RAT RACE

Well, I suppose I got away with it for three and a half years, but now, finally, the circle of life has turned once more and I find that I have had to start to join in with a large chunk of the rest of the human race on the regular commuter run again. Once again, albeit on a semi-regular basis, I am having to build myself a new routine that involves poking my reluctant nose outside the door on many a cold and soggy, or even icy, morning and coax Blinky into life to rattle and chug our weary way out into the daylight (or, given the time of year increasingly pitch darkness) and join the various queues of traffic to get to my new work place.

I know that it’s hardly a unique experience, and I’m not the only one who has to go through with such undertakings, but I had got rather used to my commute involving clicking a kettle and climbing a flight of stairs instead of facing the horrors of traffic jams and roadworks and finding parking spots and ultimately sitting in rooms with other people. Luckily, my new colleagues are people I generally enjoy the company of, so that’s less of a chore than it could have been, and it will probably do me the world of good to actually spend some time with living, breathing, actual human beings again, but it’s still a fundamental change in lifestyle that returns me to the rigours and vaguaries of mechanical transport and possible breakdowns, early morning sandwich production, and the vile control held over my life by the wretched alarm clock.

Then there are more fundamental things to think about. On a regular basis I will have to consider the needs of other people. Every fart (pardon), or belch or nasal excavation will have to be considered in a more discrete way instead of the laissez faire approach I have become used to in my companion-free days. Strange things like the fact that I have become so very used to working without any shoes on will now have to be reconsidered, although (thankfully) I never got into the habit of working without trousers, or staying in my nightwear all day, because that could have caused a variety of horrors for my colleagues if I had done and then forgot that I couldn’t any more on one black and weary morning.

There’s so much to have to think about: Changing my socks more regularly, drinking less tea, trying not to swear so loudly when things inevitably go wrong. I’m even going to have to think twice before attempting to listening to the cricket, although at this time of the year that’s not really all that difficult. Then there are the more psychological issues. It took me two years or more to get out of the habit created by my previous employer of feeling guilty about everything, and I really hope that’s not going to start creeping back in just because I’m in a room full of people with opinions.

Circumstances have dictated that I must regularly be put inside a far distant and ever so grey concrete box to earn my crust, and so my opportunities to write my personal nonsense have consequently become much rarer as the time I used to spend composing them will now be consumed by shouting at other motorists and generally raging and railing against the more real and day-to-day actual nonsense of life, human beings and all their general nonsenses, and so my little contributions to the cultural desert we have come to know hereabouts are, of necessity, likely to become much briefer. However, if brevity is truly the source of all wit, then this cannot really do any harm, and I’m pretty sure that anyone else will really mind if I am producing pithier daily ramblings, or indeed failing to produce any at all.

For I actually suspect that these tales of misadventure in the obscure hamlet of Lesser B are about to hit the rocks, however, because, I don’t really do brevity, and, being (as we indeed are) in the process of that fateful move in to the much anticipated but still something which had (by now) become rather unexpected proper office space does means that, rather sadly, as my three and a half year respite from commuting is about to come to a rather bitter end, those precious free hours that I had generally set aside for these more personal creative pursuits on the average morning will sadly be no more as I stress and grumble my way through the traffic again, and worry about the small problems like having to find the money to pay for the petrol to feed the increasingly erratic and thirsty Blinky.

I suppose I must accept that it’s a good thing, at least I might learn to deal with actual human beings again, and it has became a very necessary move really since the core duties of my job started to move into confusing areas that I don’t have very much knowledge of and which wouldn’t be able to be done on our current and rather aged computing machines. The strange dance of the dark forces of corporate mergers and acquisitions has also meant that one tasty morsel has been swallowed up by a larger creature which has a slightly different philosophy when it comes to its far distant employees and we have also been boosted in numbers to fight the good fight, so the moment, as they say, was upon us for a transmogrification of lifestyle. Shiny new desks and shiny new computers distract us like the baubles and beads used to tempt the natives about to be overwhelmed by travellers from far and distant, more civilised lands, but things like telephone lines and other wares, both soft and hard, remain elusive.

Nevertheless, things progress, lives change and the future beckons. I may even get a spare moment to keep you posted, but the holding of your collective breath may not be advisable.