Crinklybee

Sick day

This morning, 8:15AM

'Good morning, Not For Profit Organisation X, Louise Wellington speaking'

'Louise, Jonathan here- I'm still not feeling very well at all- got a really bad cold.  Going to have to stay off again today, I'm afraid'. 

There follows a very slight pause- so brief as to be almost imperceptible, but just long enough for the unspoken thought - 'you don't sound like you've got much wrong with you to me, you despicable little skiver'- to be transmitted down the telephone lines from the Westside at twice the speed of sound.  It's a neat little trick they teach them at management school.  Give Louise credit, she's got it down to a fine art, and sure enough I come off the line feeling just ever so slightly guilty- sullied, even- as if the boss has suddenly materialised in the southern suburbs and spied me through the netcurtains semi-undressed and in the course of some unspeakable sexual perversion. 

The worst part of this is that I am actually ill, I will have you know.  I know this as I spent the best part of yesterday in a piteous state, lying in bed sneezing, snuffling, sleeping fitfully and generally feeling very sorry for myself.  In the afternoon I did manage to rise briefly and, in an attempt to satisfy some frankly unusual virus-induced cravings, partake of a lunch made up of a chicken and mushroom pot noodle, a lemsip, and a potato waffle sandwich in white bread.  By the evening, I was well enough to struggle down to the living room swathed in a blanket, and, in between sneezes, follow via the wonders of Radio Five Live Extra every kick of the relegation six-pointer at Villa Park, a 'French Legion' inspired Newcastle emerging from a tense battle as victors by the odd goal in three. 

 

This morning I'm feeling slightly better, and did briefly consider going into work, before remembering that there would be very little actual work achieved anyway, given that the entire workforce of Not For Profit Organisation X has been summoned for the afternoon to a gleaming but inaccessible-by-public transport out-of-town Rugby League stadium, where the annual staff conference is being held.  If previous years' incarnations of the event are any indication, there will be some combination of the following: an opening, arousing address from the Big Boss only slightly compromised by the unexplained and noisy collapse of lovingly-erected backdrop featuring a twenty-foot graphical illustration of the organisational vision; some kind of hired-by-the-hour motivational speaker imploring us, like an evangelical congregation, to 'turn to face the person next to you and tell them one accomplishment you are truly proud of'; the large-screen beaming of an amateur propaganda video setting the organisation's achievements of the past 12 months to an upbeat indie-guitar backing track; and- as light relief to close the proceedings- a comic musical turn involving the more biddable and less self-aware members of the management cadre dressed up as air stewards.  I'm not making any of this up, I assure you.

 

So- judging that a staff conference jointly choreographed by a crack back-from-beyond-the-grave dream team of Busby Berkely and Joseph Goebbels is hardly an ideal reintroduction to the workplace for a man still not firing on all cylinders, I made the 8:15 call to Louise, and you know what, she can believe me or not- I don't care, it's not as if she can see me sitting at the computer here writing about her in disparaging terms (at least I hope not- apart from anything else she's actually quite a nice boss, all things considered and taking into account some of the vindictive and incompetent bastards I've had the misfortune to report to elsewhere).

 

Now- if you will excuse me, I am going back to bed, to sleep until early afternoon, or until the cravings for a tin of chicken and mushroom soup and a Lemsip become so strong as to be irresistable.  Good day to you all- and no slacking out there now, do you hear me?                   

Blue Monday

As if Monday mornings weren't bad enough, when I arrived at work late yesterday morning, bleary-eyed from an ill-advised session of watching the snooker final on BBC2 while draining the last of the post-Christmas supplies of emergency lager, the first email to pop up in the inbox is a cheery round-robin missive from the Giant Glasswalled Office of the Big Boss.  'Today is Blue Monday- officially recognised to be the most depressing day of the calendar year' ', it begins, cheerily.  'But here at Not For Profit Organisation X we won't be letting that get us down!  There will be complementary cakes in the canteen at lunchtime, and for those of you who have remembered to come in dressed in something bright (bright blue, preferably!) Steve from accounts will be coming round to collect your £1 for this year's organisation X charity'.

There are several more paragraphs, presumably continuing in the same irresistably jocular vein, but as I've no wish to revisit the scenes of my own personal Blue Thursday immediately after New Year, which saw me fleeing the office in near-panic at 11AM and spending 20 minutes tramping the surrounding residential streets and resisting only by force of will the temptation to leap onto the first available bus out of the Westside and start a new life as a postman, I don't read any further.  To paraphrase a novel I've just started reading on the X41, 'Its always a mistake to engage with any aspect of the city while in a condition of infirmness or incertitude'.

Fortunately so-called Blue Monday is packed with befuddling but time-consuming meetings (an engaging troupe of amateur rhythmic gymnasts thirsty for lottery funding; a rather odd little ex-solicitor with a burning desire to volunteer services of an uncertain nature in a yet-to-be-built community centre deep in the suburbs) so I am able to keep my head down and avoid forced office jollity of any description, and in the process save myself the princely sum of £1, which is the amount Steve from accounts would have forced me with menaces to empty into his 'bucket' on account of having come to work (quite coincidentally, I hasten to add) in an 'Italian Style Inspired' lambswool pastel sky blue cardigan which I thought looked quite 'La Dolce Vita' on the shelf in Stockport Marks and Spencers on Saturday afternoon, but in the cold light of Monday morning only made me look like I had an urgent appointment to appear on the Panel of Question of Sport, circa 1982.

Worryingly middle-aged fashion misjudgements aside, then, Blue Monday could have been a lot worse, and was arguably somewhat more tolerable than the start of my every working week since 1991, purely on the strength of having started with a crisp and brisk and only ever so slightly treacherous walk to school through the secret leafy neighbourhood under the train lines.  I'm tempted to agree with work colleague Deidre, who reckoned that all things considered it 'felt more like mauve'.  

Mauve Monday- I can't see it catching on, but then I probably said that about Red Nose Day, Jeans for Genes, and all the other steadily accumulating excuses for middle-management to come to work in their Tescos Jeans and release Steve from accounts with his 'bucket' and his menacing references to 'a good cause' and 'a bit of harmless fun'.  A bit of harmless fun? It nearly had me fantasising about becoming a postman again, and that's never a good sign.  No- call me a curmudgeon, but bring on Tuesday, I say- any shade of Tuesday you want.  Goodnight.    

I'm From Further North Than You. No really, I am

I've been reading Stuart Maconie's Pies and Prejudice, in which the one-time thinking man's Bruno Brooks, latterly restyled as modern-day Wigan's answer to both George Orwell and Bill Bryson, sets off on a pilgrimage home from Euston 'in search of the True North'.  It's a very good ride in the company of an engaging narrator, who proceeds at a riproaring pace through cosmopolitan metropolises (metropolisi?) and forlorn backstreets from Liverpool to Hexham, scattering as he goes an endearing if sometimes scattergun mixture of approximate equal parts streetlevel observational whimsy, Neo-Marxist Economic analysis, and jokes about Greggs steak and kidney puddings.  

Before Maconie gets around to writing about the North at all, however, he has to get the South (about which he can write with some authority, having lived there for the best part of his adult life) out of his system.  This he does by way of a just-ever-so-slightly-tongue-in-cheek character assasination, dashed off in a creative fury while sipping at vanilla cappuccinos in chi-chi Shoreditch coffee houses, and lasting perhaps fifty pages.  Along the way certain allegedly common traits of the southerner are picked out as sure signs of limp-wristed Jessiedom, of the sort- we are assured- that will be in short supply as soon as the Virgin Westcoast Express reaches Crewe (gateway to the True North, in case you were wondering).  

Now, this is where me and Maconie begin to have a slight, shall we say, contretemps.  Because in among these giveaway signs of southerness or at least non-Northerness (the tendency of market-traders and chimneysweeps to burst into song at the slightest provocation; the unsolicited declarations of unserving loyalty and love for the Queen Mother; the elevation of the thuggish irritant and alleged onetime footballer/ alleged current movie actor Vinnie Jones to status of regional icon) we are warned to be wary of, if you please, motor scooters ('surely no-one north of Wolverhampton has ever bought one, even ironically), and beards (I haven't got the exact quote to hand, but it is something like, 'a blatant and inexcusable assault on the laws of common sense, decency, and aesthetics').

Needless to say as a native of a city referred to in later chapters (yes I read what he had to say about us Northeasteners first, and it was agreeably complimentary, especially about our convoluted and Viking-influenced vowel sounds and our comely, sweet-natured hotel receptionists), I found myself quite affronted by this implied questioning of my very identity.  As a predictable consequence I have found myself, over the course of the last few days, internally vetting every aspect of my behaviour for signs of true, gritty, honest-to-bloody-goodness Northerness, if you don't mind, love.  With mixed results, as follows:

Test of Northerness number 1.  Capacity for talking to random strangers in public settings.  Maconie bemoans the aloofness of the London commuter, pallid brow furrowed behind a copy of the Evening Standard, and by way of contrast extols the virtues of the average bus traveller in say, St Helens, who we are assured has no compunction whatsoever about sharing extensive passages from his or her life story with allcomers and will take it as a personal slight, possibly leading to an invitation to partake in a mass brawl, if this spirit of openness is not returned by its recipient, and with interest. 

My performance?  Well, I did make slightly more effort this morning with the young and disconcertingly sociable Blackburn-born man of Asian origin who has taken to enlisting me in conversation at the X41 stop (it started with the usual enquiries about the Brompton, but has developed, with no encouragement from me whatsoever, into discussion of career options for drop-out medical students  in their mid-twenties finding themselves underemployed in dead-end office jobs in the far Westside).  But that was only at the bus-stop.  Once on the bus proper, I buried myself as is habitual in a paperback (Stuart Maconies Pies and Prejudice, you might have heard of it) and made it quite clear by use of practiced, hunched body language that conversation of any kind would not be forthcoming, thank you.  Also- I nearly fell off my chair in a Westside chipshop on Monday lunchtime when some amiable-enough looking old codger, probably a war-veteran to boot I shouldn't wonder, took the seat opposite me, even though there were clearly two full tables available by the door.  Poor display of notherness on my part.  Very poor.  Score for talking to random strangers in public settings, then: 3/10.

Test of Northerness Number Two.  Capacity to Withstand and Even Enjoy the Windswept Delights of the Northern Rural Landscape (you know, like your man Wordsworth).  Sure and we're on safer ground here.  Frankie has got a new digital camera for Christmas (although we are going to have to take a point off here as spoiling your children with expensive electronics is no doubt suspectly non-northern, he should have been sharing a tangerine with his thirteen siblings and been glad of it, the little bleeder) and to try it out we went for a day out on Saturday to Furness Vale.  We came back with pictures of its single, desolate pub (lunchtime clientele: seven hardened regulars of indeterminate age and indeed gender, including a Staffordshire Bull Terrrier who seemed to belong to them jointly and severally, possibly owing to tithe-based feudal arrangements dating to the 13th Century); its level crossing; and its canal towpath leading to a spaceship-sized Tescos Extra carved, quite incongruously, into a cliff-face.  On the way home the train was cancelled (failure of engine in Disley sidings) so we were forced to eke out our last rations of pub cheese and onion crisps in a dank, deserted bus-stop on the A6, waiting for 45 minutes for a bus to Stockport.  A miserable day out?  Hell no.  We enjoyed every minute and are seriously considering going back and bringing Charlotte with us.  Yes I think we are definitely on safer ground here.  Score for Capacity To Endure and Even Enjoy the Windswept Delights of the Northern Landscape (You Know, Like Your Man Wordsworth): 9/10 

Test of Northerness Number Three: All-round 'Did You Spill My Pint?' Hardiness. Well. I went to the dentist last Thursday, to have something unspeakable done involving wisdom teeth.  Or, to put it more accurately, to not have anything done at all, as my reaction to even the suggestion of the dentist approaching me with his, er, his instruments was so lacking in Northern Grit ('what are you jumping in the air for, man?  This is only a ballpoint pen  I have here!') that he refused point-blank to treat me without the aid of sedation, now scheduled for a soon-upcoming date I am trying very hard not to think about.  Embarrassing, I know.  Score for All Round 'Did You Spill My Pint?' Hardiness: 1/10 (and that is merely awarded out of self-pity).

 

A combined score for Northerness, then, of 14/30, which I think is not bad for a man with a beard (and not even a proper beard, really) who until very recently used to travel around on a 50cc Italian motor scooter, quite possibly thinking secret ironic thoughts to himself and calling at intervals into chi chi cappuccino bars.  I think me and Maconie can kiss, I mean shake hands, come on, I'm joking, shake hands, and make up, and I might even read the rest of his damn book.   You could do worse than do so yourself, love.    

Prickles

Taking Frankie into school this morning, the long way that we like to when we manage to get out of the house in time with all of our bikes, helmets, lunches and bags- under the train line and through the leafy sidestreets of the secret middle-class ghetto hidden away behind the A6.  On the pavements in front of imposing semi-detached residences, the discarded Christmas trees of the well-heeled lean drunkenly against wheely bins, awaiting collection by the Council.  Ours has already gone, but not without a fight- the living room and the front yard are strewn with the many millions of tiny needles it shred in protest as we manhandled it inadroitly out of the front door.  Rather more delicately, Frankie has collected up several handfuls of needles, which he calls 'prickles', and is keeping them in a paper bag, ready to be put into use on his trainset as lifelike railside greenery.

 

Christmas was spent in the traditional manner, watching episodes of Miranda while under the influence of unusual licquors, on familial sofas in the great cities of the Industrial North.  Due to the unavailability of trains  we travelled between these great cities in a small saloon car, hired for the duration of the festivities.  The experience of motorway travel was luxurious but terrifying, and for the return journey from Newcastle south we stuck, like refugees from the 1950s, to the A-roads of Northern Britain, tootling through sleepy market towns at 30mph and trying to resist the temptation to stop in each one of them for a full English breakfast or a matinee showing of the new George Formby picture.  The journey took a respectable six hours, but that was with a scheduled stop at Tebay Services, and an unscheduled diversion into the streets of Tebay itself, where a pair of surly, hunched up teenage girls glared at us from the depths of a vast concrete rural bus-stop resembling a Second World War tank trap.

 

The day after the journey I was straight back to work, to which I have been trying to mentally re-acclimatise- without, I think it is fair to say- any conspicuous level of success.  I will spare you too many details, but if I tell you that on on Friday at approximately 10:30AM I was to be found tramping the residential streets neighbouring the office in my shirtsleeves, giving myself an audible talking-to ('come on now, this is normal, just normal here, back to the desk now, come on!') then that might give you an insight into my state of mind.  Thankfully several members of the team seem afflicted by something similar, and after several hours on Friday afternoon trying to remember exactly what it was our jobs consisted of ('Is it something to do with Communities?  There seem to be a lot of emails about Communities....'), we seem to be almost back in the swing of things now. This afternoon I actually caught myself on the telephone to some big strategic fish in Merseyside sounding like I actually had some idea what I was talking about (and using phrases like 'Third Sector Infrastrucutral Support', and 'Neighbourhood Needs Assessment', and 'Targeted Cross-Sector Based Capacity Building to Tackle Multigenerational Worklessness in Priority Areas'), so there is hope.  Or perhaps no hope whatsoever, I'm not sure. 

 

My New Years Resolutions then.  Number one-not to have an actual and unsightly nervous breakdown during office hours, as this would run counter to the values of the organisation.  Also- inspired by Joella, who has made a similarly bold undertaking - to post on here at least once a week.  Stop laughing at the back, I'm serious.  Happy New Year, and thanks for keeping reading (and for all the comments- I know I don't reply to all of them but really appreciate every one).  Onwards!