crinklybee

The Scholar Of The Number Fifteen Bus

In a long-overdue sequel to that time a bloke tried to run off with my front wheel but I saw him off by brandishing a floral-patterned teacup from Whitby market, I've finally had my bike nicked.  The result is that I'm spending rather more time on the buses than usual- to be precise, on this classic cross-town combination; the 197 out of Levenshulme towards the city centre, then the 15 from Oxford Road out towards my workplace somewhere in Manchester's Fashionable Westside.  It is while engaged in this circuitous commute that I make my latest acquaintance with The Scholar.

As ever, The Scholar boards the number fifteen bus just as the dilapidated inner-city flatshare terraces of Old Trafford give way to the Terry and June-esque suburban sprawl of Stretford.  Oriental, bespectacled, sober, and turned out in smart brown raincoat and sensible shoes, our man might be taken at first sight to be a Physics student of the mature variety.  This impression is enhanced when he produces a neatly-folded sheet of A4 paper from the outer raincoat pocket, adopts a faraway expression, and begins to write- with tiny, but precise stokes of an expensive-looking ballpoint pen.  However, as the journey unfolds it becomes apparent that the conscientious scribblings which ensue represent something altogether more remarkable than any last-minute exam preparation. 

At the bottom of Kings Road we get our first clue that something extraordinary is afoot.  The bus comes to a halt and an old lady climbs aboard, trailing a tartan shopping trolley and brandishing a purple-plastic-covered concessionary pass.   Simultaneously, The Scholar furrows his brow and makes several precise markings on the folded-up sheet of paper.  As the pensioner takes her seat, the scribbling abruptly stops.

The next stop is The Quadrant, where the old lady gets off, to be replaced by a whole host of new passengers: a sharp-suted black woman in her twenties, a pale young man in a white shirt and tie who looks like he could be a trainee bank clerk, and a buggy-wielding young mother.  This flurry of activity is accompanied by a frantic outbreak of penmanship from inside the raincoat.  As the new arrivals take their seats and the bus pulls away to begin the long ascent towards Edge Lane junction, the pen once again comes to a rest.  At the next stop, no-one gets on or off.  This lull in proceedings is marked by a solitary pen-stroke- curiously directed towards the top right corner of the folded-up sheet of A4 paper. 

As the bus makes its way up Kings Road, the unmistakeable conclusion is that The Scholar is engaged in the precise recording of all passenger-related activity on the Number Fifteen bus.  Clearly this task is too multi-layered to be entrusted to any known system of annotation- Western or Oriental- so our man has devised one of his own.  As the downstairs deck fills up with rush-hour commuters, the beetle-like handwriting spreads to all corners of the page.  By the time we reach Chester Road, the folded-up sheet of A4 paper is a veritable tapestry of tiny but ornate markings.

At the stop before Stretford Arndale, the elegant system of annotation is tested by an unforeseen event.  The sharp-suited young black woman, it seems, has taken none too kindly to spending her morning commute as the subject of academic research.  She leans over the ticket-strewn aisle:

'Excuse Me'.

No reaction from behind the glasses.  No reaction at all.

'Hey you!  You with the pen!  Excuse me!'

But it is no contest.  The Scholar calmly rises from his seat, settles in one just out of reach, and resumes his intermittent notation- with, it seems, even more deliberate precision than before.   His furious challenger retreats from the scene.  'Bloody nutcase', she is heard to mutter to herself, as she steps down onto the pavement and recedes from view.

The next stop is Stretford Arndale.  The Scholar- absolutely untroubled by the momentary malfunctioning of a portion of this morning's data- stands up, slips his A4 sheet of paper into the inside pocket of the raincoat, and climbs off.  Out of the side window, I can see him crossing the dual carriageway.  For the first time all morning he is in a hurry- dodging between the speeding traffic in a bid to reach the shelter on the other side.  As we pull away and cross Barton Road by the Robin Hood pub, I crane my neck and see why: coming in the other direction is a half-empty double-decker.  The front is emblazoned with the number 15.

The Scholar clambers aboard the Piccadilly-bound service, delves into the outer pocket of the raincoat, pulls out a fresh sheet of A4 paper, and folds it neatly in half.  Another chapter in the never-ending tale of the Number 15 bus has begun.  One day, perhaps, this sage figure will condescend to decode the months and years worth of scribblings and lay bare his life's masterwork for us all to marvel at. Until then, we can only wonder what mysteries of intersuburban bus travel are hidden inside his smart brown raincoat.   

BoyOnABus

As you may know we are under strict instructions here at Crinklybee Towers from my sister the famous doctor of workblogging not to divulge any information that may furnish the casual visitor/crazed vengeful stalker with the precise whereabouts of our new and only ever-so-slightly scary workplace.  However I don't think we are on too perilous ground if we limit ourselves to the journey there and back- so I hereby present a short guide to our daily commute from M19 to.... well never you mind exactly where, but let's say for argument's sake it's a sleepy suburban community somewhere just West of the M25 (and possibly in another county).  The thing is you see there are various options, but none of them are exactly ideal...

Option One- the train

The train was my conveyance of choice back in the flange days- and no wonder, when you consider that I could hop onto the 8:49 out of Levenshulme, take time out to peruse the back pages of the Metro and snaffle a bacon barm from Mo's Hot Food bar, and still arrive at my desk by 9:10 sharp and if I was nonchalant enough about it no-one would notice I had my shirt on inside-out.  For old times' sake, I still occasionally hop on the 8:49 at Levenshulme- even though it now takes me in entirely the wrong direction.

Advantages of getting the train:  I get to traverse the town centre at loft level, affording me a bird's eye view of the Castlefield district, where I look down loftily and picture what I have escaped from: a sweaty desk of flange clerks beavering away at the day's first batch of orders for two-inch aluminium hinge gaskets.

Disadvantages of getting the train:  It costs the best part of £5.00 a day, and if I miss the connection I arrive at work at something like half past ten.  Also, what exactly is the etiquette for claiming ownership of a discarded Metro newspaper?  Does it become public property at the moment the commuter adjacent to you loses interest in the Carlos Tevez transfer saga and casually tosses it into a nearby empty seat, or are you ethically obliged to wait until they have vacated the carriage (or at least started to stare vacantly out of the window, and perhaps busied themselves with deleting old text messages)?  This is a matter which troubles me and if anyone has the definitive answer I would be most obliged.

Overall score for getting the train:  5 out of 10.   

Option Two: the bus

Now when it works, the bus is just absolutely fantastic.  You leave the house at 8:09, jump straight on the 168, and a hop and a skip later are sitting at your desk somewhere in the far Western suburbs.  When it goes wrong, however, the bus has a tendency to go very, very wrong.

Advantages of getting the bus: For just three quid a day, I get to career adventurously across town on a more or less traffic-free off-the-beaten-track rush-hour route, in the company of a cosmopolitan mixture of uniformed shopworkers, sparkly-eyed twentysomething TEFL students, and a fair sprinkling of weatherbeaten, buspass-wielding pensioners who spend their entire days criss-crossing the city on inter-suburban transport.  Also I get to change buses in Chorlton and spend a precious forty minutes each day living the louche life of a Metropolitan bohemian metrosexuals of that suburb, occasionally snatching a swift half on pavement terraces inhabited by people who could at a casual glance be mistaken for Badly Drawn Boy or the bass player out of The Smiths.

Disadvantages of getting the bus:  After two weeks of solid bus travel you take on all the characteristics of a weatherbeaten pensioner and find that the back pages of your diary contain a complex handwritten chart containing extracts from timetables transcribed from bus-stops.  After three weeks your pedantry will have reached the stage where you will quite happily hold up the departure of the number 23 to Stretford for ten minutes on a point of principle concerning the exact peak-hour validity of a £3.00 dayrider ticket. 

Score for getting the bus: seven out of ten

Option three: the car

You would suppose this would be the least problematic option- and in some ways, I suppose it is...

Advantages of travelling by car: Air-conditioning. No need to argue with bus-drivers, or for that matter interact with anyone at all before nine o clock.

Disadvantages of travelling by car:  It takes just as long as the bus (because of all the other cars, and because you have to park half a mile from the office) and you don't get to hang out with attractive European girls or anyone from out of the Smiths- and even if you did they would studiously ignore you on account of the unattractive pallour and latent smallmindedness unavoidably brought about by hours of sitting in intersuburban traffic jams being subjected to the 'Topical' morning Radio Five Live phone-in show.

Score for travelling by car: four out of ten.

Option Four: the bike

Well it's only seven miles across town you know and during the punishing forty yard incline on the approach to Fallowfield Sainsburys you can cast yourself as the mountain goat of Levenshulme, chasing down a yellow-jerseyed Colombian as the air thins beyond the point of human endurance and the tip of the Val d'Huez becomes just visible through the dawn mist... 

Advantages of going by bike: You get to pretend to be in the Tour de France.  Also there's a bike track (which used to be a train track until the 1960s) as far as Chorlton, and deep down at the bottom of the embankmentyou come across sights and sounds not readily associated with the inner-city, such as a swarm of dragon-fly or a scavenging fox.

Disadvantages of going by bike:  Exposure to nature is all very picturesque, but on sunny days you arrive for your early-mornin meeting bathed in sweat and dragon-flies.  On rainy days, the allegedly waterproof trousers you bought for three pounds from TJ Hughes in Stretford Arndale will fail to prevent you reporting for duty looking like Doctor Foster after a particularly puddle-ridden visit to Gloucester, or a man who has recently leapt fully-clothed down a well for a drunken bet.   

Score for getting on a bike: when there is no weather at all to speak of: nine out of ten.  When there is some sort of weather (ie most of the time): five and a half out of ten.

So- the bus is the winner (although the dream ticket, which I have yet to muster the logistical wherewithal to attempt, really involves riding the bike as far as Chorlton, enjoying a caffe latte in some louche backstreet M21 joint frequented by Mani out of the Stone Roses and Curly out of Coronation Street, then jumping on the number 23 from outside of Woolworths).  Hurrah for the number 23 bus- if you see me on it any time (perhaps sweating profusely, brandishing a cut-price WH Smith diary covered in scrawled handwriting, and arguing with the driver over the terms of a midweek interurban offpeak transfer) then do be sure to come up and introduce yourself.  And that will be all for this week- thank you for listening.

Although on the other hand...

I don't know though- from that last post down there you could be absolutely forgiven for thinking I'm really starting to regret this rash move of leaving the bosom of Corporation X, and have become desperate to return to the world of flanges.  I'm not- really I'm not.  Hell, of course there are stressful moments- but as Joella, Looby, Ben and Eeourjohn (among other commenters whose views I welcome and respect) have pointed out along the way, most of these can be put down to the sheer newness of everything right now- and if there is one thing certain about a dose of newness, it is that a case of the heebiejeebies will be following right along behind.  And as Joella (who has had first-hand experience of leaping into the abyss, and who strikes me as very perceptive and sensible) said the other day, a case of the Heebiejeebies is not necessarily such a bad thing, and is even, sometimes, to be recommended.

No- let's keep things in perspective here.  And let's not forget what made me cut out that advert in the Guardian in the first place (it wasn't really the Guardian by the way, it was the Manchester Evening News- but absolutely the part of the Manchester Evening News which has the dream public sector jobs in, as opposed to the small-print ads at the back looking for time-served joiners, whatever that means, and seamstresses for Ardwick sweatshops).  I cut out the ad because I had taken to spending several minutes a week face-down on the desk with my head in my hands, too demoralised by the moronic, demonic catatonia of it all to tackle the fortieth fucking flange order of yet another endless, thankless afternoon. 

No, there may have been something romantic, existential and quintessentially European about the life of a lowly clerk, but it would in all certainty have led me to an early alcoholic grave.  Whereas this new job- hell, it could still lead me to an early alcoholic grave (and this post, in case you have not worked it out already, is fuelled by one and a half bottles of Cobra, and I'm talking about the big bottles here) but at least there's a half-chance I may get some variety to my nine to five existence along the way.   If intervening on a daily basis in fierce internecine gang-warfare between rival factions of suburban old ladies can be described as variety (and I think it probably can). 

So- rest assured folks that I do realise, really, despite occasional appearances to the contrary, how damn lucky I am to have escaped from that stultifying, stupefying Corporation X sales office with my sanity just about- just about- intact.  And you know what?  If I ever seem to have forgotten about those desperate afternoons with my face down on the flange-team desk, when it was all I could do to not to throw myself out of the first-floor window and leave myself at the mercy of the thundering Mancunian Way traffic below and end up as a footnote to the city's traumatic post-industrial history, you will be reminding me of my absolutely unbelievable good fortune, won't you?  I am relying on all you kind people now, don't forget.

Health Warning

And here’s another thing I am coming to realise: that there is a reason why liberal-minded public sector professionals tend to hole themselves up in twee, middle-class enclaves where the most stress-inducing event conceivable is the newsagent neglecting to insert the free Ingrid Bergman DVD into each copy of the Saturday Independent.

Back in the flange days the worst possible outcome of a cock-up on my part would be a line stoppage a a false hip factory in County Kildare; presumably a stressful experience for the poor bastards on the shopfloor, but  not an event likely to trouble the editors of the Guardian Society pages. I found myself able to maintain a hands-off relationship with my nine-to-five existence, and would return home to my M19 abode energised to take part in neigbourly activities, such as putting together lovingly crafted street newsletters and  breaking off from alleyway barbecues in order to engage in perilous stand-up rows with burly flytippers. 

Now that  my nine to five existence is taken up in the pursuit of worthy, if frustratingly intangible objectives I find it is all I can do of an evening to help to get Frankie to bed, crack open a bottle of Peroni, and collapse on the sofa after twenty minutes of Newsnight.  Answering the phone is out of the question, and if any well-meaning neighbours were to call round, I can’t say for certain whether I’d be more likely to run upstairs and hide in a cupboard or storm the door dressed only in a Les Ferdinand-era Newcastle United shirt and chase them off down the road brandishing a half-eaten baguette and a rolled-up copy of the Times Educational Supplement.

In short, then: the dream jobs advertised in the Society section of the Guardian should come with a Health Warning, in that they are liable to make you less sociable.  In extreme cases, you may even begin to detest your neighbours with their unseemly inner-city ways and harbour notions of upping sticks and moving to Lymm, or some other semi-rural, brain-dead idylly where there is still a functioning branch of Woolworths and it is perennially 1976 (only with not quite so many ladybirds).  So- and this is especially for any flange-monkeys who happen to be reading with particular vigilance nowadays- be careful what you wish for, that’s all.

Heebiejeebies

Of course what I tend to forget, until it is too late, is that there was a reason I stayed on the flange desk for the best part of a decade.  Namely, that underneath this carefully-constructed façade of laid-back competence, I am a hopeless, semi-delusional neurotic, and not very good- at all- at dealing with change of any kind.  Hell, the time in the old place when they moved me across from one side of the office to the other it damn-near gave me a nervous breakdown, so the act of wilfully uprooting myself from a ten-year career torpor and leaping over the abyss from my comfort zone into an actual Proper Job With Grown-Up Responsibilities- one out of the Guardian, for fuck’s sake- was always going to interfere with my precious equilibrium more than somewhat.

So, you can take it that my two-week absence from these pages has been the result of what can only be described as an attack of the screaming heebie-jeebies, the main symptom of which has been to render me incapable of emptying my head of the fretful minutae of my new nine-to-five existence (and also of the Big Questions, such as What The Hell Have I Gone And Done) for long enough to sit down here in the back room in the late-night quiet and, you know, do whatever it is we amuse ourselves with around here.  You know, concocting dangerous theories about the wearing of trilby hats, that sort of thing.

We’re starting to come out of the other side now though.  Today, for the first time, I managed to find my voicemails without having to ask anyone for the password, and the slightly scary woman from the other desk remembered how many sugars I take in my tea (maybe tomorrow she will remember my name as well).  Last but not least I got through three meetings, with various people from inside and outside Not-For –Profit –Organisation- Y- two of which I had called and set the agenda for all by my self, if you please- and managed not only to get to the end of them without tripping over the overhead projector lead, but having also achieved small but significant steps towards the attainment of targets.  Targets which I have been assured are of the utmost importance to the Grand Plan For World Domination of Not For Profit Organisation Y, but which this time last week made no sense to me whatsoever.

So.  Small steps.  Larger, but ultimately surmountable cases of the heebiejeebies.  Thank you for your patience- and your comments- during these trying times (I notice we have some new people in the comment box, welcome one and all, apart from that eejit who slagged off my hat, but then he won’t be back now Abby has swatted him away with  a choice quote from a 1950s transport theorist).   Normal service will be resumed etc etc.  Goodnight. 

The Fifty Three Bus, it's big and it's orange

I've just found out that in order to get to my new place of employment tomorrow I'll be needing to catch a number 53 bus from outside of Longsight Market.  This strikes me as a wholly tremendous omen, because many years ago when Abby lived (for about five minutes) in shared accomodation in Old Trafford (with a pair of pale, taciturn Goth boys who were so obsessed with playing Dungeons and Dragons on their computer that they never left the house apart from to buy Pot Noodles at the corner shop) one or the other of us (we can never remember which) spent so much time waiting for that particular conveyance to arrive and transport us across town to where the other one lived that we ended up making up a song about it.  It went (you will have to imagine the tune, suffice to say it boasts a jaunty and insistent tempo, as is the wont of songs made up to keep yourself warm while standing tapping your feet at a freezing cold Rusholme bus stop in a bedraggled Oxfam coat waiting for a bus that never, ever, arrives):

The fifty-three bus, it's big and it's orange

The fifty-three bus from Cheetham Hill

The fifty-three bus, its big and it's orange

The fifty-three bus, from Cheetham Hill

The fifty-three bus goes down Wilmslow Road

Fifty Three bus goes through Moss Side

The fifty three bus, I've waited an hour

The fifty three bus never comes on time

The fifty Three bus, The fifty Three bus, The Fifty Three bus (repeat to fade/ until you get mugged by a passing quartet of feral teenagers).

Of course what with privatisation of the transport network at the hands of the evil Thatcher, the fifty-three bus is no longer in Manchester Corporation orange at all, it's in bog-standard Stagecoach white like every bus in the country- and I'm not even sure it is quite as big as it used to be.  These are facts I will need to bear in mind when I am standing outside of Longsight Market waiting for it tomorrow morning, dressed in a shiny new outfit just bought today with the last of the High Street Shopping Tokens they used to give us at the old place, including a pair of sturdy Marks and Spencers Doc Martenesque shoes, which (in a further fine omen) are just the sort of things me and Abby used to wear when we used to wait for the fifty-three bus the first time around.  They are also, of course, just the kind of egalitarian footwear that you would want to have about you when leaving the  world of multinational flanges behind to embark on a new dream Public Sector Guardian-readers' job with a Housing Association.  They are such perfect shoes for the job, in fact, that I'm thinking of just sending them along on their own and I'm sure they'd get along just fine.

So what could go wrong?  Well I could sleep in on my first day for a start.  So I should go upstairs, iron my new shirt (it's from John Rocha at Debenhams, a New Labour touch to set off my Old Labour shoes but I think we can carry it off), and try and get enough sleep to prepare me for that bus-ride.  All together now- The fifty three bus, it's big and it's orange.... 

Five Things I'll Miss... No really, I am sure there must be five things I'll miss

I'm not actually leaving until next Friday, but tonight we are out straight after work for my leaving do.  A dress-down day has been decreed in honour of the event, and, as the clock winds down towards 5:07PM first-drinks-order time, an atmosphere of heady conviviality, bordering in some quarters on mutinious hysteria, reigns across the desks.  Let's admit it: I will miss these laid-back Friday afternoons on the flange team. And over the last nine years in this place (for all that I occasionally compare my working routine unfavourably to that of a New York Grill Guy)  I have built up a certain fondness for certain other aspects of my workaday experience.  Time to gaze out of the window at the Mancunian Way traffic making its early weekend escape for the suburbs, and try to reflect on what exactly it is that I'll miss.....

1/ working in the town centre.  My new work sees me stationed in a dormitory suburb towards the far western reaches of the Metropolis.  I'll need to catch two trains to get there (one into town, and one out again).  Where currently a five-minute wander might take me to the edge of Manchester's thriving Chinatown and its array of roast pork buns and £6.00 all-you-can-eat businessman's lunches, a similar peregrination from my new office will take me, I imagine, to a newsagents.   

2/ The screens.  Putting your cursor in the action field and pressing 'z' then 'enter' will take you to the screen showing lead times against orders.  Move the cursor down to one of the orders, press F24, and you're in the enquiry screen- from there it's just a short hop (via F10) to a further screen giving full invoicing detail.  After nine years of daily navigation (I've designed flowcharts and everything), the plan of the flange order management screens is as imprinted on my memory as the map of the streets where I spent my childhood.  I suspect that, long after I have forgotten how a cut down Convent Lane would take you to the Fenham Library, I will still regale fellow inmates of a south Manchester resthome on how 's' for select then F11 took you to the shipment screen. 

3/the bike ride here.  I've got it all worked out- you dive off the A6 at the earliest opportunity, cut through leafy West Point, and within a minute you are floating diagonally across wide-open Birchfields Park on the way towards the university district.  Every morning in the park I take the bend after the brook just a little bit too fast and very nearly avoid decapitating a Yorkshire terrier belonging to one of two Miss Jean Brodie-esque old ladies taking their regular morning constitutional.  They never seem to mind.

4/ the erudite football conversation.  On the morning after a big game (an international, say, or a big European tie involving United) the unwritten rule on our (male-dominated) desk is that no work can be undertaken until a thorough post-mortem of the previous night's televised action has been completed.  On close-season afternoons (such as this one) the onset of work can be similarly delayed by a review of the latest transfer movements, segueing into an in-depth and knowledgeable dissection of the career to date of former Newcastle United striker Carl Cort.  If there was any justice in the world we wouldn't have to put on orders for flanges at all, as Radio Five Live would have signed us up by now for an hour-long sportstalk each working day. Come to think of it, has anyone got their number?

5/ the customers.  No, not really.  Not most of them anyway.  But I did say I'd give you five things I'd miss, and as the last-minute Friday afternoon orders are starting to pile up, I'd better get on with a couple of them before they start to threaten delaying the first drink beyond 5:07 prompt (or the second one beyond 5:21).  Now then.... command 'order' takes me to order entry, override the notes screen (you always override the notes screen), and F13 to search for a non-standard aluminium four inch gasket with a reinforced inner girder.   Hopscotching round the screens here, with the carefree ease of a child in their backyard, as the Mancunian Way traffic sails by.  I'll say it once more then never again, folks: I will miss these laidback Friday afternoons on the flange team.

The Outside

Corporation X is not managed by a cabal of dangerously psychotic Italian-American cousins, and we lowly sales clerks are not actively encouraged to post severed horses' heads to the purchasing departments of customers whose ordering patterns for four-inch aluminium flanges have tailed off dissappointingly during the quarter.  But in other respects the firm does resemble the Cosa Nostra.  The town centre sales office is home to as many bitter, timeless rivalries and passionate, mysterious loyalties as any Sicilian backstreet neighbourhood.  And, although younger workers on temporary contracts come and go, once you are offered a place on the permanent staff (the Corporate equivalent of becoming a 'made man') it is practically unheard of to leave the firm's employ of your own accord. After maybe five years of cosily permanent status, the thought of leaving the Corporation- and embarking on some alternaive life 'on the outside' starts to seem outlandish, even absurd.  You come to imagine that any inclination towards departure would be met, at best, by bursts of derisive mirth, and at worst, by an invitation to a private midnight fitting on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal for a pair of close-fitting concrete trousers.

It was with such not-exactly-comforting thoughts in mind that I approached the desk of the 'Cappo di Tutti Cappi'- sorry, the office manager- on Wednesday morning.  After nine years as a 'Made Man' ,I had managed to suspend my disbelief about the possibility of an alternative existence for long enough not only to fill in an application form for an interesting-sounding job with a Housing Association that had been advertised in the Manchester Evening News, but to get through two gruelling interviews and, to my absolute amazement, be offered the position ahead of a half-dozen candiates I had assumed to be much better qualified.  Now I just had to break the news to my boss.  A starch-white envelope containing a hand-written letter quivered in my hand as I embarked on the opening gambit I had spent a semi-sleepless night rehearsing in my mind:

'There's no easy way to tell you this, Lorna.  I wish to give you notice of my intention to resign my post'.

My fears of an unsympathetic hearing- or of Lorna producing a gleaming handgun from her top drawer and responding to my unforgiveable betrayal with a single, cold-blooded shot to the temple- proved unfounded.  The usually inscrutable office manager looked genuinely delighted for me- saying that I had clearly been in the wrong job for several years, and this one sounded much more up my street.  The reaction of Donna, my immediate line manager, was equally supportive ('I wish I'd got out long ago myself'). 

Donna announced my news by email to the office.  Within seconds, the entire flange team had downed tools to gather around my desk in an astonished huddle- and for the last two days, half-forgotten allies from previous stints on teams around the cavernous building have drawn me to one side to hear the full juicy details of my imminent departure, and regaled me with congratulatory emails (You've escaped at last you old bastard- well done!).  More than one of them, I suspect, may be inspired to follow my example and make a break for 'the outside' themselves.

Here's the thing, though: everyone keeps telling me how brave I am being.  I don't feel brave at all.  If you want to know the truth, I feel absolutely fucking terrified of the leap into the unknown I am set to take.  Leaving The Corporation in search of a more fulfilling (if, at first, less-well-paid) career may prove to be the best move I ever made.  Or it could turn out to be a terrible, terrible mistake.  One thing is certain however- my departure has caused such a stir in this close-knit world that there is no possibility of ever going back to the life of a lowly sales clerk on the industrial flange team.  My life 'on the outside' will start at 9AM on Monday, June 18th.  Do wish me luck, everyone.

Indelible

Tomorrow morning sees a break from the usual nine-to-five routine.  Instead of climbing aboard the pushbike at 8:10AM and pointing it in the general direction of Manchester City Centre, I will be meeting  work colleague and fellow Levenshulme resident John at the bus stop outside the second-hand furniture store at the ungodly hour of (it is giving me shudders even typing this out) 6:45 in the morning.  By 10:30- courtesy of the 192 bus down Stockport Road, an early-morning Inter-City express train, and a Shropsire minicab driven in all likelihood by a casual racist (there may well be Guardian-reading cosmopolitan metrosexuals driving taxis in the True Blue swathes of rural southern England, but I have sure as hell never met any of them), we will be checking into a four-star hotel somewhere in Shropshire- the venue for our department's annual sales conference.

Attendance at this three-day-long jolly is viewed as a rare privilege for lowly sales clerks like myself and my travelling companion- and you can see why.  Certainly our office colleagues whose turn it is this year to stay behind, processing orders and fielding an endless stream of phone calls enquiring as to the availability of the new generation of half-inch orbital flanges, will be quite beside themselves with envy- and so when the email came, advising me in breathless terms that this year it was my turn to enjoy three days doing nothing more arduous than feign interest in a Powerpoint presentation showing the quarter two sales projection for general industrial consumables, I felt more or less compelled to accept the invitation.  The truth is, however, that I am dreading the whole damn thing.

Well OK, that is not quite true.  I'm quite looking forward to the journey there, for example.  My fellow M19 resident John, who spends 7 hours a day working alongside me, is a convivial and worldly fellow, who I am sure will prove an invaluable ally in cracking the Guardian quick crossword as the Transpennine Express whistles through Cheshire.  I don't even mind the idea of attending, during Monday and Wednesday, an endless series of seminars with titles like 'Metal Fabrication In The Transportation Sector: A Success Story', which, while no doubt unremittingly tedious to the point of catatonia, will at least make a change from the day-to-day monotony of the glorified data entry that passes for meaningful employment back at our Manchester base.

I'm not dreading any of the actual 'work' stuff at all, in fact.  The part of the four-page agenda that has been sending me into a cold sweat for the past fortnight is the page entitled 'Day Two-Rest and Relaxation', and in particular, the time between 10:00 and 12:30, which reads, simply but ominously, 'Paintballing'.

I suppose it was only a matter of time- you could certainly argue that to survive ten years on the fringes of the corporate world without ever being called upon to chase the South West Region Automotive Marketing Manager through some undergrowth armed only with a giant peashooter and an industrial-sized tin of gloss paint is no mean feat.  But it still feels like impending defeat to me- after a decade of lopsided struggle against the inevitable trajectory of my not-quite-chosen career, I am finally about to become the sort of person who goes paintballing.  Whatever happened to that floppy-fringed indie-pop kid who left Wolverhampton Polytechic in a blaze of glory all those years ago, armed with a degree in French New Wave Cinema and Latin American Revolutionary Studies (or something, I can't quite remember) and a seemingly unqunechable desire to change the world?  Where did it all go wrong?  Paintballing, for fuck's sake.  Paintballing!

It's not too late, of course.  I could start to complain of a vague nausea as the train pulled out of Crewe, and then on Tuesday morning fall into a swoon at the serve-yourself breakfast buffet, sending individual-sized cartons of Rice Krispies, complimentary copies of the Daily Express and the Regional Strategic Director for Domestic Fittings and Fixings (East Midlands Division) scattering across the tastefully-appointed foyer.  Or I could just go AWOL as the hour of reckoning approached- and spend Tuesday morning holed up in some bohemian Shrewsbury coffee-bar chain-smoking Camel Lights and nervously peeking over a dog-eared copy of L'Etranger (in the original, bien sur), at any moment expecting to be apprehended by a posse of venge-crazed middle managers armed with clipboards and giant paintpots.

But I won't do anything of the sort, of course.  Because- apart from anything else- underneath that floppy-fringed wannabe revolutionary exterior there always was a snivelling ultra-conformist functionary screaming to get out. Come ten o'clock Tuesday morning, I will be on parade with the rest of them-decked out in tracksuit and sturdy walking boots in preparation for an hour spent being chased through a semi-tamed copse by a crack team of dead-eyed trainee marketeers.  And you know the worst part?  I'll probably end up fucking enjoying it.  Be thinking of me, kind people... and pray for my soul.  The mark this experience seems set to leave on me, unlike the specially-treated gloss paint in the container strapped to my back, is surely indelible.   

Brandy Snaps

The last Friday morning of the working year, and as I write (well there's bugger-all work to do after all), an eery quiet has descended over the usually hectic office.  An artificial Christmas tree flickers over by the Stationery cupboard, and the muted sounds of a some sort of heavenly choir drift, tumbleweed-like, out of the tannoy system and become hopelessly tangled up in the air conditioning, causing the duty site manager to look up from his game of onscreen solitaire and put through a call to a firm of maintenance contractors in Blackburn- where, against a backdrop of 'Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer' seemingly played on a 1980s Bontempi organ, a pre-recorded message tells him everyone has gone home, and to call back on January 2nd.  The duty manager sighs, puts the phone down, and moves a virtual nine of diamonds into position underlapping a virtual ten of spades. 

Around him, the skeleton staff clatter about among rows of empty desks covered in chocolate wrappings.  On the automotive flange team a desultory conversation on the subject of the latter career of Cliff Richard breaks out, only to peter awkwardly away into the middle distance, rather like the latter career of Cliff Richard.  Somebody from Metalworking and Finishing comes back from the coffee machine with four steaming styrofoam cups, and the tin of king-size tin of Quality Street- 'Thanks for all your help in 2006- Bob National Salesmanager'- makes its ninth circuit of the desks since 9AM.  But there are only those hard ones left-you know, the ones with the walnuts in- and they go unclaimed.  The heavenly choir drifts off into 'Come all ye Faithful', and the Duty Manager, with a triumphant flourish of the mouse, slaps a virtual two of spades onto a virtual three of hearts.  The day's work is nearly done.

And Christmas- in case you didn't quite catch what I was getting at yet- is very nearly upon us.  This morning at-work-but-not-really-at-work is the calm before the storm.  In just over an hour's time the Duty Manager will, with a benevolent, almost Papal flourish of the raised right arm excuse us from our duties for the year, and a gaggle of like-minded souls (read: hardened, desperate drinkers) will descend on that trendy bar opposite Deansgate Station, whatever it is called nowadays, and embark on the utterly serious business of  the yearly end-of-term drinking session.  I will intend to join them for a couple, but end up having more like four (read: five, at least) before stumbling through Manchester streets rapidly emptying of scurrying last-minute shoppers to catch the last train home to Levenshulme before the trains start, like the latter career of Cliff Richard, to peter awkwardly away into the middle distance.

And then- and then, Christmas will really begin in earnest, my fine feathered friends.  As we speak, Charlotte and young Frankie are somewhere in deepest Cheshire, scouring the aisles of Marks and Spencers in preparation for a staged strategic invasion by various branches of both of our families, set to last half-way to the New Year.  I've put in a request for a packet of Port Salut cheese, and four big bottles of M&S own-brand 'Birra De Oro' (like Peroni only somehow more Italian and more English at the same time, a snip at £2.19 for 2 litres, you should all try it).  Back in Levenshulme a game of charades will be held up for ten minutes while a stewards enquiry is held into a little known, arcane ruling- and attempts are made to rescusciate several of the less robust competitors using a festive combination of smelling salts and brandy snaps, whatever they are.

None of which, I don't think, will leave me much time to report from these pages again until, oooh, January 2nd or thereabouts.  So- if you have got here in time (perhaps you are filling in the last hour of that last eerily quiet morning in the office, or are just, like everyone else, trying to find a way out of writing last-minute cards for the neighbours), then, on behalf of all the staff here at Crinklybee Towers, I would like to wish you the very finest compliments of the season.  Don't overdo it on the brandysnaps, now, will you?