We're off to see the wizard...

Today's my last in the office for a short bit.  I'm flying out to Ireland tomorrow morning first thing to see my sister.  She lives in the wilds of Co.Donegal.  The weather is supposed to be shithouse at the moment there too, which is a shame because I'm the designated driver for the weekend.  And when it's wild in rural Donegal, it's proper mayhem, like the bit in Alien when they land on the hostile planet and find the alien eggs in the guts of an abandoned space ship.

I haven't driven for a while either; we flogged our car a couple of years ago (has it's been that long?) as we simply weren't using it.  Driving's one of those skill sets, however, that never seems to desert me.  It's like riding a motorbike.  I had a bike when I was a student.  I haven't ridden one for 20+ years, but if someone pointed a blunderbuss at my head and ordered me to pop a wheelie on one, I could.  They say you know when you've mastered a motor skill if you can imagine it and feel the moments.  That's me and motorbikes.  I'm a motorbike prodigy basically - like Eddie Kidd and the Fonz.

So, it's an early one tomorrow morning.  We fly at 7am.  Tonight I'm crashing at my other sister's house; she lives close to the airport, which is just as well because I'm an absolute shambles in the morning - like a six foot tall, bespectacled new born.  It's as well I don't have to drive to the airport at 5am, otherwise we wouldn't make it.

Break the ice with a gag - a 5 minute one.

One of my colleagues left the employ of the firm yesterday.  In time-honoured style, his boss was handed the poisoned chalice, and had to make a speech to mark the occasion.  This he did with praiseworthy candour.  The chap who left, let's call him Joe, is unswervingly honest in his assessment of the short comings of the company.

They've (the bosses) only themselves to blame.  Joe was doing a job he disliked and wanted to move to a post for which he was eminently qualified.  However, his refusal to hold his tongue for the sake of social mores earned him some powerful enemies.  He gave them six and a half years, but eventually he realised he was banging his noggin against a concrete curtain.

Because he disliked his job, he alienated his colleagues in that section - hence the rhetorical cold shoulder.  His boss opened with the observation that some people are brilliant at their jobs but quickly forgotten.  Joe, on the other hand, was "a nightmare" at his job, but would linger long in the memory.

Joe sat and took the drubbing like a champ.  He waited for the bell, lifted his arms in the air and started an Ali shuffle on the spot as the judges scored the contest.  Those of us who were fortunate enough to witness this event guffawed from start to finish.  In the end, we concluded that the firm had lost on points.  When you start ridding yourself of talented, charismatic employees for being a little rough around the politesse edges, you're screwed.  The office is filling-up with dead-eyed, sharp-suited corporate robots - exactly the kind of people who know how to wield a fish knife and confine themselves to anodyne small-talk, but are ultimately fucking useless.

This kind of behaviour is what did for Thatcher.  She started to believe her own press, and remove the dogs-in-a-manger from her cabinets.  This isolated her from the "out there", and we destroyed her as a result.  She was the last person on Earth who saw it coming, which explains her tears on leaving Downing Street.  She thought we loved her.  Why wouldn't she?  That's what her advisers told her.  In fact, we hated her.

I, for one, welcome our digital overlords

I used to be very sniffy about the internet - not its avowed purpose, which is to propagate information and to allow instant communication, but its reinvention as a giant, virtual Argos.

I do still have massive reservations about the march of on-line retailing.  Okay - it's quick and convenient, but what happens to the centres of our towns and cities when all the shops close down?  And they will, let's face it.  And people who witter on about towns "being given back to people" are talking out of their fundaments.  Towns and villages have always had commercial premises at their hearts, encouraging people to congregate, discuss, foment revolution and generally to revel.  All those smokey inns in Shakespeare and Dickens - what would London have been and become without those?

Well, you can answer that question for yourselves.  Take yourself off to a village in the home counties on any given Sunday.  Chances are it will have been long since denuded of its pub, village shop/post office and any other commercial premises.  The reason for this is that home counties villages have become dormitories for London.  The people who live in them are generally newcomers, attracted by the peace and by the size of the housing stock.  They use them like apartment hotels: they sleep and ablute in them, but little else.

Without the patronage of locals (who sell up to accommodate the newcomers), the village pub goes the way of all flesh.  Ditto the village shop - people who work in London, shop in London.  What remains is a facsimile of an English village: half-timbered maybe, but half-dead too.  I've wandered around villages like this hundreds of times during country walks, and the feeling of isolation and joylessness that pervades them is horrifying.  No-one spends time outside their house because there's perceived to be no point.  There is no point.  I don't stand outside my (London) house, saluting passers-by, but I see and chat to my neighbours all the time when I'm rushing to and from the shops and pubs that surround my home.  That's how community is reinforced.

So next time you buy a kipper or a surfboard, do yourself and England a favour - do in an acutal shop, eh?

You again? Hurrumph...

Great Scott im Himmel, it's Monday again...already.

I had a funny weekend - a real bag of mix.  I spent all day Saturday in the hoose, doing good domestic deeds.  This was followed on Saturday evening by a trip to The Barbican Theartre to see Henry IV Part II.  It's a bit of an Elizabethan dog's breakfast if I'm honest.  It retreads ground already comprehensively, and much more entertainingly, dealt with in H4 Part I.

To compensate for the absence of anything to say, Shakie reverts to a string of comic (sic) scenes in act two, which are excruciating frankly.  And this is the RSC, mind you, with Antony Sher as Falstaff.  If they can't make it work, it's fcuked.  The upside was that we had better seats this time, not like the cruel perches we were subjected to last week.  But you know a play is failing when you start praising the furniture.

Yesterday, I awoke in a bit of a shabby mood.  I felt restless and twitchy.  The missus and I went for a longish walk, and popped to a museum we know slightly, to see if that would cure matters.  I then went off a-wandering alone around some of the places I used to work.  When I worked there, this area was an absolutely hovel.  It's currently undergoing an economic regeneration at the mo, and it's vee pleasing to see the old bag with a bit of lippy on for a change.

That event seemed to kick start my optimism, and the rest of the evening evaporated in a pleasing social whirl.

Voltarie was wary of too much philosophising, as it's sounds the death knell for action and therefore happiness.  When at eh end of Candide, Pangloss starts holding forth on his metaphysical nostrums, Candide replies "That is very well put . . . but we must cultivate our garden."

Quite so - let us cultivate our gardens.

High culture and that

Missus O and I are off to an RSC production of Henry IV Part II tomorrow evening.  It's at The Barbican, which is handy for us to get through.  Unfortunately, the seat in the auditorium are fucking atrocious, which as it's a 3-hour play, is less than brilliant.

The seats appear to have been designed by some disciple of Ernő Goldfinger.  They're all form and no function.  The bit behind one's lumbar spine has been recessed, making it impossible to rest the small of one's back.  Sadly this idiot aperture sits above a very shallow arse dish (I don't know the mot juste in chair architecture for the bit your buttocks sit on).  This means the jutting-out bit of chair back pushes on your shoulder blades as you try and follow the Tudor action.

Usually uncomfortable seats take their time in making their presence known.  Not these ones though.  As soon as you flop down in one, it's clear something is seriously to cock.  They're so poor, these perches, that we won't be going back to The Barbican.  That's some shit chair, isn't it?  The production was brilliant, but I won't be going back because my arse can't tolerate another sitting.  Their loss I suppose.  I might write to them, pointing out this big old hole in their business model.  In these straightened economic times, the arts, particularly high falutin' guff like Shakespeare, needs to ensure the customer comes back.  They shooting themselves in the loins.  It's not good enough.

I might have to pack a rubber ring tomorrow evening.  Oh woe.

Ahh, fun - I remember you

I had an unexpected fillip at work today.  When I got there, shell-shocked and foaming with anguish as per, my colleague informed me that our mutual boss is out of the office both today and tomorrow!  Let joy be unconfined.  And as a result, today has been an absolute pleasure.  I've been to several meetings and dealt with the same people and the same bullshit, but it's all been fun because we don't have him leering over our efforts, like impending doom.  I feel like I have a free reign to make decisions - wise, informed decisions.  My boss's judgement is like that of a 5 year old: driven by self interest and e-numbers.  He has zero deft and no political nous whatever.

I'm afraid I can't elaborate any further; I'm off out for a drink with my relieved and oh so thirsty colleagues.

In your face, bosses.

Vim Fuego

Bah!  I'm really lacking vim today.  No matter.  On with it.

I've taken a leaf out of the Pollyanna set this week and have started actively avoiding the news.  The news is supposed to be an objective overview of events, but if you weigh up the balance of positive and negative stories in a bulletin, you'll see that its primary objective is to scare the beejesus out of you.  The reason for this of course is that journalists are just co-opted entertainers.  They're there to inform, yes, but if (as I imagine the shameless self-justification rationale begins) no-one buys our product, then we can't educate them, can we?  So - paper the house with outlandish speculation, some showbiz news dressed up as fact and some sexual deviancy.  That's catnip for most commuters.  They're trapped in tube trains or on buses for an hour or so, and this stuff acts as a quick one off the wrist for the unimaginative part of the brain - the part Chris Morris memorably christened "Shatner's bassoon".

Instead of news I've been listening to Radio 3 of an evening.  It's perfect for me as I don't really care for classical music, so it just sits there in the background - an undemanding, yet comforting presence.  It's like when a cat rubs the side of his head against your shins.  It's pleasing and very restful, and you can get on with the washing up whilst the mogster does his worst.

Obviously, I do have some appreciation of the composers' skill in classical music, but as it's not something I'm likely ever to play, I can't let it slide in one ear and out the other without analysing it too much.  I am a musician (a rock musician, for want of a better term), and whenever I hear a piece I love, I tend to demand to know how to play it.  By the time I've worked it out and mastered the fingering, it's transcendent power is lost forever, which is sad.

Tonight I shall spent listening to Sibelius whist sanding the skirting.