Nuneaton

I could make all kinds of excuses for my recent lengthyish absence, but I think what it comes down to is that my work has taken to sending me on a weekly basis to Nuneaton. This is like being sent to Coventry, only significantly more depressing- especially when you know your day there is going to be spent poring over excel spreadsheets, and debating in agonising detail the intricacies of the invoicing procedures for the shipment of flanges to Burton-on-Trent.   Every Tuesday I am getting up at some unearthly hour (I try not to look too closely at the alarm clock, but it is definitely begins with a '5') and sneak out into the deserted, grey streets to stand on Platform Two of Levenshulme station with the same ragtag collection of shiftworkers, insomniacs, and extreme trainspotters, looking down the line to catch the headlights of the 6:25 for Crewe beaming through the early morning mist.  Just two hours later (for some reason the train connections between south Manchester and sleepy Warwickshire commuter towns are positively space-age) me and an equally shell-shocked colleague are stepping off a Virgin Pendolino and into the giant Asda behind Nuneaton train station, where we avail ourselves of strong coffee and try to remember what the hell we are doing in the East Midlands at a time when we might normally just be thinking about leaving the house. 

The next few hours typically do nothing to dispel the nauseating feeling of being part of a remake of Groundhog Day, inexplicably set in the bowels of a flange factory in Warwickshire.  We spend six hours having exactly the same meeting as last time, then a fifteen minute taxi journey being lectured by an overweight Coventry City supporter on  Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council's speed-camera policy, and how it amounts to an open vendetta on hard-working, slightly overweight Coventry City fans who drive taxis.  Back at the station my colleague lights a Lucky Strike, and at the same moment a Virgin Pendolino whooshes into the station and straight out again at 325mph, putting his cigarette out and sending us scattering backwards against the platform walls.  Three minutes later our own train turns up- my colleague spends most of the journey back studying the main section of The Independent from cover to cover, while I make a show of leafing through the review section, while really concentrating on gazing out of the window at sights I don't normally get to feast on during the course of a working day, such as a field full of cows, and the main stand of Crewe Alexandra FC.

I know- it all sounds just hopelessly exotic.  But this high living comes at a price, which is that the rest of the week is more or less shot to hell.  As soon as I come home on Tuesday night I have to go straight out my five-a-side game (the five-a-side game I have spent most of the journey back organising through a series of increasing frantic text messages), so I get little rest... and on Wednesday I am practically useless back at my desk, and certainly in no fit state to deal with the mountain of emails that has built up during my forced exile in Warwickshire.  During Thursday I manage to effect some sort of transition back into life as I know it, so by Friday am feeling more or less grounded again- but of course Friday is no sort of day to embark on anything resembling serious work, so I spend too much time gazing out of the window at the four-lane urban motorway, pining nostalgically for fields full of cows, Crewe Alexandra and the review section of The Independent.  The weekend cannot come too soon- and then, of course, on Monday I get another invite to a meeting in Nuneaton, and it all starts over again.

So- I think what I am trying to say is, please bear with me during these testing times.  This Groundhog Day existence (only of course, with the part of Andi McDowell taken by a series of overweight Coventry City- supporting cab drivers with a grudge against society) has to end sometime, and then we will be back on an even keel.  Until, then, I will try and get here as often as possible, and certainly more than once every two weeks, which is just unacceptable isn't it, especially while Mike Troubled Diva has herocially taken himself up on the challenge of updating every single day for a month.  All very impressive I'm sure, but could he do it while being sent to Nuneaton every Tuesday at the crack of dawn?  Could any of us?  Well you are all welcome to try, but don't say I didn't warn you. This is not a life for the faint-hearted, I'll have you know.

Comments

[looby]

Oh dear - that does sound a bit grim. I look forward to seeing a dramatic upturn in the Nuneaton area's flange exports as a result of your efforts. How long is this rather gruelling pattern set to continue?

I'm so glad you got "poring" right though; not many people can do that.

[looby]

I've just been asked to do one of those anti-robot things when posting. Have you had a lot of comment spam?

[jonathan]

Oh yes you'll get no 'pourings' instead of 'porings' around here, or any similar abominations- what do you think this is, The Guardian? I do think I might have misplaced an apostrophe a few months back, but you can be assured I took myself off to a back room here in Crinklybee Towers as soon as it was discovered and gave myself a damn good thrashing. It won't happen again.

As for comment spam I hardly ever get any as a matter of fact.. but I have noticed typepad will occasionally put up an anti-robot thing, just to keep us all on our toes. I think we're back to normal again now...

[Tim]

Only a complete idiot would get poring / pouring wrong. Not the sort of people who come here, that's for shore.

Sounds grim. I thought you were going to say they make stay down there all week. It does happen, you know. Even in Nuneaton. Probably.

[Jonathan]

A week? There are people in Nuneaton Asda who look like they have spent their whole life there. Not just in Nuneaton, but in the Asda. Mind you it is a very large and well-stocked Asda, I will give them that.

In the interests of balance I should point out the town boasts other attractions for any hardy souls prepared to venture beyond the immediate environs of the train station. For instance there is a statue to local figure George Eliot- who of course was born Mary Ann Evans, but pretended to be a man and wrote a series of novels including Mill On The Floss under her assumed name. Which may seem like a lot of work to go to just in order to escape from Nuneaton- but you have to remember it was the mid-nineteenth century and Virgin Pendolinos (or for that matter taxis driven by overweight Coventry City fans) had yet to be invented. I think she got as far as Bedworth befoe being discovered.

[Martin Q]

"poring/pouring" - maybe not, but we seem to have an incidence of "increasing/increasingly".

Shoddy.

But then again it does sound like there are extenuating circumstances. I'll let you off this time!

[jonathan]

Damn, you've got me there all right Martin. Rest assured I will haul myself into my office first thing tomorrow morning and give myself a stern dressing-down. Unless I get sent to Nuneaton again, of course.

[Clare]

Oh stoppit, I am Trying Very Hard not to be worried about my impending return to work in Nov, for which I appear to have agreed to work Stupid Hours to claw back some of the mony I've lost in the last six months.

It'll be all right, I keep telling yself. It'll be all right.

Oh, and I suppose you get some sympathy too. ;o)

[beth]

If it's the same meeting every time (and they usually are, aren't they?) could you not just pretend to have been?