Anger shopping

Today was an almost unparalleled shitstorm of unpleasant electronic communication activity in my work environment. Just when you think you have a handle of whose ego is affected by whose presence and which members of the Senior Management Shitbubble are compatible and which are anathema to each other, something happens that lights the touch paper and you feel like running to the hills.

I won’t bore us all by going into the details, but I went to work this morning hoping for a quiet day and ended up spending eight hours caught in a conflict and trying to help mitigate a peace settlement between three different People Above Me, each of whom earn at least four times as much as I do. It was like working with infants. Honestly – you hope beyond hope that the big people making the big decisions in the big companies might be above petty playground squabbles, but no. There were hours of back-and-forth, she-said-he-said bullshit shenanigans that you would have to have been involved in to believe, but that I wouldn’t wish on any of you.

I feel completely drained.

So – what did I do after this cauldron of childishness was finally settled? How did I alleviate the angst in my mind and help to dissipate the adrenalin in my system? Did I sit in peace and meditate? Did I distract myself with a puzzle or quiz, or busy myself with the issues facing members of staff in my own location? No – I went online and splurged. I dealt with unhappy feelings the way I often do – by buying shit I don’t need, and will probably never use. I bought myself a complete cycling outfit (bright orange), a new Bluetooth speaker for my office (because I already have 3 at home), and a set of Stanley Kubrick DVDs (which I could have got for less than a tenner on eBay, but decided instead to buy brand new and import from abroad.)  I even bought a pair of walking boots for my infant son who cannot even sit up straight yet, which I think I only did so I could congratulate myself on the fact that I was buying something for someone else, not just wasting money on myself.

Maybe I have a bit of a problem.

On another note – I can’t believe how many attempts it took me to get the spelling of ‘unparalleled’ correct….

RC 30-4-19

Months moving manically

I know I like the early part of the year to pass quickly, so I can get away from the painful dark of Winter and step happily into the glorious light of Spring, but I’m finding it very scary that we’re already approaching May.

It was another weekend where my plans to cycle were lost to the weather. Thank you, Storm Hannah. No doubt there were some hardier souls than mine who defied the climate and took themselves off for a ride-about, but I took one look at the rain slamming into our kitchen window and thought ‘sod that – I’ll stay in and play with Mathew.’

It was a good decision, but one that I’m now berating myself for. I am all too aware that November will be here before I even realise it’s Summer, and I’ll be looking back at Spring and thinking ‘WHY DIDN’T I CYCLE MORE???’

But there we are - it’s done now, and it can’t be undoneulated.

God, I love making up new words.

RC 29-4-19

MMCCC / Triplets

This is my 2300^th blog posting, statistics fans.

To celebrate this great milestone, I am presenting for your enjoyment some little lists, each containing three examples (because there is a ‘3’ in ‘2300’) Strained link, I know, but I’m tired…..

PLACE NAMES THAT SOUND LIKE 1970s BANDS

Cabo Verde

Kiribati

St Vincent and the Grenadines

BEST ITEMS ON AN ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT BREAKFAST

Fried bread

Buttered mushrooms

Crispy bacon

MY FAVOURITE FICTIONAL DOCTORS

Doctor Watson

Doctor Strange

Doctor House

BODY PARTS THAT SOUND LIKE SCI-FI VILLAINS

Gnathion

Lunula

Hallux

TITLES YOU COULD GIVE A BOOK THAT WOULD GUARANTEE I WOULD BUY IT

Confessions of an Amateur Sloth-Wrangler

My Life As A Badger

Nipples – An Appreciation

RC 27-4-19

Quickie about quickies

Don’t you hate people who post one-line pithy blog entries, instead of taking the time to write something worth reading?

RC 24-4-19

Quickie about Westminster

“Politics is, always has been, and always will be, a game played by egos, enjoyed by idiots and rued by all.”

RC 24-4-19

Quickie about Europe

No-one’s mentioned Brexit for a week or two, so I’m assuming everything is perfectly all right now?

RC 24-4-19

St. Gorges Day

Today I crashed back into normality with such force I left a crater the size of Alaska.

The joys of a relaxed Bank Holiday disintegrated into a dark cloud of Management Wankspeak and Head Office Pressure from a group of ‘higher-uppers’ who seemed distraught to be back at work for the first time in five days and determined to take it out on those below them.

Tossers.

Anyway – I battled on through the pain and managed to visit all 4 garages I control in one day, which is no small achievement (especially given that every few minutes I had to reply to another pointless, but apparently urgent, e-mail from Those Above Me.)

We were selling off Easter Eggs at a ridiculously low price, and I’m guessing there must be a website somewhere on which the gluttonous masses of Suffolk notify each other when there is cheap chocolate to be had, because we had a constant stream of fat-arsed, manky-skinned, American-looking Neanderthals streaming into each garage to fill their bingo-winged arms with goodies to take home and indulge in.

It turned my stomach, but at least the shelves are empty now and we can fill them up with sun-care products. Nothing like a hot weekend to get your senior management orgasmic about cashing in on the After-Sun.

RC 23-4-19

Hank Boliday

Here I am, back at work again.

I don’t mind, really. There’s quite a nice atmosphere around. Everyone seems delighted to have had decent weather over the long weekend, and seem determined to enjoy today before we fall back into the regular routine of monotony tomorrow.

I got to have a nice bike-about last night, and it was hard to remember that it was only the middle of April! I’m sure it was only a week ago (Sunday last) that I had 4 layers of clothing on to combat that bitter wind. Yesterday evening it was like Summer in the Mediterranean. Funny how quickly things can change in this weird and wondrous climate our little island exists in.

I heard a great ‘countryside saying’ from an elderly Suffolk gentleman – “When the rooks built their nests at the top of the trees; Summer will scorch, with barely a breeze.” I don’t know if that’s wisdom or bunkum but I can tell you that, in the wood near our home, the new nests are as near the top as they can be without toppling off the branches, so hopefully that’s a sign of some great Summer weather ahead. Be nice if this carried on until October at least, wouldn’t it?

A quick thought on today’s blog title – I wrote it as a fun spoonerism, but wouldn’t HANK BOLIDAY be a great name for a grizzled American detective in a pulp fiction novel?

RC 22-4-19

Unplanned experiment

This is my day today, so far, written in list form:

Got up.

Had a cup of tea and a toasted hot cross bun for breakfast.

Drove to work.

Had a cup of coffee, with a plain hot cross bun.

Did some work on computer.

Helped out in our serving booth.

Popped over to supermarket staff canteen for lunch, having two of their luxury hot cross buns (made that morning in the in-store bakery)

Helped a lady who had (somehow) got our diesel pump nozzle stuck in the side of her car.

Chatted with a member of staff, who had brought some home-made hot cross buns for us to share on our break.

Tidied my office for the first time in three months.

Drove home.

Sat in garden with Philippa, who had kindly spent the afternoon baking some hot cross buns ‘because I know how much you like them’….

My conclusions?

a)    Hot Cross buns taste much better when soaked in butter.

b)    It is possible to go an entire day eating only Hot Cross buns.

c)    If I see another Hot Cross bun this year, I’ll throw myself off a cliff.

RC 20-4-19

1920 BST

I'm the real martyr...

I might be the only manager in our entire company who hasn’t taken advantage of his position and given himself the long weekend off. I am working today (albeit only until lunchtime) and I shall be working again on Monday.

Happy Easter, everyone.

RC 20-4-19

Climate change (card edition)

Tonight, there is a programme on BBC TV all about the upcoming catastrophe of climate change, and whether or not we still have a chance to reverse our effect on the environment.

They can save themselves the bother, because I think I’ve identified the solution. Forget wind farms and eating insects and electric cars and all those other silly scientific suggestions that are being bandied about. I have the one step we can all take that will slow down our poisonous, ruinous global legacy.

Ready?

Stop buying each other greetings cards.

Seriously – the whole thing is an absolute nonsense, and must be terribly detrimental to the world around us.

I understand that it’s nice to send Christmas greetings to people you won’t be seeing during December, and it’s nice to post Happy Birthday wishes in card form to distant friends and relatives, but our supermarkets now have a large section full of Easter cards. EASTER CARDS…..

I look at the shelves and all I see is a group of trees that were massacred for these stupid little £2.50 ‘Happy Easter’ folds of cardboard. AND THEY’RE ALL WRAPPED IN PLASTIC!!!

Think of the destruction of the forests that goes into the construction of these damn things; think of the harm the waste that is thrown away afterwards is doing to our oceans and wildlife; then think of the answer to the question ‘for why?’

And the answer to that question?: So that you can purchase a pathetically-written, poorly-manufactured, expensively-priced piece of envelope filling in order to tell someone something that you should be telling them to their face every day; so that they can proudly display it in their home for a few days before adding it to the pile of discarded shite that we humans churn out constantly and unnecessarily; so that you can continue lining the pockets of unscrupulous companies who prey on your need to feel like you’re being a perfect friend.

It’s ridiculous. It’s wasteful. It’s unnecessary.

It must stop.

(At least today’s blog wasn’t a rant, right?)

RC 18-4-19

Morning remorse

God, I’m sorry about yesterday’s blog.

The disappointing thing is that I’d only drunk a couple of glasses of wine. My intake of alcohol has been so low since Mathew was born that half-a-bottle of Rioja sent me spinning and heading for the keyboard.

Yeah, I’m a lightweight, and I don’t care.

RC 17-4-19

A littler rant (a rantette, perhaps?)

I don’t watch the news at all these days, but obviously the garages of which I am manager are also purveyors of newspapers, and I notice that the front pages have become amazingly Brexit-free over the past week. It’s almost as if nothing outside of ‘The European Problem’ existed for weeks on end, and now it gets barely a mention. It’s almost as if the Brexit delay until October has made it disappear from the consciences of the masses. It’s almost as if the self-serving, money-grabbing artichokes that run these media companies just leap on whatever is getting the ‘click-throughs’ at that given time and sensationalise them for profit without thinking about the long-term effects on the everyday folk who waste their money on buying their turgid output. Isn’t that what basically got us into the whole Brexit mess in the first place? People basing their votes on the bullshit in print? Whichever way you sat on the Euro fence you were misled by the bollocks-spouters in Wherever-They-Are-Now-They’ve-All-Left-Fleet-Street.

The good news (from their point of view) is that no-one in this country ever learns anything, so the papers are still flying off the shelves, and when Brexit roars back onto the covers later this year, they’ll probably fly even higher.

Is it obvious I’ve been drinking this evening?

RC 16-4-19

WARNING: BIG RANT

We took Mathew for his first dip in a swimming pool yesterday. Our local leisure centre does a nice little ‘newborns only’ session every Sunday morning and we want him to get used to it as soon as possible. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not expecting him to get a 200metre swimming certificate before his first birthday. It’s just that I’ve seen a lot of toddlers get freaked out when they’re first dropped into a pool or the sea, and it would be good if he was spared a shocking encounter that might scar him for life.

The activity itself was great, but what happened afterwards left me fuming and despairing and I must get it off my chest or I’ll end up with an ulcer, or explode with anger at an employee who hasn’t really done anything wrong but just happens to be in my way when my internal pot boils over.

The last time I went swimming, those showers you have on the way back to the changing room from the pool itself were just there to rinse off the chlorine before you put your clothes back on. Now, it seems, they are there to be used for giving yourself and your family a weekly full-body scrubdown.

Honestly – I’m amazed some of these people didn’t turn up with a basket full of washing.

I’m sure the first person that did this did it in good faith. They probably thought “If we take shampoo in with us, we can wash the kids’ hair on the way through and save them having to get wet again at home by having a bath.” Then, as happens in every aspect of life it seems, other people spied what happened and, being the shit-eating sheep that they are, decided to leap onto the idea and let the swimming pool cover the cost of a big chunk of their water bill.

So can I just pass on a message to the other people who were there today? Just on the off chance that one or two of them might be reading this?

“The showers are NOT THERE for you to shampoo and condition your brood’s hair. Stop clogging up the drains with your exfoliating body scrubs, stop abusing the generosity of the owners and STOP HOGGING THE SHOWERS FOR TEN MINUTES you pr**ks.”

Now if you’ll excuse me, I really must start work.

RC 15-4-19

Mood, etc. (update)

A couple of days of bright sunshine, albeit with a cool breeze, and I finally feel as if I’ve shaken the heavy cloak of Winter from my shoulders.

As I type this, there is a bright sun still slowly making its way across the expanse of our back garden, and a beautiful blue sky that is only slightly broken up by some lumps of cloud. We are settled nicely into British Summer Time, and we have a good half-year ahead of us before I need to start thinking about sinking back into my pit of dark-night despair.

Lovely.

RC 13-4-19

Mood linked to surroundings

It rained today. Almost continuously. I had plans to build up my cycling regime and maybe spend some time in the garden, but no. The Gods of Suffolk Life deemed fit to shit on my dreams again and confine me indoors like a prisoner.

Philippa says I can’t complain. She says that weather forecasting is now as accurate as it’s ever been, and if I decide to ignore the warnings and expect the best then that’s my fault and I can’t rail against Nature. She said, rather sarcastically I feel, “If only there was some kind of app on your phone that showed you very clearly what the weather would be. Why hasn’t someone invented one yet, I wonder?”

I punished her by staying in her presence and giving her another hour of my mood.

I then spent the rest of the morning blindly hoping against hope that the weather would change and I’d still be able to play outside, but no. Thankfully, Mathew was on hand and able to drag me out of my self-induced self-pity and remind me that there are good things in my life and that The Forces of The World are not conspiring against me.

I wonder if he’ll be this useful when he can talk? Right now I can read his expressions and interpret them how I feel, so in my mind he sees me as a fun, caring, talented father. When we get to the stage that he can vocalise his inner feelings I might be in trouble. My illusions might be shattered. These times when he can lift my spirits with a gurgle and a grin might give way to even more pain as he reacts to my approaches with disdain. How long have I got before the reality of our relationship is thrown in my face and I consider it less painful if I simply withdraw from interaction with him instead of setting myself up for emotional rejection?

God, I wish it was sunny.

RC 9-4-19

Silky

I feel chipper today, as it feels like a bonus day off. I’ve already had to answer four work-related calls and spent two hours deciphering e-mails, but I’ve done it all wearing pyjamas, so it’s good.

I might see if I can get permission from Head Office to spend one day a week working in my dressing gown. I believe I would be more productive as a result of being more relaxed, so they’ll get far better financial figures from me (if you’ll excuse the alliteration.)

Not sure if they’ll go for it, but you can’t blame a girl for trying…

RC 8-4-19

Yesterday (all my troubles seemed something-or-other)

It was weird to work a Saturday again, but nowhere near as unpleasant as I had expected. When you work weekends all the time (as I used to) you forget how nice it is to have them; then when you have them off all the time (as I do now) you start to take them for granted, so going in yesterday reminded me of two things. No.1 – it’s really nice to not have to work on a Saturday, and No. B – it really isn’t that bad when you have to.

With less staff in, I had to do some customer-facing ‘proper’ tasks for a change, and I must confess it was nice to be doing something ‘on the floor.’ When I sit in my little office doing my little things I feel glad to be locked away and hidden from the outside world, but when I have to step into the light and talk to a few people it reminds me how much quicker time passes when you’re working harder. I do like interacting with my fellow humans, and I forget that generally they tend to be very decent and very pleasant. One unfortunate aspect of being a manager is that I normally only have conversations with customers who are pissed off and making complaints. So I start to falsely assume that everyone ‘out there’ is the same, but of course they’re not, and yesterday showed me that.

So I might adjust my working schedule a little from now on, so that I can actually spend a bit more time out-and-about alongside my employees. They might hate me for it, but I’m sure it’ll help me get a better understanding of what their worklife is like, and therefore I can be a better manager for them. And let’s be honest – even complaining customers are more fun to deal with than the Wankspeaking Self-serving Middle Management Scuzzbuckets I have to deal with from the office.

And now I’m going to stop typing about work, because IT’S MY DAY OFF!!!

RC 7-4-19

Swings and round things

I’m at work today, which is annoying, so I’m being rebellious by typing this blog post instead of sorting out my delivery.

On the plus side, I get to ‘work from home’ on Monday and Tuesday because my office is being redecorated and having new digital phone lines put in (or something.) If I was my boss I would have insisted on me basing myself at one of the other garages rather than let me lounge at home, but there we are. Those Above know best, I’m sure. I do have an almighty amount of boring shitty ‘paperwork’ tasks to perform before the end of next week, so maybe they’re hoping that me being stuck in my own house with no distractions from employees will mean I’m more productive. Shows you how well they know me…..

RC 6-4-19

Scrambling rambling

I’m afraid these Rory-Not-Posting-As-Often-As-He-Used-To weeks may become more of a feature as the year progresses. Having a full-time job involving dozens of staff members in four different locations and being a parent of a little one gives me plenty of stuff to blog about but precious little time in which to do it. I hope to get into a better routine with it, but I can’t promise anything.

Are there set ages, by the way, at which a Newborn becomes an Infant? And then an Infant becomes a Toddler? And then a Toddler becomes a Child? Mathew is into his fourth month of life now and I’m not entirely sure how to describe him.

And I promised not to mention this topic again, but I thought I’d share with you a word I have made up, which I believe perfectly sums up how we’re all feeling about the main political topic that has been dominating our lives for an eternity.

I am now suffering from Brexhaustion.

RC 5-4-19

New month, old fools (an afterthought)

April Fool’s Day.

Another parliamentary debate about BREXIT.

Has anything ever felt more appropriate, ever?

RC 1-4-19

1730 BST

New month, old fools

It’s a nice bright day today and I’m feeling buoyant.

In celebration of “April Fool’s Day” (probably my least favourite forced annual date-of-note) I present below a small collection of genuine, and genuinely awful, tricks that I know for a fact have been played on this particular date, and the resulting consequences. These all involved either me personally or people I have known.

1.    One of the prefects at my High School told a 12-year-old girl she had to go to the Headmaster’s Office because her mum had been murdered and she had to go home early to help clear up the blood.

The prefect was suspended, and stripped of his ‘Prefect’ status, and we all had to endure a boring assembly given by a child psychologist.

2.    An old work colleague of mine thought it would be ‘a giggle’ to convince someone with a nut allergy that the coronation chicken sandwich they had just eaten contained peanut oil and peanut butter.

The tricked person went into a panic attack, which was then misinterpreted as anaphylactic shock. Paramedics were called and they were seconds away from administering adrenalin when the ruse was revealed.

The trickster got fired, and a punch in the face.

3.    A girl I had taken out for a meal on Valentine’s Day (our only date) called me on April 1^st to tell me that we’d had a one-night stand that night, which I had forgotten due to alcohol, and that she was now pregnant with twins and they were definitely mine.

I was halfway to the airport with a packed case before she called me back to say “April Fool – you just fell asleep on my sofa”

My conclusion?

People, generally, are stupid, uncaring bastards who think belittling, scaring and abusing others is acceptable behaviour. April Fool’s Day is just an open invitation for twats to behave like twats and it should be outlawed. Anyone who finds humour and enjoyment in the degradation and humiliation of their fellow humans should be flayed in public by a trained torturer.

RC 1-4-19