COFFEEFEE

Not so much an art installation as an indictment of both our office coffee drinking habits and our inability, despite the very best of intentions, to actually take anything to the recycling centre.

CAPTAIN HILARIOUS

Captain Hilarious has moved in next door…

Well, it certainly sounds as if he has.

At least, I assume he must be Captain Hilarious, given the amount of raucous laughter he seems to inspire in all of the "lay-dees" who sound as if they are constantly rubbing up against him and hanging upon his every word which results in all of the utter hilarity, tittering and peels of coy laughter and cackling that seem to greet each and every one of his muffled utterances.

Well, you have to laugh, don't you…?

Well, er… No...

The sounds are muffled, by the way, because of the intervening wall, and alas not because they have him tied to a chair with a sack over his head and his pinstripe pants around his ankles as they tickle his nethers with a sharpened complementary biro embossed with his company's logo.

Well, you have to hope, don't you…?

Sadly, that wall isn't intervening enough, and certainly doesn't contain anything like enough sound-proofing for my poor bludgeoned earholes, which means that we can hear every wretched bloody noise that's made in their new office space, although not quite clearly enough that we can share the joke. Unfortunately, this also means that they can hear every word of ours, too, which will no doubt lead to internecine wars breaking out almost as soon as they've finished moving in and the bleak cynicism of a trio of world-weary artists comes into direct conflict with the servants of mammon.

Most probably over the mysteriously diminishing milk supply.

Meanwhile, at the moment it's like listening to the worst ITV sitcom which was recorded in front of a "live studio audience" made up of sixth generation inbred morons stuffed to the gills on "Sunny D" being played a full volume, whilst you've got a drawerful of socks rammed into your ears in a pitiful attempt to keep out the banality and simultaneously try in vain  to block the spontaneous bleeding from your brain as it tries to shut out this torturous ordeal by half-witticism by crawling out of the nearest available orifice and trying to find a dark corner to curl up and die in.

In case you hadn't yet guessed, this is a work thing, by the way…

Two things I learned from a conversation I had in the kitchen with a former colleague of the Captain (who is obviously quite smitten) who wanted to inform us (in case we hadn't already noticed) that we had a new neighbour:

One, he has a "loud laugh" apparently… "He's well-known for it…"

No shit, Sherlock...

And two, they work in "Financial Management"…

Oh… Double joy…

This naturally means that they are obviously hellspawn who will probably be constantly wrestling in the corridors for the business of their direct competitors across the corridor whilst guffawing maniacally (and probably demonically) all of the day long as they dupe yet another poor working stiff or gullible grandparent out of their life savings and afterwards flick idly through the boating catalogues picking out their next yacht.

My God, they're noisy…

Sometimes it all goes very quiet and you think that they've finally got down to business, rather than the "getting down to business" that had sounded so imminent when the groupies were in full "gush" mode. Then you realise that it's gone quiet because it's lunchtime and he's taken them all off to the pub to loosen them up with yet more hilarious tales from the world of high finance.

All-too-soon, they return from whatever watering hole and/or motel they've just defiled and it begins all over again. First there's a small joke just to get the titter muscles started and, after starting slowly with a bit of tentative but unsubtle foreplay, we are once again exposed to the full horror as they work their way back up to the total "Captain Hilarious" experience…

Sometimes it seems as if he's like the Ken Dodd of Financial Management ("Buy shares, Missus…!") - although I seem to recall that that's possibly not the best analogy to make...

This is all accompanied by the sort of strange noises that you might hear through the walls of a cheap hotel as the neighbours do their best to let everyone else in the place know that they're testing the bed springs to destruction, and they're obviously wanting the world to know that having a far better time doing so than you could possibly imagine, even though by this stage there's precious little actually left for the imagination to have to work with.

These sounds are probably, of course, merely because they are shifting furniture although, from the amount of parcel tape which appeared to be being used, on occasion it did sound like there was a serial killer in there attaching his victims to the brand new office chairs…

The Rice Krispie Killer…? The Wheated Shredder…? The Fruit'n'Fibre Massacre…?

Either that or even the "lay-dees" had finally had enough and that "sack over the head/trousers around the ankles" scenario I thought about earlier had finally come to pass and made one of my dreams come true at least.

Still, doesn't time fly when you're having fun…?

Again, no… Especially if it's someone else's idea of "fun" that you're being forced to listen to whether you want to or not.

Or maybe those noises were just a puppet show of some kind…? Perhaps the "Financial Management" description was just a ruse and we are now to have our days accompanied by the swazzling toots of a "Mr Punch" training school or maybe something even more peaceful like some sort of Brass Band Academy…?

We can only hope...

Sigh… Maybe it'll settle down as they knuckle down to the hard graft of earning this year's bonuses during one slightly extended tea-break, but I doubt it. After all, it's always great to know that everyone else's job is far more fun than you're could ever be, and, judging by the sound of it, "Financial Management" really must be the most fun that you could possibly have in the whole wide world.

Meanwhile, back in our own little grey box, we decided that we probably needed to have our own "Happy Hour" every day in retaliation, although I have to admit that I may struggle with this, given that I rarely manage to conjure up a Happy Minute during the average decade…

Still, I was prepared to have a go and I tried (and failed) to add to our own air of hilarity, only for my every utterance to be greeted by the kind of silence which follows at the unexpected assassination of a "much-loved"public figure.

Mind you, with my constant repetition of "Have they found that plane yet…?" being the nearest thing I can get to a witticism nowadays, I'm hardly surprised… Incidentally, I'm kind of wondering whether I could claim to have worked out where the missing aircraft actually is and then get funding for an expedition in an "Indiana Jones" style-y way in order to escape the cackling madness of "Captain Hilarious"… because, on a more serious note, whilst you want them to find the plane, in many ways you also don't want them to find it either… and sometimes the only way people find of coping with things as traumatic as this is to look for the humour inside it.

The problem is the other "Captains Hilarious" around the world forget that the people on board were real people living real lives with real friends and family who are sick with fear and terror at what might have happened to the people they care about, and that's really no bloody joke at all...

GIBBERISH

I often wonder if anyone would notice if I just wrote a load of old gibberish when I got up one morning...

Some, of course, might say that I already do...

Others might say that it would be an improvement…

Well, that's just mean, mean, mean…!

That said, this morning I have come to the keyboard without a coherent thought in my head, and feeling so very sleepy (and, if it's not going to prompt one of those sarcastic "thank you for sharing" comments, more than a little bit ill… and gloomy… today I feel a little bit gloomy, too...) that this is likely to add up to little more than just some random words strung together purely for the sake of it.

But then, as I've often stated before (although perhaps I've not admitted it hereabouts to often for obvious reasons), I seem to have come to a point with this bloggery where it's become more of a habit than anything else; I write because I write, not necessarily because I have anything to say.

It sounds fiendishly windy and rainy out there… The weather is beating against the roof slates like a frustrated toddler desperate for a new toy and the temperature appears to have dropped considerably. This must mean that spring has sprung, as it will, but my spirits do not appear to have been lifted because of it.

To be honest, at the time of writing, I'm coming into a Friday off a very frustrating Thursday which has left me feeling exhausted. The working day started with me arriving at work to find that the internet had crashed and was refusing to reconnect, and, as I attempted to work my way around this, the batteries in my wireless mouse went flat and it turned out that the replacements were locked inside a drawer to deter thievery.

With graphics, that can be very irritating; Move a slider [DISCONNECTED… WAIT… CONNECTED], alter a… [DISCONNECTED… WAIT… CONNECTED] setting, run the [DISCONNECTED… WAIT… CONNECTED] sequence, select another…[DISCONNECTED… WAIT… CONNECTED] layer…

You get the drift.

Meanwhile, it seemed as if the world just believed that the internet would fix itself and, whilst messages would appear on teffalone screens, the vital documents and files contained therein were not managing to make the great leap into the email inbox, and all of the advice on fixing the problem that we required was all available by visiting websites that were being remarkably uncooperative, given that actually accessing the internet was, basically, the problem.

And much of the day unfolded like this, distracting us from actually getting a great deal of the bloody work which we had to do done. In the end, I packed up my troubles in my old kit bag and went home to set up there, and achieved far more in the few hours I sat in my own house than in the entire morning of frustrations and irritations in the office.

The hope is now that the problem was an overnight upgrading glitch and the Thursday night overnight upgrade will solve it, because otherwise we might as well not turn in at all.

After all, I have better coffee at home too…

After getting home and muddling through for a few hours, I went to collect the Beloved who had a plan to complete her marathon watch of "Elementary" on Thursday evening, so that she could discuss it at length with the person who lent us the files containing the series at lunchtime on Friday without everyone at the table having to tiptoe around the "spoilers" problem...

This meant a very swift meal, which followed a blitz upon the accumulated washing up backlog which had been calling out to me for at least forty-eight hours or more to remind me that attending to it was long overdue, but I had determinedly ignored its cries due to having other, far less important, things to attend to.

After this, we settled down to a "box-set blitz" of five back-to-back episodes before bedtime, during which revelations upon revelations were revealed in that "high-octane" manner and huge pile of "out of character" moments that story lines leading up to season finales of television series can bring along with them.

I yawned a lot, to be honest, because I was feeling very sleepy… but we made it through...

If you're blocked, they say, write yourself out of it… but if you're writing stuff that you hope that somebody at least will read, then it's very difficult to just bludgeon them with some random nonsense and expect them to stick around for more than a sentence or two.

Nevertheless, by rattling on and on about nothing in particular, we've somehow managed to fill up another posting with a load of old gibberish, so that probably proves something significant or otherwise, I suppose.

So, how far anyone's actually penetrated this impenetrable tome will dictate as to how far into the realms of gibberish I feel that we can now venture, because I could just tap out a load of flim, flam, flummery (Pop! Wheee!!!) and if nobody's any the wiser, what harm could it do…?

Maybe tomorrow I'll have something more substantial to share with the world…?

Who knows.

CREATIVE SWEARING

We were having a chat at work the other day, as you do, and wondering about the various possibilities for conversation offered by the imminent arrival of the office window cleaner. When he turns up for his regular monthly visit, he always seems to enjoy engaging us with a little bit of seventies-style mildly sexist, racist and/or homophobic blue-collar banter, during which any and all of the topical stories in the news he might wish to discuss at that time, in that "taxi-driver-like" way he has, might actually manifest themselves.

It's always a bit of a lottery as to which subject might crop up, although we do like to take a punt, even if we're inevitably wrong. Sometimes he disappoints and takes a thoroughly left-field approach, and sometimes he gets right on to the predicted subject in hand, although it took a couple of goes before he felt comfortable enough to offer an opinion about the celebrity abuse trials - a topic that we imagined would go straight in to the top of the charts with a metaphorical bullet...

As he once more failed to appear, however, the idle chat moved on and m'colleague started speculating upon the possibilities offered by his "creative swearing" to which I felt the need to half-wittedly reply:

"You'll probably be able to do a university course in that one day!"

(Because I still never know when to keep my mouth shut when it comes to smartarsery...)

"You probably already can..." m'colls mused, and this led me on to thoughts of both the Shakespearean insults which I mentioned to you a few weeks ago, and the award-winning roomfuls of writers whose main job (it seemed) was to come up with the bizarrely brilliant lines of abuse that were hurled out by Malcolm Tucker in the satirical series "The Thick Of It".

Some of the dialogue for that satirical sitcom was in fact improvised rather than being scripted (and the cast were credited for providing "additional material" which seems like nice work if you can get it...), and, to be honest, the series includes some very, very strong language indeed.

Peter Capaldi, the real-world actor responsible for putting life into the character of the Swearmeister General, Mr Malcolm Tucker, once stated that "Fundamentally 80% of the final cut is the script that we started with. The improvisation just makes it feel more real and not written."

Meanwhile, before rehearsals began, those very scripts were, I'm unreliably informed by Wikipedia, forwarded on to a "swearing consultant" who was, in reality, apparently actually a gentleman called Mr Ian Martin from Lancaster, who would then add in some of the more "colourful" language to up the comedy ante to a far higher (and obviously far lower) plane of existence.

How and why he became an expert upon such matters, and the "Go To" Guy for impressive linguistic profanity conjunctions remains a mystery, as does the reason why Lancaster should inspire such ingenius wordplay or creativity in someone's abusive responses, or, indeed, such ghastliness (depending upon your point of view of course…).

Lesser Blogfordshire is, of course, a very "family friendly" part of the great big internet, or, at least that "No Adult Content" button on the settings page claims that it is, so I couldn't possibly reprint for you any of the most creative potty-mouthery which got written for the series, although, if you follow any of the links listed below you'll get a pretty colourful range of epithets to mull over.

WARNING: If you are easily shocked by words that were considered perfectly acceptable for post-watershed broadcasting aimed at grown-ups, then DON'T click on the links, and don't say that I didn't warn you...!

"Feet off the furniture you Oxbridge twat, you're not on a punt now."

Hmm...

"Adult content..."

What does that mean, exactly...?

Presumably in internet terms, that means to pictures of anyone with their bits hanging out for all the world to see, and anything which could be regarded as being foul language, although, in my limited experience, it was seldom the "adults" who were caught snickering at the nudie photos and magazines when I was at school, and most of the more impressive examples of swearing I hear come from people I consider far too young to be exhibiting knowledge of such expressions...

Still here's those links I promised you…

Enjoy!!!

(Or not, obviously…)

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0029856/quotes

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2009/oct/15/thick-of-it-malcolm-tucker

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Thick_of_It

http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/21-simple-ways-to-swear-like-malcolm-tucker

http://www.totalpolitics.com/blog/24868/top-five-malcolm-tucker-quotes.thtml

http://drownedinsound.com/community/boards/social/4265621

SIXTY-SIX

M'funky FizzBok page unreliably informed me that a former colleague o'mine was sixty-six years old this week. I don't suppose that I ought to have been surprised, just as I'm sure that those of you who know me you won't be at all surprised either to find that I chose not to comment upon it at the time in those pages.

After all, I don't really "do" birthdays...

And I'm not really a fan of using that kind of venue for the passing on of greetings and good wishes. Apart from the fact that it seems too public, and far too open to ridicule, mostly it just seems to lack that personal touch and sincerity that I would like to try to achieve for myself and perceive in others.

But reading that reminder did set me thinking…

Way back in the so-called when, I was but an earnest-faced youngish boy artist, not quite fresh out of Art School, but not so very far away from that. The intervening year-and-a-half since being kicked out into the great big and rather uncaring world hadn't been too kind to my non-burgeoning non-career and so, at the second attempt (for I found a long-forgotten rejection letter once…), I took a job at the blunt end of advertising, hoping that six months or so of that would give me the experience to move on to bigger and better things.

Then, as is often the way with such things, I stuck with that job for more than a decade.

There is a point to all of this back-story, I assure you, so do bear with me.

As you may already be aware, I've always been an early bird and, one February day, a little over six weeks into my sparkling new career, I arrived at the office in Didsbury to find jolly japes and pranks were afoot, and that the office was in the process of being "decorated" in a mildly unkindly manner in preparation for the arrival of this self-same colleague upon the occasion of his fortieth birthday…

The image bank had been raided for pictures of old men in wheelchairs with plastered limbs, and suchlike, and these had all been blown up to A3 size on the office photocopier and stuck all around the room in places prominent enough to be entirely noticeable upon his arrival. There was much giggling and hilarity from my new colleagues, some of whom I had hardly got to know yet (On the whole, it takes me a good long while to even talk to anyone new to me, and this was still very early days…), and one of whom might have been my manager, although I don't recall the object of their light-hearted derision being too pleased about it all when he did finally arrive.

I think the pictures disappeared fairly quickly but I'm also aware that, if he is anything like me, he was probably quietly chuffed to be remembered like that, even if he never would have admitted it at the time...

Can that be over a quarter of a century ago already…?

Could I really have been only twenty-three years old on that day…?

Could we really have believed that turning forty was so very old…?

I stayed for that decade, and left when that same person was now a fifty-year old, (which kind of passed unremarked upon, as we'd become a much less frivolous outfit by then…) and, I think, we'd become friends and allies over those years because, despite not appearing to have all that much in common (and me still being referred to as"the prat in the hat" because of what I wore to my first interview), we both had a cynical streak that the other appeared, at least, to appreciate. He was certainly an appreciative audience to some of my cartoonery and scribbling, and featured in a fair few of them in that gently mocking way I used to have back in those days when I still tried.

As is the nature of such things, I seldom went back afterwards, despite the possibility cropping up, from time-to-time, that my "new career" wasn't quite working out as planned and my hope that I might still have a "safety net" of a kind if things went too wrong, and "office life" in the old place moved on and new people came and went and my own small role in the great history of the company became little more than a dusty, forgotten footnote to what was happening right then.

Years passed and, sadly, that company finally bit the dust, at around the time I first started writing these blog postings, and I attended the party which was organised to mark its passing and was surprised to find that m'colleague still had a lot of my old drawings stashed away, some of which were used to decorate the venue on that sad but glorious evening three-and-a-half years ago.

Which just goes to show, really, that none of us are ever really truly forgotten whilst there are still people who remember us, even if we sometimes think that nobody was paying any attention at the time, although, when the history of my old Art School is written, I somehow doubt that anyone will recall the ghost who flitted around in the shadows trying not to draw attention to himself, but that's another story...

So, a belated happy birthday, you old curmudgeon, and many more of them, old sport… :-)

HOLD THE MAYO

One of the small but significant "perks" (if you want to think of it as that) of travelling half way around a couple of countries in order to attend a business meeting, is that, if you're very lucky, lunch of some sort might be provided.

And so it indeed was for me last Monday. In fact, lunch was considered to be such an important part of the whole thing, that it actually got its very own mention on the agenda, where it was described as an "informal lunch", so I decided to leave the tuxedo at home that day.

In reality this meant that pots of coffee and tea, bottles of fruit juice, a jug of water, a bowl of fruit, various packets of crisps, and a platter of sandwiches were delivered (which was all very nice), although, when I politely mentioned to the person on sandwich delivery duty that their caterers were far better than ours (mostly because in this instance "ours" is basically me putting my lunch together at some ungodly hour of the morning...), they muttered something about "Tesco" in reply...

Still, in so far as anything approaching a "free lunch" goes (because we all know that there's no such thing), it was all rather nice and it managed to keep me going through the rigours of the afternoon, and kept my system fuelled until the "top-up" sandwich I bought later at the railway station on my way home.

However, as I stood hopefully in line with my little plate, wondering whether all the "cheese and onion" ones would have vanished before it was my turn to take not enough sandwiches so that I would appear greedy, I heard what has become a rather familiar complaint in recent times...

"I bet they've all got mayo on..."

Now, I've heard this quite often before. Whenever I've been at a "catered" event with a self-service buffet, or when former colleagues at places where I used to work returned disappointed from the canteen, or when I've been on a train, or even listening to other customers when I've just been standing by the sandwich counter in a supermarket, and I do find myself wondering why, if it is so unpopular, sandwich suppliers still insist upon adding it to almost every option they make...?

Mind you, I've worked in offices where the "young people" have regularly dissected the sandwiches that they've just bought to remove even the slightest trace of vegetable matter from it, perhaps revealing the lie in the belief that everyone younger than me is "health-obsessed" to the point of insanity, so what do I know?

Even in cafeterias where people can order a freshly-made sandwich, you'll hear people asking for theirs without mayonnaise, which seems to cause an "eye-roll" or three when the order is passed on to the sandwich-making chef du jour...

So, why do people seem to dislike mayonnaise with such vehemence...?

More to the point, when did mayonnaise become so ubiquitous in bought sandwiches?

There I was, in a boardroom (I know! Even I think that sounds more than a little ridiculous...) having this "informal lunch" which had actually turned out to be far more than I expected it to be, and yet there was somebody finding themselves to be disappointed by the range that was on offer to them, which seems a shame given that, for most of us lowly employees at the bottom end of the greasy pole, such "treats"don't come our way all that regularly.

Now, of course, whilst I no longer object to it personally, I know that some people simply don't like the stuff - I myself was always more of a "salad cream" person in the past - and there are probably an awful lot of people out there in the world  who are intolerant of the stuff and, to be honest, if I was making myself a cheese and onion sandwich at home, I wouldn't necessarily be putting any mayonnaise on it either, so I suppose that it would be nice to have the choice when you go out to buy yourself a bit of lunch.

After all, in the supermarkets, there are often options like "tuna and cucumber", or "ham and cheese", which mention that they are "without mayonnaise" but there always seem to be far fewer of those available and they appear to get snapped up pretty sharpish, so they must be popular, and you'd imagine that the people selling them would have picked up on this by now.

Maybe the huge numbers of "hold the mayo" customers need to make themselves heard, get a campaign going, and get the "mayo/non-mayo" ratio back to acceptable levels and help keep everyone happy.

Either that, or we'll all just have to get used to the stuff...

KETTLES

Here's a funny thing...

That's funny "peculiar", by the way, but then you probably knew that already, didn't you? After all, it's not as if people come here for funning and japes and the kind of joke that they can pass on to the world.

Well, not unless the joke is me, anyway... Although there's precious little evidence that anyone wants to share me with the world, either...

Now, where was I?

Oh yes...

A "funny" thing...

In our office building, there is a little "common usage" kitchenette containing, amongst other things, a rather venerable "jug" kettle that's probably seen better days. It's one of those plastic ones which sits on a separate round base which is the bit that gets connected to the plug socket once you've filled the kettle with water, placed it on the base, and switched it on.

Now normally, when it's my turn to go and brew up for our coffees, the handling of the kettle, once it's been filled with water, is something which can be done one-handed. The granules are added to the mugs, the milk is splooshed in where applicable, and the switch is clicked and, once it clicks itself off, the kettle is lifted, poured and positioned back upon its cradle without a hitch, and I'll then pick up the coffees and transport them back along the corridor to our little grey box.

Why was it then, that the one time that I happened to be holding a glass of water in my other hand for a colleague who's on a bit of a health kick right now, that the kettle's base insisted upon running (well, sliding) away when I tried to return the jug to its spindle just because (it appeared) and for no other reason than my other hand was full...?

Usually, of course, I would have had a spare hand free for moments like this, when a usually one-handed operation suddenly requires a bit of support from another hand, but, for once, because I was trying to do those two things at once that we chaps are often accused of being incapable, the blooming thing just refused to settle upon its spindle and the base kept on moving away.

In the end, and no doubt in response to the thought you've probably already had "Why didn't you just put down the glass of water?", I put down the glass of water, and swiftly settled the jug part back where it belonged, but it is interesting that my mind seemed unwilling to accept the wisdom of that option during that particular moment.

Perhaps my brain gets too focussed on what it's doing to accept an alternative plan of action (which might, incidentally, be something to do with why people sometimes "freeze" during moments of intense peril…?) or maybe I'm just a bit rubbish, although sometimes I just have to believe that inanimate objects really just do not like me...

ANIMAL

One of those strange ideas which seemed amusing at two o-clock in the morning and just had to be put down on paper, only to seem far less amusing once it was done.

Let's be honest, I'm just embarrassing myself now... although, by some strange coincidence, having drawn this, I arrived at the office for the first day of the year only to find that the kettle in the kitchen had gone missing...

Maybe I am psychic... only in that completely useless version of psychic which doesn't actually foretell anything until after it's actually happened.

Bloody typical!

FILLING MORE GAPS

The Beloved has developed her annual Christmas cold which is, quite naturally, what comes of working in an environment full of "people" like she does, but at least it descended after her work Christmas outing so that, for this year at least, she didn't lose all of her prepayment.

Still, she dragged herself in for one last hoorah, and, after I dropped her off at the station, on my own way to the office to face what was expected to be the last working day of the year, (although this was by no means certain), I noticed a great big billboard informing me that Santa, at least, believes in Coca Cola which is, at least, very comforting. Personally, I've never actually seen a real Coca Cola despite hundreds of people trying to tell me that it does exist, so my relationship with this fabled fluid has always had to be ambiguous at best, until I got absolute proof.

Phew! What a relief!

It's good to finally know, though, because I really was beginning to think that Coca-Cola was something children had just made up to explain the existence of Bacardi to grown-ups.

Happily, there are no such doubts about the provenance of the one and only, 100% guaranteed genuine Santa to make this claim, and I'm now convinced enough to go forward into my life believing whole-heartedly in the existence of tooth-rotting fizzy pop…

With that matter finally settled, I sat down at my desk and allowed the day to unfold, although with so many sirens being heard during the morning, it did seem as if Christmas is beginning to become such a troubled time of the year…

Mind you, with the way people drive, and with all of that desperation in the air when it comes to completing the shopping in order for everyone's expectations of perfection to be met, perhaps it's not surprising that there's aggravation and impatience in the air and tempers get more than a little frayed during the run-up to the so-called "season of goodwill..."

Meanwhile, the drudgeries of life go on. I got an irritated telephone call from the Beloved, mostly to ask when I was finishing work for the day, but also to grumble a little about the latest call she'd made in response to another stroppy and demand-filled letter we'd received with regard to mum's Estate. Of all the people we've had financial dealings with since mum's death it turns out that the bank is the one which is most unreasonable when you telephone them which is ironic given that it's they who actually have much of mum's money still parked in limbo...

Everyone else is actually very sympathetic and understanding, but I'm prepared to believe that the person she happened to call had already been hitting the sherry because, if there's one thing I remember about the Christmas when I'd been offered my first "proper" job and was waiting for my January start date, the bank I went into to set up my nice new current account was falling over themselves to hand out the sherry and mince pies which were, incidentally, the only thing I remember ever getting from a bank which didn't actually require forms to be filled in and a fee to be paid.

The day plodded to its natural conclusion and, if the email we got a few weeks ago was to be believed, we finally finished for Christmas, although first we had to enter that strange hinterland where it's not quite certain precisely when we would be finishing…

Once upon a long ago, a call would come through at a ridiculously early hour and basically tell us to go home. In those good old days I would depart in a mood of utter dejection and then would most likely have popped around to see my mother on the way home if we finished early enough, but obviously that's no longer an option any more. Anyway, as it turned out, that call didn't come so I ended up driving home in the dark as usual and popping into a supermarket to get the Christmas Lilies, a visit which brought me into direct contact with some Christmas spirit as a passing stranger offered me his parking ticket to save me a quid...

Hey, you've got to take it where you can find it.

In the meanwhile, as an aside, I utterly failed upon my mission to find the Beloved some cheese-related Christmas carols for some reason which now escapes me… I think it was to do with a message she was writing to a fellow cheese-lover but my own experiences of cheese-related punnery (see "Henry Brie" in the "MAWH - Light Under A Bushel" blog) were not quite suitable.

Anyway, I spent no time upon writing such a thing myself, and a quick internet search proved that there was little in the way of cheese-related carol lyrics out there, although I did discover that Leeds has a very promising sounding monthly meeting of a cheese club, and, from a list of Christmas carols I found, the following few seemed the most promising, if you budding copy-writers feel like having a cracker at continuing with any of them...

"We three Kings of orient are

Bearing cheese we've travelled quite far…"

"Good King Wensleydale…"

"Yarg! The Herald Angels sing!"

So… In the manner of a slightly Christmassy game that we could play, what precisely are the rest of the special "cheese" lyrics to those Christmas carols…?

I look forward to finding out...

FROZEN OUT

With the sudden onset of winter, which came down upon us out of what would have been a clear blue sky if it hadn't happened overnight, the doors on my car were unexpectedly frozen on Monday morning last week as I attempted (in my own inept and half-hearted way) to set about the process of beginning the working week in the usual manner, which did, at least, add a certain amount of drama to the morning routine to distinguish it from all of the other humdrum days.

You see, because I wasn't prepared for this development, not only did I not have the windscreen cover on overnight, but I also had no de-icer about my person, and so a certain amount of scraping and hot air blowing had to be done before we could even set off for the railway station and, given that we were already running a little late, and that the trains are running early at the moment to combat their annual "leaves on the line" excuse scenario, things got more than a little "touch and go" for a few moments there, and we made it with moments to spare with ungrateful thanks to the ineptitude of other drivers getting in my way and the traffic lights refusing to cooperate with my schedule.

As if they don't know...

At the present time, thanks to the burglaries and the paranoia that it subsequently induced in all of us in the little grey box next to the sewage works, I also have the added complication of having to keep lugging my equipment back and forth between the office and home each day.

Don't ask me why, because it's far too complicated and depressing to have to explain it all over again. Suffice it to say that my own paranoia is getting the better of me and is now creeping into my spine and my muscles as I gear up my aging body to do this routine of two-way heavy distance lifting each and every working day.

Each morning, after being negotiated around the piles of clutter which we are still managing to live around, a hefty box of stuff is lugged along the front of the houses, down the stone steps, and along the street to wherever I've managed to sneak myself a parking spot, and then heaved up into the boot of the car, before being removed and lugged into work at the opposite end of the commute, and every evening it makes the return journey, albeit seeming far heavier, and my body far wearier.

This already slightly annoying matter becomes far more difficult, however, when the back door of the car just won't open because of the ice sealing it closed, and I find myself torn between lugging the whole lot back to the house so that I can try to find the wretched can of de-icer which I stored away somewhere at some time in April, leaving the box at the roadside, or just chucking it onto the back seat and hoping that nobody else notices that it's there as I tootle along through the darkness and cold...

That is also presuming that I haven't already come a cropper on the ice, or by tripping over the broken flagstones in the darkness, or just fallen down the steps as I was manhandling the beast towards its chauffeur driven carriage...

The word that keeps coming to mind is "Bah!" and, if I'm not too mistaken, there may be the addition of a "Humbug!" or two over the course of the next few weeks...

I'm none to fond with the idea of winter at the moment, I can tell you, but I think that you may have guessed that already...