Office Tales: The Colonel

When our boss smugly announced he’d just made £70,000 with one phone call, I was unimpressed. Seconds earlier, he’d told me my £8,000 salary was ‘pretty high’ for a young graduate. A few months before, I’d been lured to an interview by a second-hand verbal promise that he was looking for six trainee journalists.

In reality, he wanted one admin lackey to input data and extract invoices from a clearly-possessed printer. Desperate for work, I accepted, even saying that I was sure the financial package would be ‘just fine’. I’m sure I saw a twinkle in the eye of this perma-tanned, self-loving man of the world as he registered my laughable innocence. But while he was bright enough to see my erstwhile colleagues and me coming, he didn’t realise we might one day get our own back.

My partner in counter-insurgency was my line manager. When, I had an issue with an obnoxious client, I passed the call over to her and she would sweet-talk them better. Once this was resolved, we’d spend the afternoon calling them back and playing inappropriate music down the phone. Alternatively, we’d connect them to a Radio 1 phone line in which a pre-recorded Mr Angry bellowed abusively at the confused caller. Oh, for the salad days before 1471!

During the transport strikes in London that summer, we were expected to make our way to work, wherever we lived. The first week, I arrived at my city workplace via a sardine-packed bus and several hours footslog. Walking six miles home amused me even less as I watched my boss’ taxi slip into the twilight. From then on, I was more pragmatic. I’d rise two hours late and enjoy a relaxing al fresco breakfast before ringing the office from the nearest noisy payphone claiming to be stuck somewhere completely different while sounding mortified that I wasn’t yet manning my desk. It was a sad day when the strikes ended and Lazy Thursday became a working day once more.

One day, our deluded chief foolishly asked my manager and me to stuff thousands of envelopes for a mailshot. We did just that – stuffing armfuls into the bin while only occasionally breaking into paroxysms of work when the office martyr arrived to help. She was paid even less than us, but favoured passive moaning over active rebellion. It was a heavy but satisfying load that I delivered into the arms of the bin men that night.

Whether he ever knew he got the workers he deserved, remains a mystery. Whether he ever knew I deleted almost all his subscribers from my PC by accident is another.

Certainly, he seemed oblivious of our greatest and final triumph. With the ‘name game’ we succeeded in changing his very identity. We would subtly correct the pronunciation of those that rung him – a vowel here, a consonant there, so that after several months, his public name morphed by degrees into something entirely new. The man formerly known as Brunton became Branston and Brunswick, before maturing into the more complete identities of Kelvin Beanstalk and Conan Broomstick. Finally, this stock of mixed identities was reduced to its purest essence: The Colonel. And before The Colonel left the building, we had moved on. Our work here was done.

The Guardian 2007

Office Tales: The Cleaner

The post of part-time toilet cleaner required an interview with the man from the council. Soon after we shook hands, a chance remark uncovered a mutual interest in cross-country running.

I’d competed competitively at school and he was a born-again jogger, in the honeymoon phase. He pressed me enthusiastically for training tips and about my greatest moments slipping and schlepping around the local park. He was enthralled, his bored office face melting into one of childish glee. I simply enjoyed the attention as most of my races had been witnessed by one unimpressed man and his dog.

The interview was almost up by the time I wrapped up reminiscing on my less than Olympian career. Exiting our daydream, we hastily discussed the job – he muttered some stuff, I nodded in a trustworthy fashion. Like an old friend, he waved me off, with the words ringing in my largely irresponsible teenage ears: ‘Not to take it too seriously.’ The gig was mine.

The friend who ‘recommended’ me had said it was an easy £15 for an hour’s work. I remembered hazily from the interview that I was meant to lock up the town’s one public lavatory one night and open it the next morning, before cleaning it on Sunday. But I could dramatically improve the efficiency of my labour by not locking up Friday night and circumventing the need to unlock them in the morning. This adherence to the principles of FW Taylor meant I could reduce my three visits to one, and the total task duration down to 30 minutes.

The scene of the grime was a small, unprepossessing concrete block on the edge of the town cricket pitch. Its dim, dank interior soon revealed that its few users were either desperate, drunk or recently injected – the detritus that slipped beneath the radar of a ‘respectable’ Home Counties town. Despite my regulation Marigolds, there were few things I was prepared to touch with my hands – an instinct I immediately upgraded to a working principal.

So the runner’s feet that had impressed my boss so much now worked tirelessly in the cause of civic duty kicking the untouchable flotsam and jetsam out the door into a waiting binbag. Well, for a weekly six minutes anyway, following further time and motion improvements. This made me an impressive £2.50 a minute – a rate I’ve sadly never since matched.

As well as keeping me in fish suppers, the job taught me that working success was not always about bringing the relevant skills to the task. I passed the reins onto Maria – a friend who sadly did not share my success in the public convenience world. This was a surprise as not only did she enter this Stygian bog a ‘number’ of times a week (I lost count, horrified), she even got down on her hands and knees to scrub the floors. ‘So what happened?’ I asked. ‘I was sacked,’ she replied tersely, ‘apparently I wasn’t doing the job well enough.’

I didn’t tell her about the glowing letter of thanks I’d been sent by the same man in which he’d praised my excellent work. Perhaps she just didn’t interview well.

The Guardian 2007

Office Tales: Lord Mayor's Parade

‘It’s a bit different, but the pay’s good,’ said the woman from the agency. At a tenner an hour, it tripled the going rate. But while I usually washed dishes or stuffed envelopes, this time I was dressing up as a bank safe in the Lord Mayor’s parade. I accepted, unsure if it was the price of humiliation, or a generous rate for my big break in TV.

Four of us were paid to march alongside a corporate float winding through central London. The wooden ‘security’ boxes were designed for visual impact rather than pilot comfort. The three girls who completed the team tried them out for size, but claimed it was impossible to walk in them. They elected instead to sit on the float and earn their money waving for their wages. Despite their tempting example, some misguided macho instinct persuaded me to strap on my box and walk alone.

As the parade got underway, the cramped dimensions of my wooden body suit constricted my natural stride. The supporting rope began to rub through the top layers of my shoulder’s skin. Downhill sections followed calling for bursts of speed I could only achieve by taking fast mincing steps – a comical effect enhanced by the rictus of pain brought on by each crash of my bruised and bloodied knees against the unyielding wood.

As the sun and the strain drew streams of sweat down my ruddy cheeks the reality of what I was doing dawned through a mist of mental and physical pain. A punchable child squealed: ‘What are you meant to be, mister?’ Some giant walking chocolates from the float behind urged me on with the words: ‘Pick your pace up, Safe-Boy! When someone screamed: ‘Look up and smile – you’re on TV!’ I knew I’d reached my nadir. I cast my eyes down balefully. And confronted now by terraces piled high with spectators, my life flashed before me, and anyone watching BBC1.

I consoled myself with lager in the lunchtime break agreeing belatedly with the girls to join them on the float for the return trip. We stashed beer in my grounded box ducking inside its secure walls for crafty swigs when the crowd’s adulation proved too cloying.

But after an hour of waving inanely at thousands of inquiring faces philosophical doubts crept into my mind. An anonymous man, now endorsing nothing, paid to wave at a crowd of people he didn’t know. Why? The existential angst kicked in, then the lunchtime beer. One of the girls suggested we danced along to the jazz band playing behind us on our float. Would this be the final dance on the grave of my tattered dignity or a chance to pluck some minor triumph from the public disaster recorded earlier?

I chose dance. Not well, but with enthusiasm. A few feet tapped, the odd hip wiggled, a family swayed and a madman screamed deliriously. Soon whole sections of the mob swayed happily along to our joyful arrhythmic moves. And while we orchestrated the masses, I searched the sky in vain for a TV camera. But my memories must suffice. For what the cameras recorded, I’ll still pay good money for the tapes.

The Guardian 2007

Crap Holidays: A Blonde Romance

Heddie and I briefly met when I was living in Ecuador and she had visited to study.

Six months later, she was back at Quito airport clutching the ticket for which I’d loaned her the money. But the blue-eyed blonde I clumsily embraced didn’t closely resemble the angelic image nostalgically imprinted in my mind’s eye. Perhaps unsurprising, as our hypothetical romance had fed off emails and crackling phone calls.

Her long flight from Oregon explained the puffy eyes, and possibly the scowling face, if not the extra ballast she now carried about her waist. But surely her real beauty had been more than skin deep, however much more skin there now was. I had two weeks to find it...  

So I made breakfast the next day with a spring in my step. The night before, I’d ignored the ‘I have a problem with commitment’ comment she made entering my newly scrubbed-up flat. Much as she ignored the sparkling Christmas tree I’d set by the door. It contrasted too with the rather melodramatic flow of compliments with which she had waking me up regularly for the last few weeks.

True love, I had presumed, recognises no time zones. She had little money so I’d filled the fridge up with exotic local produce with which to deal with the yawning gaps in her stomach and wallet. But when she chose her favourite, expensive, American steakhouse that night, it was the waiter who stole her attention and contact number. I ruminated longer than usual on how large a tip to add to the pricey bill.

We developed a new personal chemistry – the original was presumably confiscated at customs. So when I say we got on like dynamite, I mean it in the scientific rather than romantic sense. We soon realised we had nothing in common. Her impressive powers of consumption needed underwriting too. One day though, she used her own money to buy a Che Guevara badge before asking: ‘Who’s he? He’s pretty.’ I was too depressed to laugh.

She made many new friends. One, a ‘totally cool DJ’, was kind enough to put her up whenever she couldn’t get home. Strange men smiled slyly in the street. It was a long fortnight, which I saw out with masochistic fatalism. Shortly before her final exit, she intercepted a text from a friend of mine on my mobile. She was borrowing it to facilitate her ad hoc social life. It read: ‘Chin up mate – only 36 hours more.’ It was the only time we empathised.

Six months earlier, I had taken her to the airport with a heavy heart and moist eyes. I didn’t understand why three other forlorn and unconnected men had been waiting in the shadows by her hotel. At four in the morning.

But only one of those men was dumb enough to edit her poorly written university essays on a Saturday night. And only one man was dumb enough to stump up for a plane ticket to bring her back.

I was the biggest blonde of all.

The Observer 2007
       

Crap Holidays: Four go mad in Marbella

When Adam leant over and whispered: ‘This trip is going to be hell,’ I probably should have marched off the plane without a backward glance.

The writing was on the wall, in mile high, plain English: our holiday was doomed. Adam and Lydia had broken up, messily, the year before. This was the first time they had met since. Loads of uncomplicated, happy people were meant to be coming with Siobhan and me to Marbella – but they had all dropped out. Now we were four.

When we pooled our money on the first day, I realised we had a financial problem as well as an emotional one. Somewhat surprisingly, the two exes had brought virtually no money. Adam had £50 cash for the 14-day holiday after Lydia made him pay for her flight – an impressive act of debt collection achieved without even speaking to him. Bizarrely, she then turned up with 30 quid – when 30 quid still wasn’t a lot of money.

On our first shopping trip, we thus stocked up on bread, booze and water. I had the temerity to ponder a carton of yogurts. ‘I don’t think we can afford those, can we?‘ snapped Lydia as she ripped them from my hand with a disbelieving shake of the head.

Mealtimes were strained. Increasingly. Thrice daily. Siobhan and I were stuck in the blackest of black comedies. Less funny ha-ha, more funny deep psychological damage. ‘Can you ask her to pass the salt?’ Adam would say. ‘It’s not really about the salt, is it?’ came the reply to I’m not sure whom. 

Of course, we were now too poor to actually go out and seek the comfort of better-adjusted strangers. So we stewed together on cheap vodka, brewing obnoxiously. Later, Siobhan and I wondered why we didn’t reclaim our dwindling cash, flee the flat and let nature take its course in all its terrible fury. But to err is human, and we ummed and erred our way through two painful weeks of poolside paranoia, of requited fear and loathing, of festering unresolved issues.

Even a night on Marbella’s beachside strip failed to defrost the group chill. The gaudy glare of Disco Flash Pub failed to illuminate our conversation, while the saucily-titled cocktails of The Cockney Kilt stimulated little beyond our undernourished taste buds. Adam and Lydia, still bitterly divided, glared mutually while pouring bile into the ears of their designated, unblessed peacemakers. 

The four of us have never since shared a room, let alone a bad atmosphere. Waking in a cold sweat, years later, I calm my pounding heart by telling myself that I’m not on holiday, or anywhere near Marbella. It’s just Monday morning and everything’s going to be all right.

Submitted to The Observer 2007

Stargazing for Answers

‘Don’t tell me... you’re a Leo.’
‘No.’
‘I know... I know... Cancer.’
‘No.’
‘Virgo.’
‘Yes’.
‘You see Jenny – I knew he was a Virgo.’
‘Oh yeah... definite Virgo. Watch him.’

In just four attempts, she was on to me.

It was hard enough trying to impress her, and now I had to overcome her astral prejudices. Her mates shook their heads gravely communicating small feminine gestures with every Virgoan blunder I made.

‘I’m not into it that much – not like some people,’ she said lightly, secretly marking me down as a dangerously rational insurgent.

But what of this star-fated personality allotted to me from some time before the dawn of science and its obsession with common sense and facts? Within, I know, slumbers a passionate and sexy Capricorn, an occasionally gregarious Leo, a sometime courageous Airean  and a freedom loving Sagittarius. But apparently not.

And what of the celebrities with whom I share my zodiacal fate? In my case: Sean Connery, Peter Sellers, Oliver Stone, John Coltrane to name a few. I can see these, but perhaps less so Mother Theresa, Frodo Baggins and Raquel Welsh.

I wonder if people would identify with astrology so readily if it was Michael Howard or Barbara Cartland they shared a sign with. Was Hitler a Virgo tidying up  Europe with his little helpers, the panzers and Stukas? One girl I knew stayed in three weekends to avoid the professed man of her dreams – the solar system was just not conducive to nookie right then. Meanwhile he was getting off with her best mate.  I could have predicted that.

Apparently, I shouldn’t date Ariens and Aquarians and, heaven forfend, my last girlfriend was Aquarian. And yes it was turbulent – just like the book warned! But hang on, it was also mellow, affectionate, fun and loving. It’s easy to forget the good when distracted by the ‘truth’ of the bad.

And should I run screaming from the room if I meet an Aerian tomorrow? Should the possible love of my life be denied by the whim of pseudo science? For research I borrowed an astrological book from my ex, ‘my bible’ as she describes it.

Virgo: ‘Logical, meticulous and modest, Virgo’s are one of the most subtle earthly sign ruling cleverness, competence and expectation.’ Well, I have my moments. Then again I have my moments of stupidity, incompetence and pessimism.

A French researcher once placed an ad offering readers a 10-page personal horoscope if they wrote to him with details of their birthdays. The first 150 were sent an identical analysis drawn up by a professional astrologer. Ninety percent were amazed at how well it described them – as were almost all their family and friends. The real subject of the horoscope was a mass murderer. Suggestibility is the key. I remember the last time I read a medical encyclopedia. Aside from a drink problem, I discovered I had trenchfoot, yellow fever and tennis elbow.

Astrology is hesitant about making concrete promises which is very wise for its survival.
In my case, the suggestion that Virgo’s may be tall and possess extremely large foreheads would only be true if I hung around with a lot of small-headed pigmies.

Such inconvenient inconsistencies encourage astrologers to cover themselves. All manner of astral influences can justify its inaccuracies – a handy polyfilla for its rather shoddy brickwork.   
The source of all this wisdom is not so easy to find. There’s plenty about what to believe, little on why. I turned to my ex’s bible for enlightenment. It included a brief introduction for those vaguely interested in finding out why we should believe any of it.

I was surprised how compelling its basics premises could be. Certainly more plausible, scientifically, than testing the flotability of a suspected witch in a small lake or testing a womens fidelity by making her drink dust and water (courtesy Numbers 5:11, Old Testament). I was fascinated to read about gravity affecting our water-bound bodies. So simple, so obvious and  quite compelling in a nice idea, bugger-all-proof kind of way.

Then again, that flat earth concept must have seemed bloody good sense at the time too.
But strangely, none of the astral disciples I spoke with had the faintest knowledge or interest in why any of it should make sense. And instead of turning a sceptical eye to the unproven – fans prefer to listen to latter day prophets such as Mystic Meg and Russel Grant. Faith is an incredible thing and indeed listening to a word from these two surely requires it in abundance.
Astronomy has now taught us that what we thought were groups of related stars and planets  are nowhere near each other. Not only that, but we now know there’s 13 of them.

Unfortunately, Ophiuchus (whose presence should make me a Leo) crashed the party a bit late. You’d think this might be thought significant, but most star-gazers have blithely ignored it as being irrelevant.

The irony is that there may be something in it. Like most accepted ideas, which started off as heresies and half-truths, astrology may well come of age. But what truths science may later unveil are, for the moment, buried deep in the tripe served up for the gullible.

And even if there is something – is it in the hands of those that can help? Apart from the obvious charlatans and quacks – just how qualified is anyone else to interpret such nebulous matter? I’ve always suspected there’s much in the metaphysical world beyond our ken and I haven’t met the person yet whom I’d trust to give me the answers.

Perhaps it’s just a bit of a laugh which momentarily consoles or lifts its afficianados. It doesn’t ‘harm’ people in the way established religions have over thousands of years. After all, nobody’s been beheaded for being a Capricorn.

A harmless pastime maybe. But as a religion, a science or belief system? I’ll keep making my own decisions for a while yet. But I would say that, I’m a Virgo.

Women’s Health 2000