be beyond the fucking pale?  This is clearly bullshit.  It is either a principled or an unprincipled act.  One cannot cherry pick instances when it's okay and others when it's not.  That's like arguing that it's fine to ridicule a Chinaman, but not a Nigerian.  Actually I do believe some racists actually advance this confused argument.

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.