My Ridiculous Life In London

Discretion Advised

2008-08-11T20:31:00.002+01:00

So what about when ridiculous things stop happening? Unfortunately it doesn’t mean I run out of things to say. There’s been plenty of embarrassing nonsense to tide me over throughout my life and the past few weeks have proved no exception.

For the past four years or so, I’ve avoided eating wheat. I was having, shall we say, digestive problems. A quick trial at cutting out a certain pesky grain saw a swift alleviation in symptoms. My avoidance of wheat caused people to fall into two categories. The first acted as if sponsored by the World Wheat Council and instructed me that by giving it up I was only making things worse and so I was doing myself no favours and they once had this aunty who didn’t eat it for twenty four years only to find out she was allergic to everything but wheat.

The second category saw this as a moment to demonstrate some remarkable ignorance. “Can you have cake?” they would ask. “What about bread? Pasta? Baguettes?” Of course, the answer to all of these is, bloody hell, no. People with first-class Oxbridge degrees were asking if wheat was found in potatoes or rice or asking what corn flakes were made from (er, corn?).

There was actually also a third category who would ask immediately what would happen if I ate wheat. They deserve no mention here.

So after years of being awkward in restaurants, overspending in the supermarket and generally leading a miserable existence, free of Danish pastries, cookies and Bran Flakes, events took a turn for the infuriating when I started to realise I had digestive problems all the time anyway, despite the food fad. Even the occasions when I gave in to pizza failed to produce any consistent results.

A quick stop in at the doctor’s of a morning lead to an in-depth discussion of the properties of my turds before some prodding of the abdomen by cold hands. A blood test was allegedly the next step. Smashing, I thought, some time off work and a manly stab in the arm. I find injections quite exciting. Perhaps I should have been a junky. You get the chance to man up in the face of impending physical abuse and there’s always the chance you might catch something nasty from an NHS needle, which will make a chucklesome tale to beguile any dinner party.

Luckily, with a hospital behind my house, making the most of their drop-in blood test service was practically no hassle. I warned my old job that I would be late, confident no-one would notice either way. I popped down after a modest lie-in to join the queue. Patients were required to take a ticket and wait for their number. I enjoyed the nostalgic trip back to the days of waiting for an assistant to fit new school shoes in Freeman Hardy Willis for a brief moment before becoming sidetracked by guessing which macabre reasons had drawn such a collection of people to have their blood sucked and tested on a sunny Friday morning. I hoped I looked healthy enough not to fit in, but kept a low profile with my nose in my book should anyone find out I was there for something so middle-class and self-indulgent as suspected IBS.

My turn was soon called and I followed the signs into a sizeable room where a row of large Caribbean ladies were busily extracting plasma and the like from hundreds of arms an hour.

“Have you fasted?” the lady barked as I sat down. I thought she was accusing me of flatulence until my brain processed the ‘s’.

“No,” I said, finding the question about as irrelevant as asking a bus-driver if he’s ever been to Switzerland on a singles’ mountain-walking holiday.

“Right then, can’t do that test,” she declared, scribbling notes. I felt like I was being accused, but moved on, seeing as I couldn’t exactly go back to earlier that day and not have a bowl of Rice Krispies.

In a jiffy, I was on my way back to the flat, sporting a manly plaster on my forearm with a small dot of blood seeping through. Gosh, I had really been in the wars, hadn’t I? I was a little dismayed that the whole process was so speedy, as I would have been on time for work had I set off then. Back in my room, I stuck on a DVD to make sure I made the most of my hospital appointment excuse.

Getting the results, however, was not so good. Not because I have crap guts - I still don't know. Just getting my hands on any sort of feedback required dedication and perseverence. A bit like being a record-breaker. I dashed out of my new job one lunchtime several weeks later to hear the good or bad news. The surgery informed me I would have to ring a special results hotline. It sounded a bit like a premium number for erotic chat but I was informed it was a reliable service, operating nine to five, every day of the week, apart from Thursday. And what day was it? Thursday.

I rang on the Friday and finally got through to a friendly sounding Indian man. I told him I was after the number for the results line. “That’s me!” he exclaimed in a voice similar to someone spotting themselves on the telly. He had soon calmed himself and had my results to hand. “Oh, oh dear,” he began, “I’m sorry, but a doctor will have to phone you back.” It all sounded terribly ominous and I reacted by chuckling to myself. I somehow didn’t trust this man’s medical diagnostics and looked forward to hearing from someone who wasn’t a receptionist.

Said doctor rung when I was on my way home, wedged onto the upper deck of the 168, thumbing a free copy of Dazed & Confused while wondering which of the recently boarded characters would come and squeeze into the seat next to me. The doctor ran through that everything was in order during a conversation which thankfully appeared quite innocent to any eavesdroppers. And in the confines of a cramped bus, I’m sure every word was inescapably audible. “But I understand you’re still having some trouble?” he asked. Not wanting to launch into my digestive history on a packed bus of fellow ninety-pence commuters, I nodded stupidly.

Shouldn't've Said That

2008-07-30T19:29:00.003+01:00

I’m starting to worry there might be something about my face which causes others to impart unto me dark secrets they wouldn’t normally share with others. Or maybe not. But a couple of recent events have led me to wonder. And they seem to involve eye-care.

It kind of goes back to my less than 20/20 vision. No-one realised I was short-sighted until I was about fifteen, which went some way to explain my lack of prowess with ball sports: I couldn’t see the bloody ball. I have been shoving contacts in my eyes since I was twenty, but prudently booked a quick check-up with the Camden branch of a well-known national chain of opticians. “You’re eyes are infected,” the optician said, having prodded around for a bit and squirted some colourful dye onto my eyeball’s surface, “well, your eyelids are.” Great, I thought, until I was informed that I couldn’t wear my contacts for five days until eye-drops had sped the infection on to recovery. This would mean wearing my glasses, unless I fancied spending the best part of week ignoring friends, talking to strangers I have mistaken for friends, falling down and getting run over. Which I didn’t. Although perhaps it wouldn't be too different to how I usually spend my weeks.

However, my glasses had rarely seen the light of day. I overwore my contacts and I was proud of it. I did not identify myself as a glasses wearer. Mostly because I only had an old pair of NHS specs whose ends I had chewed and whose lenses were scratched. Shamefully, I wore them to work, on the train, in the street and around the flat. I chose to go to the gym blind however, reasoning that although I had already achieved the pinnacle of embarrassment there, there was no point adding to it.

The resulting epiphany was I decided I had to get new glasses sorted out. Maybe I would need trendy media specs for my trendy media job. What I didn’t realise was that this would involve numerous trips back to the branch for fittings, trials, appointments, inquisitions and general catch-ups. I had the entire branch’s staff giving me feedback on how I looked in the majority of the frames on offer (before embarrassingly informing them I would be back after payday when I would actually be able to afford the blessed things).

But it was during one of the fittings that the overshares with the staff began.

“What do you reckon’s worth more, mate, a tonne of iron or a tonne of steel?”

I wasn’t sure what to answer. Was this some sort of science test? Had GCSEs returned and would I be expected to show my working out? “Erm, I’m not really sure,” I began tentatively, trying to focus on the matter at hand: glasses. “Maybe steel,” I ventured eventually, “cos iron is untreated.” I had no idea what I was talking about.

“And what about nickel?” he asked.

Flummoxed, I speculated further, unsure as to what aspect of my appearance might have suggested that I had any interest in metallurgy or commodities trading. “Why do you ask?” I said.

“Oh we’re just clearing out the basement.”

Logical enough, then. Turns out this is the sort of stuff kept under the shopfloor of your high street optician. You might raise your eyebrows or you might not care. Maybe it was just a bit of filler chat while we fiddled with my new frames. But then said trained optician begins recounting to me how he suspected the value to be about “six grand” and that he used to drive around with a mate’s truck and empty recycling containers of their precious nickel and steel cans and make a fortune selling everything on to scrap merchants. “We stripped Battersea Power Station down to nothing,” he went on, before finally pausing to ask, “You’re not a copper, are ya?” I answered truthfully that I wasn’t, withholding that part of me was contemplating shopping him to Crimestoppers. Not sure why he only asked that AFTER incriminating himself extensively.

The tales of recycling theft days were long and tedious and I was not sure what sort of responses were expected from me. I wasn’t exactly impressed. And to be honest, I wasn’t hugely interested. Awkwardly enough, I managed to tear myself away and pay and then leave, worried I might now risk going daaahn for a stretch for Association with Criminals or some similar bylaw.

But it seemed the overshare mentality was shared by his colleagues. My next visit saw an employee asking me for advice concerning her mother’s career in Asian banking, going so far as to disclose her mother’s salary and work history, as well as alluding to racism rife within the industry. Again, I stole myself away, disinterested and slightly embarrassed.

It’s one thing to make conversation, but there is something of an art in keeping things appropriate for both parties. Obviously, I’m a fine one to talk, divulging away about myself on this very page, but out and about, surely some finesse is required to prevent embarrassment, awkwardness and wanton self-incrimination...?

Meathead, Part II

2008-07-28T20:38:00.002+01:00

So while it might seem fine to suffer life-threatening accidents in one’s own time, dealing with their consequences at work leaves a little something to be desired. The impact of the bench-press bar being dropped on my head left me with quite a shiner the following day. I had an imprint on my cheek below my eye, as if I had smeared on some purplish war paint before playing American football. This was going to be hard to explain to co-workers come Tuesday morning.

I managed to saunter in without too much bother, but was soon cornered in the kitchen by some inquisitors.

“Taken a knock to the head?” someone asked.

My formulated excuse was simple. I had slipped on some wet tiles in my kitchen, thanks to the slovenly lifestyle choices of my ‘stupid’ flatmates. I hadn’t just fallen over, but had spun into the air as if in some awful Hollywood comedy aimed at under-tweens and frat boys, using only my face to grab onto a kitchen work surface to decelerate my descent. Thusly, I had twatted myself.

But why the excuse in the first place? Vanity, I suppose. And also a dying hope to save some face, as it were. People at my work already thought I was stupid, so why give them further evidence of my stupidity in my private life? It would only add to my reputation as an idiot that I was such a weakling that I collapsed under weights in the gym. Slipping in water could befall anyone, no matter how muscly, and seemed the perfect cover-up.

I did however miss an opportunity to make the entire fiasco fully acceptable. Somebody put two and two together and asked the following question, “Were you drunk?” Although it was a Monday night, had I confessed inebriation, I would have enjoyed a little of legend status among the self-proclaimed office banter-mongers, hopping from desk to desk saying, “Ha, golly, Rob is such a legend – apparently he was wasted and smacked himself in the face with a kitchen worktop.” Not needing this validation, I replied, with a vague sense of honesty, that I was not drunk.

I have missed this chance previously when telling another colleague about the state of my IKEA bed. Namely, that all the slats seem to be falling through the frame at will, leading to my suspicion that the bed has been broken. “ Were you shagging on it?” was apparently the obvious question, and to me, the obvious answer was, “Er, no.” There was a girl in the bed but no conjugal thrusting shattered those slats. Had this been the case, I would have again achieved a big of ‘ledge’ status among the bored and the artless. Never mind.

But back to my sore head. Throughout the next day I failed to be productive at all. This was, of course, no different to my usual professional performance, but only on this day I felt sick AND I had a headache. I later realised this might have been concussion. Having felt like a fool all day, I resolved that I was owed a day off and followed up with a sickie the morning after. Surely massive head injury had earned me a lie-in and some prolonged channel-surfing.

I’m not sure work were bothered by my absence. They were also slightly indifferent the best part of a month and a bit later when I handed in my notice. “It’s not for you, is it?” my line manager asked sweetly. Erm, not really. They were at pains to point out I did not need to see out my notice period, but I was clear that I needed to stay for at least one more payday.

I thought I might finally reveal the truth about my head injury once my departure was imminent. That I might confess that the purplish line that gradually turned deep brown before migrating up my face and circling my eye, leading to my resembling a boozer pugilist, was in fact down to my utter failure as a gym-user, rather than attributable to any comedy mishap brought about by my flatmates’ antipathy towards a tidy kitchen. But I didn’t.

Meathead, Part I

2008-07-20T19:21:00.002+01:00

There’s something truly awful about going to the gym: the other people. I think it must be equally as bad for both sexes. Girls have to deal with skinny minnies parading around in tight leggings and needlessly flattening needlessly flat stomachs, while working up an unwomanly sweat in many a jiggling contraption. For the boys, it’s not much better. Chaps generally tend to go to the gym in order to get muscles. But then each gym is filled with characters so huge that intimidation is difficult to avoid. We skinny folk cower in the corner, while the fat lads get lost somewhere in between, neither group getting anywhere while the perennially muscular buffen up further still.

Nevertheless, I still occasionally get in from work, eat something disgusting and cheap, pull on a tracksuit and head out to the local gym round the corner from the flat. I’ll never be one of those monsters but it’s nice to blast away the cobwebs and manufacture some endorphins to see one through the rest of the week.

One of the things I hate the most is the bench press. This is where you lie down on your back on a bench and repeated lift a loaded bar above your chest. It’s difficult, everyone looks to see how much you are lifting and, in my particular gym, it is situated right in the middle of the floor. So while I quite like to slip in and work out inconspicuously, plucking up the mood to get on this device requires striding over to it as if declaring “Come and see how much I can lift!”

How much I can lift is, of course, not very much. It doesn’t help matters that my inherent dislike of intensive physical labour makes it difficult for me to bother to push myself enough to make any real progress. And before this descends into the vacuous bile that is weight-training discussion, I hasten to add that this is heading somewhere typically ridiculous.

It was a Monday, not long ago, and I was in the midst of being very disciplined about going to the gym. I approached the dreaded bench press with dignity and pride and proceeded to load up and get repping. I was determined to push myself and did more sets than normal. In addition, I was aware of one of the regulars ‘observing’ me via one of the mirrors. This was mildly offputting: people should be focussing on themselves as far as I’m concerned. Nevertheless, I pressed on, quite literally.

At the end of each set, the bar needs to be placed back on its rack. There are hooks to rest it on and the bar has to be lifted over and on to these. Whatever happens, you need to make sure you have enough strength left in you to do this because, if you can’t, there is nowhere else for the bar to go...

Holding the bar in its highest position at the end of the set, I decided I could squeeze out one more repetition, just to push myself that bit further. As I brought the bar down, I realised this was a terrible idea, akin to crossing the road without looking or opting to take a first job in the headhunting industry. Panic set in somewhere in my mind and my arms rushed to bring the bar back up before everything gave way and collapsed onto me. I managed to get the bar back up, feeling the muscles in my arms scream in protest.

But there was an unusual clunk as I realised I had pushed the bar up into the underside of the hooks instead of bringing it to rest on top of them. The last ounce of strength had accelerated the bar up into this underside with such force that it practically bounced off the hooks and began its descent towards me. My arms were again called to come to the rescue but they gave out almost immediately. They strained in vain, making little to no difference as I realised that a considerable number of kilograms of metal were hurtling towards my face. By considerable, I simply mean that it is more than anyone would want to catch with their head, not that I was shifting huge amounts.

I thought to roll the bar down my chest but as I went to move the bar, I realised it was heading for my neck and would only garotte me. Time slowed down, or at least my thoughts accelerated. Was I going to die? What would my skull look like crushed? Would it be embarrassing? I felt my eyes bulging in surprise as the one catastrophe I had always been determined to avoid was all set to befall me. From the depths, it occurred to me to turn my face. If I were to survive, I did not want a wonky nose.

This meant I was able to glimpse the unfolding of this cruel disaster in one of the gym’s distant mirrors. They come in handy for vain people wanting to admire their own gurning faces as they pump iron so there was no reason why they couldn’t serve to allow me to witness my own embarrassing death.

As the bar struck my cheek, I felt my legs sort of jolt up. I heard a slight crunch and detected a small seismic shift in the plates of bone forming my skull. The bar and its weights bounced up again as the atmosphere in the gym turned to one of emergency. I felt people’s attention drawn immediately. My arms worked to catch the weight and prevent it landing for a second time on my face. All the while I was staggered that my head had not exploded on impact like a smashed egg.

But the weight had been caught by something else. I became aware of the character who had been paying a bit too much attention previously. He had dashed over from his bench and grabbed onto one end of the bar, holding its weight off of me. Meanwhile, another regular, a ratty man with a pony tail and short shorts, had taken up the other side. Together they hoisted it off me.

I sat up, a bit dazed. Everyone was looking and I detected chuckles. It was indeed funny. Mostly because I wasn’t decapitated. Had I been, maybe the chortles would have been altogether less hardy.

I immediately thanked my two rescuers as sincerely as I could, trying to laugh things off in the process, which was challenging given the pounding sensation in the side of my face. “If you want someone to spot you,” one said, “you should just ask.”

“I’m think I’m done with that for now,” I explained.

They went off and I stood there, dazed, drinking in the mortification as people lost interest. Was I concussed? Was I in shock? I felt like there was a lot of adrenaline coursing through me. It was like falling off a horse: I wanted to flee the scene but I knew I had to get back on. It probably wasn’t the smartest idea as I really had no idea what was what or potentially who I was.

Later on that evening, I decided to go up to one of the rescuers who was still around and thank him again. Sort of addressing the embarrassment head on so it wouldn’t become an issue. Or something. I played the angle that I was sorry for taking such a risk in the first place.

He looked down at me. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I did the same thing when I was eighteen.”

I failed to mention that I was actually twenty-three.

Ignorance

2008-07-19T19:36:00.001+01:00

The role of parents becomes increasingly harder to define the greater the number of years one has spent out of the family nest. A lot of my friends are simply bankrolled by their mothers and fathers while others use their homes as cheap accommodation and still enjoy bed and board at a bargain price.

Mine have been pretty hands off for a long time, occasionally helping out here and there but more or less happy to watch me make and resolve my own mistakes or to lend a hand when I crash and burn. The extent of our contact is a once-weekly phone call made by my mother during which we both fill each other in on the minutiae of our respective weeks. She knows I don’t want her judgment (disapproval) on what I have got up to, or I will simply withhold information, and I know how to sound interested when listening to stories about the neighbours’ new double-glazing.

A recent call did however leave me wondering what benefit these calls were having. Somehow, after exchanging tales of my friends’ more impressive careers and my sister’s more exciting social life, we got on to going through my monthly budget. Going through my monthly budget is like walking through a disaster zone minutes after a stampeding tornado has ravaged everything in sight and rendered all life meaningless. As soon as my money comes in, it flies off in countless directions. I am typically buoyed by the influx and allow myself a few frivolities, which generally result in the feast turning to famine with three weeks to go before the next pay date. It’s called being an idiot and it is a field in which I excel.

We went over my outgoings: gym membership, phone contract, internet, council tax and rent, among a wealth (or poverty?) of other things.

“Yes, your rent does sound quite expensive,” she revealed. I informed her that rent is generally quite expensive. “But I think you may be living in an area out of your price range,” she went on. Nice. A cuss on my socio-economic status.

“I’ve been living here for nine months,” I pointed out, “It’s too late to tell me that.” I don’t mean to paint her to sound like some awful woman – she is, in fact, lovely. Just a bit misguided with advice occasionally. We agreed in the end that I was probably better off living in a nice bit than getting mugged on a nightly basis in some hellmouth with no conveniently located tube station.

“Well, I’ll have to go now dear,” she said. “Are you sure you’re alright though, you sound quite sad now.”

“Maybe because we’ve just worked out that I’ll be strapped for cash for a long time yet,” I mentioned. “I was fine until you phoned...”

No

2008-07-18T23:02:00.002+01:00

A career change was going to mean two things: no longer secretly hoping to fall under a tube train so as to avoid having to go into the office of a morning, and taking a massive pay cut if I was to do something remotely of interest to me. My foray into finance, albeit via headhunting, had shown me that I need to fill my day with dealing with firms that at least feel remotely relevant to my life. Had I had the luxury of not owing my college a shedload of cash, I would have gone straight into poverty-wage media. Now those debts were paid off and my tail was firmly between my legs from trying to do something I didn’t like, there was nothing to stop me being one of those trendy young things who get to wear jeans to work.

To my surprise, my career search saw a lot more takers than my previous attempts immediately following my degree. Getting through stage after stage by filling out application forms with an ironic tone or being rude in interviews seemed to lead only to success. But with this process ongoing, my attentions turned to ways to accommodate my new trendy media wage: a pittance in comparison to the heady days of, er, headhunting but I was determined to bite the bullet and tighten the purse strings if it killed me.

Luckily, the flatmates were surprisingly amenable to my suggestion that we could all save some money by renting out our fifth, spare room. As in, a fifth room which happened to be spare. Not the fifth of our numerous spare rooms. And so began Flatmate-Search 2008.

I decided to take the lead, having the least to do in my current job and also perhaps the most exacting standards as to what sort of people I would subject to my charming personality on weekday mornings (don’t speak to me and I won’t be horrible to you).

Carefully worded ads were placed, a photoshoot of the tiny, tiny room undertaken, preceded by clearing all the junk away that had piled up in there. We disposed of the former occupants’ post, found a new home for the vacuum cleaner and threw the rest over the edge of the balcony to the baying crowds below. We decided to specify that we were after a girl in order to prevent the flat from becoming too much more of a dirty pigsty than it already was.

Before long, I was sorting through emails, discriminating on misused apostrophes, embarrassing email addresses and assumptions of success in the process. We had a surprisingly high level of interest from French, Spanish and Italian girls, but did have to disappoint those who really couldn’t spell any English without errors. In retrospect, this sounds like abhorrent snobbery. Of course, everyone was given a fair chance and we met a number of these European ladies. I have been the linguistically incompetent foreigner in climes abroad myself and know how difficult it is not to come across as a stuttering simpleton even in a short email. But there has to be a line somewhere.

Within a week, we were gathered excitedly in the sitting room for the first round of prospective visitors. One French girl told us about her current living arrangements where her flatmate-cum-landlord would wait for her outside the shower to catch a glimpse of her in her towel. Another Italian girl asked if she could smoke in the room.

“No,” I said.

“Can I smoke out the window?”

“No.”

“Can I smoke outside?”

“No,” I said for a final time before showing her out rather swiftly. Obviously smokers deserve the same treatment as normal people, but I’m not sure which part of “We’re looking for a non-smoker” she didn’t understand. Probably the whole thing. When I wasn’t busy being the smoking-police, I was fielding idiotic questions. All too often we heard the same stream of useless blabber: “The room’s a bit smaller than I thought.”

“It’s exactly the same size as the dimensions we specified in the ad.”

“It’s a bit more expensive than I thought.”

“The price is, funnily enough, the same as it was on the ad.”

And other outpourings of speaking before thinking too numerous to bother typing out here. The power relationship in these informal chats is also difficult to define. The prospective flatmate needs to find out if he or she can bear to live with people such as us, and I’m sure a lot of people couldn’t. But maybe they should keep some things to themselves, such as not telling us that they are having to move because they argue too much with their current flatmates about washing up or because their landlord is kicking them out.

Nevertheless, a ray of light was found and everyone was happy. That was, until it was time to get the letting agents involved. Through this experience, I have perfected the skill of finally getting hold of people who systematically ignore their voicemail. I now only need to improve my performance in weaselling out of them what possible reason they could have to ignore me so shamelessly. Perhaps, just as the poor European girls we rejected would like to know on what basis we did so...

Ain't Gonna Go To Work No More

2008-07-12T14:52:00.002+01:00

You have to be at work all day so you might as well do something that doesn’t make you want to contract explosive food poisoning just so you can achieve a day of escape. As my mum depressingly says all too frequently, “You spend a large part of your life at work.” I first realised I hated my job several weeks after I started, but I didn’t realise I had realised I hated it until several months later. I found it hard to understand why I was in such a bad mood every morning, why I spent Sunday evenings filled with dread and why, on finally arriving home at the end of the day, I didn’t really recognise who I was. That last comment sounds a bit odd, but I was so bewildered by my first months in the office environment that my personality died away as the day wore on. By half past five, I would have completely lost my sense of humour and all ability to recognise jokes, as well as struggling to string together any halfway decent sentence that might pose any interest to any of my long-suffering flatmates.

Just after Christmas, I had given up mentally. Each day was to be survived, with hometime the only thing to aim towards. I completed my duties as required, but hardly clamoured for the extra work that others lusted after in order to gain good standing among the office’s important people.

“I think I hate everything about my job,” I told my mum on the phone.

“Yes, I thought it wasn’t right for you when you took it,” she said sagely. Right, great, so the whole time she waited for me to realise my mistake, simply so she could wade in with some quality ‘I-told-you-so’ statements and thereby prove that even though I had moved out of the family crotch, I was still a lost child.

I knew I never really wanted to do headhunting, but I thought it would be a good wage and a good start. To compound the mistake, I chose financial headhunting, just to ensure that what might simply have been boring was also strangely incomprehensible. Whenever anyone tried to explain financial aspects to me, I would switch off uncontrollably, becoming distracted by their socks or their fingernails, wondering what they had for breakfast or thinking about what I had had for breakfast. Other times, a bizarre mist would spread in my mind, paralysing all processes of memory formation and forcing me to fall back on my god-given ability to blag.

I could go on and on about the things I didn’t like but there’s no point being depressing. I vowed that I would enjoy the wage just until I had paid off the money I owed my college, then I was out of there, possibly smearing my dirty business on the walls as I waltzed out.

But having already decided to leave, it became even harder to at least look like I was performing. My behaviour deteriorated, I read online papers and Wikipedia in small, discreet windows on the screen, emailed friends at the same rate as normal spoken conversation, stared into space, learnt the Tube map off by heart, wrote to-do lists, doodled in pads, sat in the toilets playing games on my mobile and offering to make cups of tea every five minutes.

A partner I was working for pulled me into a room. “I’m just wondering where your head’s at, Rob.” Aargh someone was on to me. My head had just been reading the Wikipedia entry on the tiny Polynesian state of Tuvalu and now I was going to have to bring the blag like never before.

“What do you mean?” I asked, all innocence and incensed expressions. The kick up the arse kept me going a little longer and saw a bit more effort made begrudgingly. Then the grad scheme began to fall apart around us. The crumbs of the credit crunch had tumbled down to our level, business was slowing, partners were greying and I still wasn’t interested. My role in the firm became more freelance instead of being attached to a team, which meant I more or less reported to no-one. I worked on a project for six weeks and did nothing the entire time. I also completely got away with it as people just weren’t expecting such brazen dickheadedness from anyone.

Meanwhile, I was out most lunchtimes meeting recruiters, all the while making my own applications to any job where I might be able to wear skinny jeans and trainers and not have to shave. In other words: media. The recruiters proved useless, either harassing me about wholly unsuitable jobs, making me sit maths tests the moment I came into their offices or doing nothing at all besides displaying inferiority complexes that my field of recruitment was more prestigious than theirs. Recruitment’s recruitment and it just wasn’t for me.

Bagging an offer was an amazing feeling, as was dashing out of a company meeting to take the call informing me. I returned to that meeting unbearably smug and proceeded to neck as much free wine as possible in private celebration while everyone else squinted at tiny profit figures on the plasma screens. Pressed for a start date, I geared up to hand in my notice, coming in as the second grad to jump ship.

“I’d also like to resign,” I informed our lovely line manager.

I had barely finished the sentence when she broke into a relieved smile and asked, “It’s not for you, is it?” Fair enough I suppose...

Fowl-Spotting

2008-07-10T19:17:00.002+01:00

A boring day at work is not well followed by a commute during which people repeatedly try to kill you. Nevertheless, I have got used to taxi drivers attempting to knock me off my bike and even chortle inwardly when I realise that their wing mirror really did just speed past my handlebar at a distance of mere inches. But where cycling really falls down concerns British summertime: pissing rain. Cycling in drizzle is not so bad, but when each torrent that lashes down in your face, smacking your skin like the crack of a whip while your freezing wet feet frantically rotate as fast as they can to escape the ongoing nightmare, the prospect of meeting death under the wheels of a Hackney carriage becomes a tempting alternative. Such was last night’s journey home: an idiot in a helmet and sunglasses (to keep the water out my eyes, not just for being a poser) moistening at speed under cats, dogs and buckets of rain while waiting glibly for the lights to change. It’s not London’s fault it rains, and I’ve been soaked in a number of the world’s major and mediocre cities, but at that moment, I hated the place.

So when lunchtime today found itself bathed in modest sunshine, I took the chance to spend some quality time with London: I went for a walk in St James’s Park. Having already spent my allocated hour making and eating food, as well as conspicuously trawling the internet while getting tuna all over the keyboard, I decided to throw caution at my work’s face and head out for another hour.

Not long after I was standing on the bridge over the lake, watching tiny ducklings bobbing for food. I had become a simpering OAP and was carrying on as such in public. Although, in that park, it’s not really the public, but tourists and out-of-towners, and they don’t count. A family were orchestrating photos in Gujurati while Spanish students debated how on earth the ducklings managed to get out the water, given the lake’s kerbed edge. The edges of my work shirt probably figured in their holiday snaps, remnants of some weird bloke loitering in the way. Oh well, they would be back on planes bound elsewhere before long and our crossed paths would be untangled – a slightly melancholy reflection, given I was quite literally just gawping at a duck.

I walked one lap round the lake. And I mean I actually walked, at leisure, not the usual hasty hurrying and scurrying that normally characterises my day-to-day pedestrianism in London. I wasn’t even plugged in to music as my earphones have demised. But this isn’t about to turn into some description of an epiphanical moment when I realised that the pace of modern life was holding me down or that, yes, after all these years, I really did want to be a nun. Nothing of note happened.

However, I did notice a chap of similar age strolling anti-clockwise to my clockwise. As we passed a second time on the other side, I checked myself as I began to think him odd for his aimless walking, because I was doing the same thing. I had probably looked at him derisively for his NHS specs and ill-fitting shirt, but then I realised I was wearing NHS specs and had an ill-fitting shirt. So I stopped feeling superior, if only for a second. Here was a kindred soul. Perhaps a refugee from a different office hell.

I vowed to bother putting my contact lenses in more often and to cease this wasting away so as to fit my shirt better. I’m not being kindred souls with a speccy git in a school shirt.

When Your Life's In A Mess

2008-07-09T22:34:00.002+01:00

Blah blah blah London. It’s easy to see why the regionals get angered with so much of our media being focused on that bit what you see on the opening credits of Eastenders (and then the West as well). But one of the things about living here is that you occasionally have to leave to go to another part of the country. A friend’s 21st drew a couple of us out of our safe Oyster card zones, bus-bound for Liverpool. With the train lines currently being upgraded for leaf-on-track-resistance, we saved ourselves some quids by plumping for five and half hours of National Express hospitality and luckily, being the most annoying people on the bus ourselves, had a very pleasant journey.

We were also treated to a night out in the city. I saw girls flash their boobs in bars for cameras and leggy blondes wearing catsuits. Maybe this goes on in London, I’ve no idea, but if it doesn’t, it should. We staggered around between bars for the required number of hours, finally leaving a club and emerging into a scene straight from ‘When Binge-Drinking Britain Goes Wrong’. One friend insisted he would only walk to the taxi with his trousers round his ankles while local residents were more interested in our group’s lone ethnic minority, who had both ‘Estelle!’ and, more worryingly, ‘Tina Turner!’ caterwauled at her from a variety of boozed-up gentlemen. We joked that maybe they would shout out the name of any black person: ‘Trevor McDonald!’ or ‘50cent!’ These sorts of interjections would earn a punch and a stab back in London, but the Liverpudlians were all so friendly that we simply put this down to innocent enthusiasm rather than torch-wielding provincialism.

Where things really got silly concerns our journey home. Not only did we have the privilege of a stop off at Stoke-On-Trent, but we soon wound up stranded in Birmingham following motorway closures and missing drivers. There is little more tedious than middle-aged men swapping motorway horror stories and playing one-upmanship with knowledge of alternative A-roads, so I will keep things brief. But suffice to say, Birmingham bus station was awash with both lashing rain and lost busloads of passengers. We sat twitching nervously on the bus, eager for an explanation, until it transpired that taxis, yes, taxis were being laid on to see us the rest of the way to Birmingham.

We were soon squeezed into vehicle akin to a Scouts minibus with some fellow beleaguered passengers, chuckling along in a Britons-in-the-Blitz spirit as an argument erupted audibly in the next taxi between two equally snooty young ladies. We wanted to stay and watch but were soon on our way… into stationary traffic on the motorway. There we sat and sat while iPod batteries ran out and wills to live expired. It rained, it got dark, we got hungry, tired and bladders swelled for the lavatory. You can’t really fit a commode in an eleven-seater without demanding people do away with certain social mores, such as weeing in private, and so the misery was compounded.

Hours later, we were crawling on the Kilburn High Road into London, not having eaten since breakfast. Fair enough, we were not experiencing famine, but we were being exposed to every international cuisine of delicious food imaginable while trapped in the cramped confines of our taxi: there was Abyssinian, Vietnamese, Lebanese, Bangladeshi, Italian and every type of fried chicken. It was a hellish punishment out of an Alanis Morrissette song or a Greek myth and by the time we had directed our Birmingham-dwelling, non-English-speaking driver to Victoria station, it was past eleven. We had left at three. When you only get two days for a weekend, you can’t help stacking up a bit of resentment at spending a meaty chunk of it in motorway inertia.

Nevertheless, the adventure had its moments, including watching a girl drop her laptop off her seat and seeing the shocked faces of fellow passengers caught mid-fag break as the driver moved the coach along and they thought we were driving off without them.

The trip also allowed some savouring of that self-righteous feeling of going back in time when leaving the South East: “Oh look, a Wimpy Burger,” and “Why does the MerseyRail smell of peanuts?” Coming back to London had essence of homecoming about it, of slotting back into the rut I have scratched out for myself and I sat pensively contemplating this as the Tube bumbled along up the Northern Line: here was home.

There To Meet

2008-07-08T08:08:00.002+01:00

I used to think the garden at my parents’ house in Surrey was small, mostly because the surrounding gardens were all so large, that our little patch of lawn seemed to be ringed only by things you would keep at the far end of sizeable property chunk, smugly out of view of the actual dwelling. Compost heaps whiffed, horse flies flew forth from trash piles and bonfires billowed noxious smoke from burning branches across our drying sheets. Nevertheless, it now lives on in my mind as a patch of heaven.

Living in a flat means no garden. Not even a balcony, unless you count the rusting shell of a fire escape which juts from the kitchen door, still harbouring, after ten months, the rotting junk we cleared out the flat’s every nook and orifice on moving in. I suppose I could fashion a chair out of the recycling box, crack open a tinny and stare out yonder over the scene: a scratty row of garages, a ventilation shaft from the Northern Line, a number of patronisingly primary-coloured council blocks and there, behind the tree, a Camden streetsweeper simultaneously weeing and drinking a Fosters.

Luckily, being a stone’s throw from Hampstead Heath means I have thus far avoided such a vista. But even this happy proximity can be cause for complaint. Whereas at my parents’ I can roll down the stairs in my boxers and be on the grass and in the sunshine within moments and whereas, at college, each quadrangle had a lawn meaning you were never far from a green space, getting to the Heath needs to be an orchestrated experience. Alternatively, I can sit and pose in the shade on the pavement at any one of the cafés downstairs, sipping a bargain £18 coffee for the privilege.

What I’m jabbing at is that with a garden, taking the sun is a split second wish which can be fulfilled a split second later. Without one, getting to the Heath or nearest green space often involves a level of kerfuffle akin to making a purchase in Primark on a Saturday afternoon. Nevertheless, many’s the time we have found ourselves making the most of all the Heath has to offer. Apart from the cruising.

One weekend, after many phone calls and organisational emails, a crowd of us met for a picnic. The sun was coyly toying with its first summery weekend of the year and we picked a spot near the Hampstead Ponds from which we could marvel at the constant stream of visitors in estival clothes and ladened with hampers and wine bottles marching along the paths like an invading army. Within view and earshot were a large group of large Beryl Cook-esque Hispanic ladies, guffawing in Spanish and drinking beers.

We played Frisbee. Harmless enough, until I managed to gouge out half my wrist skin on a sharp edge. My friend’s daughter was incredulous that someone could draw so much blood with a Frisbee, in spite of my explanation and reconstruction of the rapidly spinning disc tearing up my flesh like a combine harvester in a field as it spun past my open hand and up my arm. Left with wounds suspiciously resemblent of self-harm, my only solace came from watching some girls with muffin tops having their dispoable barbecue put out my a Heath ranger, their offers of a free Tesco-value chipolata falling on deaf ears as they were ordered to extinguish. This in fact did remind me of college, where the porters would rock up and confiscate any item with which someone might be observed to have fun within the hallowed gardens: frisbees, balls, Pimm’s. The worst part was that we were dobbed in by the gardeners so frequently. On the Heath, the rangers tear around in tiny trucks and so are able to cover more infractions per minute than on foot.

Next on the agenda was a dip in the Mixed Bathing Pool. I looked at my open wound and hoped any nearby rats were decent enough to get out of the water to go to the toilet. Apparently you should pay to swim in the pool, but everyone just walks past the ticket machine, ignoring it as if some elderly relative. The enclosure was crowded with laddish blokes and foreign students. We ditched our shoes and clambered onto the pebble-dash jetty where the lifeguards stand. A dipped toe confirmed the water temperature as ‘inhumane’. My flatmate stood on the steps up to his knees and then got back out. I took his place and slid in at once, eager to get the process over with, gasping with eyes a-bulge as the icy brown water rose up my body, each inch a ballshock worse than the one preceding. I floated there treading water before bobbing off as one by one my internal organs shut down. My flatmate had reassumed his position on the steps, edging slowly into the water, only for some ‘lad’ in the pursuit of ‘banter’ to begin splashing him with vigour from the side and showering him in oafish handswipes of chilly chilly liquid. It was a situation in which screaming like a girl was the only option and flatmate gamely followed protocol.

The ‘lad’ lost interest and my flatmate dived in, the pain barrier having been broken. We later remarked that said ‘lad’ never managed to man up enough to get in the water and felt suitably self-righteous as a result. Another friend joined us and we sploshed around among the ducks, the swans and the floating detritus: fowl down, tree seeds and the odd lifebelt, to which I clung intermittently to stave off asthma attacks. I was obvioulsly no longer the swimmer I had once been and was utterly exhausted, hopping out after less than ten minutes with shrunken everything and chattering gnashers.

As an out-of-towner, it has been eye-opening to see the Heath as it really is: a place for everyone. Ugh this is getting a bit sentimental, but I have a point. Normally, to the outside, tabloid-reading world, the words ‘Hampstead’ and ‘Heath’ conjure up ideas of rummaging in bushes and lost MPs. In my experience, it’s all family outings, couple holding hands, dogs gallivanting and lycra-clad joggers running.

We’ve taken to dashing up there with the Aerobie of a weekend. Fewer sharp edges on which I can take my own life. I did however once throw it so hard it sailed off and eventually came into land in an unsuspecting pram. Suspecting infanticide, I cringed from afar, only to realise with joy that the baby was having its bottom wiped on a nearby changing mat. Another time, we were in a clearing of lawn, flanked by other groups of bare-chested young men throwing around Aerobies and kicking footballs, smugly aware we had the biggest Aerobie I hasten to add. A male tourist was walking past, chaperoned by some sort of local. Taking in the scene of me and my friends, he enquired of his guide, “Oh, is this the gay area of the Heath?”

I chuckled inwardly. Some people should stop reading tabloids.

TV Debut

2008-07-05T08:17:00.003+01:00

There are not many advantages to working for a beginner’s wage in a very posh area. Every morning when I am emitted from the hot bowels of Green Park tube, I become acutely aware of my relative poverty and subsequent shabby appearance. In cooler weather, the expensive suits on display made a mockery of my off-the-sales-rack M&S number, while during the deep-freeze of winter, successful business men displayed their wealth in impressive coat format, while I shivered under some tiny corduroy mistake I got off eBay five years ago for three pounds. My shoes were also no solace, a scuffed pair of imitation leather shufflers that I’ve had since the days I used to push trolleys round the car park in Waitrose Cobham, the equivalent of free school dinners to everyone else’s double burger with extra chips: four hundred pound brogues.

Making matters worse is my walk past both The Ritz and The Wolseley. I may as well have propped myself up on a crutch and held out a tin cup for coppers, though my bad shaving and terrible hair, both my own fault, no doubt exacerbated by prolo appearance.

But for all the raging snobbery, it’s nice to be in a posh bit: fewer tramps, swankier cars and gentlemen’s clubs with polished brass exteriors. Some days, while traipsing home, I could smell the cigar smoke in the air. So too could the Ethiopians who had been polishing the brass since dawn. I may not have wealth, but at least I have youth. While scraping their fortunes, these finance types have grown fat and haggard, which no amount of bespoke tailoring can vanquish. I can skip by, an impudent imp with no money, but also no cash-getting wrinkles. I tell myself they look at me jealously, but they are probably frowning at how the soles of my shoes are peeling away.

Come summer, and I am in a better position. In the sunshine, the less you can wear, the better. The real earners swelter behind expensive neckties and crystal cufflinks. I roll up my polyester trousers, cast off my elastene socks and give serious though to slipping out of my ten-pound work shirt and searing my pasty parts under the midday sun while lounging on the grass in beautiful St James’s Square.

Every bright lunchtime, this haven of fauna amid Georgian townhouses and angry taxis fills with office workers clutching bags of nosh from Eat, Pret and Itsu, mingling on the lawns with tattooed builders working in the area. Us grads have taken to ambling down there, albeit with cheaper food brought from home in trusty tuppaware, and rubbing sweaty shoulders with the West End’s rising stars in hedge funds and executive search. I may lack the required signet ring to fit in with the crowd, but my twelve quid white rimmed aviator sunglasses from River Island at least mean no-one can see the shame in my eyes. And it was indeed this yoof-fashion eyewear that prompted the latest surprising development to fall into my lap.

“There’s a massive sculpture in the square,” one of our jollier colleagues had informed us, “Fancy coming along for a gander?” I had to admit to not being interested in any highbrow art during my allocated lunch hour, but said I would more than likely be there anyway, doing my best to sustain heatstroke among tempura rolls and Greek salads. Turned out a Jeff Koons behemoth was residing on the grass prior to auction at nearby Christies. I had never heard of him and immediately accused my colleague of being a racist pig.

“What’s that big pink thing?” a fellow grad asked me later, we being the only two to escape to the square that lunch time. I smugly reeled off artist and information as if a general expert, much to their indifference. We were more excited to spot a TV crew, a boy with camera and a girl with boom, going from group to group, apparently gathering comment on the statue. Behind my aviators, I seethed fierce jealousy that we had not yet been approached, pretending to listen to my friend talking. Why were they asking the couple with a baby? They had a baby in the way and were clearly idiots! Why were they asking Woman With Book? She shook her head nervously because she knew it was our bloody turn.

Only after losing interest did they bound up, as if making the most of a veritable scrape of the barrel. “Hi, we’re from Richard & Judy and we’re asking what people think of the statue today.” They made Richard & Judy sound either like some sort of evangelical church that sends out missionaries among bored office cattle or like a far away place where people with inane questions come from.

“You’ve asked me before,” chirped my friend, confessing this was not her first time to be voxpopped for the show.

The boy and the girl were two of the nicest people I have ever encountered and clearly well trained in the art handling fame-hungry cretins such as ourselves. We had to stand with the pink sculpture in the background and describe our thoughts on it, all without turning to look at it. It’s funny how when you’re told not to do something that a compulsion to do so overpowers your every rational thought. Nevertheless, they assured us we were doing well and would make it onto the show that evening. I remember calling the sculpture “pink and shiny” and my colleague likened it to “intestines or haemorrhoids”. We thought we were hilarious and the nice boy and girl were happy to let us think they agreed.

Next we had to guess its value before opening up a pre-prepared golden envelope for the camera which revealed the true price of the artwork: a Tesco-value twelve million pounds. We did our best impressions of salt-of-the-earth outraged British consumers and I made embarrassing dad jokes before signing release forms and saying goodbye to the lovely crew while wishing they were our new best and only friends.

My friend immediately rang her mother to get our broadcast Sky plussed as we dashed back to the office to gloat and receive ribbings from jealous podfellows. Our genius aired just after five fifteen. I was still chained to my desk waiting to go home, but I received a text from an old friend not seen for years, asking what the devil I was doing working on the telly. As if.

I dashed home on the bicycle in time to catch my small screen adventure on Channel 4 +1, stopping only to notice that J from Five was basking in the sunshine on a bench immediately in front of my flat. While reheating beans, I willed Richard to stop gabbling over Judy until they finally showed the montage of clips in which I featured. I can’t have been on the screen for more than four seconds; my nose was a funny shape, my skin pale, my shirt creased and my voice strange. I bloody loved it. And then that was that. Back to banality. Nevertheless, it was enough to add a frisson of glamour to my tedious days. Imagine if I’d been on something higher end than Richard & Judy, maybe had a ten minute slot on Pebble Mill or something.

A flatmate soon arrived home and I fired my news at them: “Come and look out the window; J from Five is on our bench and he’s been talking to a tramp for the last hour.”

“I don’t know who J from Five is…”

“Oh. Well guess what – I’ve just been on Richard & Judy.”

“Wow,” he said, “That really is news!”

Pesach

2008-07-02T19:28:00.002+01:00

For most young people, moving to London is not simply a case of seeking out a swanky pad, wallpapering it to taste and then inviting all and sundry round for a flatwarming. Very few people can afford their first place alone and so to split rent, we embark on flat-sharing. Most of us gain experience of this in our uni towns, bickering about washing up, getting burgled and never buying loo roll. At college, I was lucky enough to be given a room with cleaner for the duration, though I did take part in a spot of sharing while living in Germany and got to see all the conflicts and conflagrations played out in beautiful Foreign.

In London, we were three flatmates with five rooms, having secured our ramshackle palace above the shops in Belsize Park thanks to one of our number’s decisive cheque-writing. The fifth room really lacked space enough to squash a spider, let alone swing a cat, so we endeavoured only to fill the larger fourth room. Our Gumtree ad posted, the popularity of our location saw our first prospective making contact within four minutes. We met a number of people and eventually found someone perfect, having been incredibly picky with the applications, turning down people for being called ‘Deano’, for playing the guitar or for describing themselves as ‘mad’, as well as those who professed that their friends would also describe them as ‘mad’, which everyone knows translates roughly as ‘boring’.

“I’m Jewish but I’m not really practicing,” our new addition had said when we met her for drinks one evening in Angel. As open-minded young people, this was a complete non-issue for us.

So several months later when I found myself sitting in my lounge wearing a yamukkah and chanting ‘Dayenu’, I began to wonder what we had let ourselves in for. I am no maverick when it comes to organised religion. Never christened or baptised, much to the chagrin of my only grandmother, church was where you had to sing carols at Christmas or watch coffins containing elderly relatives borne aloft by jittery oldtimers while someone’s toddler screams in the back row because the oppressive stench of death is getting on their wick. My mum had used the local Baptist church’s Sunday school as a babysitting service. During my year abroad, a friend wanted me to see an impressive church in her home town of Speyer in Germany. Having been to Rome and concluded that if you’ve seen one church, you’ve seen 'em all, I was less than interested. However, I was pleased at the provision of a sink in which to wash dirty hands - quite refreshing on a warm day. This was then pointed out to me as the ‘Weihwasserbecken’ or holy water font. Whoops. Her family were particularly amused by this story that evening, asking innocently how old I was at the transgression, expecting me to simper that I was five or six. They cleared their throats of embarrassment when I explained unashamedly I had done it that afternoon.

Our flatmate explained that Passover was the biggest event in the Jewish calendar and given that her family were in South Africa, it would mean a lot to her for us to join in. “Don’t worry,” I said, “We done it in RE.” I never go anywhere on a Saturday at the best of times, partly to avoid embarrassing drunks (such as myself) and mostly to preserve funds. Our flatmate crocheted us each a little skullcap, which I had thought was called a ‘chutzpah’ until the very last minute. A friend had to pin it down to my curls as it kept slipping off after my late arrival at the ceremony.

The coffee table was decked out with Seder, there were Haggadot for all and the TV, for once, had been switched off. I had begun things with a faux pas by sitting myself down on a spare stool and grabbing a spare glass of wine. There were awkward inhalations of breath all round. At the ceremony, a glass and a seat are kept free for the prophet Elijah, should he return, and I had plonked my arse straight down on his seat and was about to quaff his finest red plonk. I imagined a berobed and bebearded individual tapping me on the blasphemous shoulder and saying in a deep voice, “Excuse me but that’s my seat.”

We then proceeded with the ceremony but in a sort of Diet Passover version, having heard that the real deal goes on from sundown till the early hours. We dipped bitter herbs in salt water to remember suffering, but it was quite tasty. Wine was poured here and there, biscuits broken and hidden and a story read out, which we all took to varying degrees of seriousness, with some gushing in the multiculturality of the moment and others giggling like choirboys.

It was something I would never have had the chance to witness at home, Surrey’s greatest minority being people who live in caravans. Nevertheless, my disassociation with all of the major faiths can be attributed to my lack of comfort when it comes to group chanting. I just feel a bit silly. So after shouting out ‘Dayenu’ for the fifteenth time, the novelty began to wear off and I remembered why I had embraced heathenism. Things drew to an end, all were self-congratulatory and I marked the occasion with, “Does anyone mind if we watch Britain’s Got Talent?”

Rickshaw?

2008-07-02T19:15:00.002+01:00

Another way to get home after a well beveraged evening is to take a tuk-tuk. At least, I think that’s what they’re called. Maybe it's a rickshaw? The West End of London is crawling of a weekend evening with handfuls of shouty men calling to passers-by to see if they need a cycle-cab to take them anywhere. They seem to mostly be empty as the pedal around, with the occasional amused tourists jiggling around with the bumps in the road.

I had met an old friend after work on a Friday for a catch up. We were meant to be joined by a number of others, but in the end were ostracised like two old losers, perfectly content in each other’s company. She had been on it since four, working in a slightly more liberal and celebratory office, but I soon caught up. In Soho, we stopped briefly at a pub, where she got us a drink each. “Two sambuca shots,” she said to the barman as my jaw hit the floor.

In another pub, the surly pint-puller was not impressed at our handing over ten pounds with, “Get us anything you like.”

“Yeah, but what do you like?” he barked.

“Anything!” We ended up with two vodka and cokes.

In a swanky gay bar, I shelled out for expensive cocktails and then was determined to rely on youthful good looks to get the next two for nothing. Back at the bar, I slurred, “I want two more drinks but I don’t want to pay for them.” A very obliging barman without any sleeves told me to sit down before canvassing the clientele on their willingness to get our drinks in, before ending up covering our costs himself.

And all this before climbing into Mohamed’s tut-tut. Mohamed was from Kurdistan and became our best friend for the journey from the bottom of Soho to Tottenham Court Road. I kept asking if he couldn’t take us as far as Belsize Park but it seemed he was not keen to sweat through the ascent to Hampstead. Nevertheless, it seemed to take ages. I remember poking my head out the rain covers on Regents Street and caterwauling at others that I had been kidnapped. Eventually, my bladder took over and Mohamed made a pit-stop while I went to find a lavatory. I vaguely remember popping into a closing restaurant and asking to use their facilities in my most polite tone. Their point-blank refusal was met with me spying a sign to the toilets and following it down a subterranean staircase. But then I found myself standing in the middle of their kitchens. The doorstaff found me and told me that if I didn’t leave, they would call the police. I saw no downside to my mischief: “That’s fine,” I said, “But can I use your toilet first?” I was shoved out the door and only returned to the tut-tut after finding a pissoir outside.

Mohamed eventually managed to deposit us at our destination. Later, we were worried we hadn’t paid him, but a credit card statement revealed we had, which led us both to remark how impressed we were these contraptions have EFTPOS abilities. At the night bus-stop, another Londoner came to our aid, after spotting our difficulty working out which number to take home: a tramp with a Mohican and a ghetto blaster. Our gratitude was repaid by sharing our journey with him and sitting at the front of the upstairs on the N5, singing along and aloud to his tunes and also trying to encourage the other passengers to join in, which they, understandably, mostly refused. The next morning, we were thoroughly ashamed of our behaviour and relieved not to find the tramp under the bed. I have since seen him looking after rats in some shrubbery by the Royal Free Hospital: perhaps a vision of myself in future years…

Night Hike

2008-07-01T09:46:00.001+01:00

It seems my brush with dangerous home-journeying following excesses of partying and partaking has taught me nothing. At the end of spring, a college friend was throwing a belated flat-warming at the pad he shared just over in Archway. I took the bus there with some friends from West Hampstead and we even helped out some lost-looking New Zealanders, pointing them in the direction of the house party they were trying to find and agreeing that if either party, theirs or ours, proved boring, we would swap over.

The college contingency was thankfully small and we were able to stretch ourselves a little, getting to know ex-girlfriends of work-colleagues of flatmates of friends. We chuckled at the American frat-party style white-rimmed red cups on offer, until someone mentioned the unutterable words: beer pong. Far be it from this blog to turn into some binge-drinker’s guide to banality, I will go so far as to say that a combination of my poor throwing skills and our opponents’ accurate arm saw me swigging back large servings of beers and ciders. For those with class, beer pong involves lining up two sets of cups like bowling pins at either end of a table, with teams taking turns to throw a ping pong ball into the opponents’ cups and thereby forcing them to drink the contents. Hardly relative to London or exemplary of my time here in itself, but what happened next smacks of my ridiculous lifestyle.

Towards midnight I was verging on worse for wear and thought it best to make an exit for the sake of all involved, more as a precaution than anything else. The girls were being slow to galvanise and I soon caught wind that maybe they had not finished conversing with some of the chaps there. I was too late for buses and assured the host that I was happy to walk home.

Archway to Belsize Park should not take long – maybe half an hour.

I don’t think I got home till half past three, which means I spent hours wandering in some sort of twilight abyss. The bus route I planned to follow eluded me and I kept just taking right and left turns at random, at one point reaching Kentish Town and realising I’d gone too far south by a long way indeed. I may have staggered through estates and trespassed through gardens, tripped over kerbstones and bumped into lampposts. My feet were sore and I was very tired the next day; my attempt to get to bed sooner had failed entirely, with my friends possibly speeding past in a taxi while I hiked on. “Yeah you seemed oddly determined,” the host had said later, “but I thought I’d better just let you get on with it.”

Office Days

2008-06-28T16:25:00.002+01:00

Transitioning from student lifestyle to office slavery has been one of the defining changes brought about by my move to town. One thing I didn’t realise about work beforehand was that you have to be there ALL DAY. As finalists, we moaned about the hours spent in the library, but at any time, we could swan off and take a break, mooch around the shops, nap under the duvet or listen to some music. In fact, we could even listen to music in the library if we remembered to bring our earphones. Not being able to leave the office at will was, at first, strangely disconcerting. What if I got bored? Or if it was sunny outside? Or I needed to go to the shops? By 4.30pm, my legs would be twitching and I would be itching to bust out of the open-plan wasteland.

But working in the kind of firm where the partners frown at you if you laugh out loud, or if you stop to speak to someone about something other than work, or if you actually take a lunch hour instead of slurping down lukewarm soup over an unfinished document and answering your phone with a mouth full of avocado salad, it soon became apparent that leaving on time was also something that displeased the greater powers. So although I initially could scarcely make it through to 5.30, before long I was being reminded I could be merrily beavering away at my desk till at least seven.

At a communications meeting, a partner shared some observations concerning associate demeanour: “I walk through the office at 8am and no-one is there.” That’s because our contracts say we start at 9am. “And when I’m there at night, everyone has gone home.” And that’s because we finish at 5.30pm. Only we don’t: we ignore the contract and make out like we were being so busy and industrious that we didn’t even notice the time, whereas surely everyone is counting down the hours, minutes and moments since lunch. During periods of trying to improve my image, I would stay and see what I was missing. Not a lot really. I just lost a great part of my evening, but felt smug about every single person I outstayed. Soon enough, I was back on my marks for the striking of half past five and into the first bend on the route home before you could say ‘show hours’.

Other cardinal sins which drew the disapproval of the partners included, as I have mentioned, talking to colleagues, or at least indulging in conversation that was not strictly corporate. One way of deterring this seemed to be the dividers that separated most desks. Despite being open plan, most worker ants were separated from those around them by deep blue dividing walls that were just tall enough that you could only see the top tufts of hair of your neighbours. So in order to pursue an audible chat, you are forced to perform the ‘meerkat’ manoeuvre: standing up and surveying for predators, or, in other words, meddling partners. Should the coast be clear, you could then lean over and talk away. Or you could, as I eventually learned to, be as brazen as you like, and blether with the brethren till blue in the face, aware the partners were noting your crime, but also unbothered.

As it turned out, the dividers on one occasion turned out to be to my advantage. Whilst trying to make the most of things and salvage my reputation on my desk, or maybe because everyone else was busy, I was lunching alone at my computer. Fair enough, I was reading papers online, but at least I was projecting the corporate image so cherished by the big cheeses. On reaching my yoghurt course, I was relieved to have removed the lid without spraying myself in strawberry-flavoured calcium-rich low-fat gloop. Spoon in one hand and pot in the other, I was filling my face when my resting elbow slipped off the desk, shaking my forearm violently and causing me to launch yoghurt in a number of directions. I’m not sure how it looked because one of the first escaping parts struck me in my eye. The rest went in my hair and over my absent colleague’s work on her desk. Sat there, torn between panicking that yoghurt and contact lens were mingling together and endangering my sight and worrying that someone would see me with a face full of Muller light, I was rendered inert for several moments. Luckily, the office had mainly emptied for sandwich runs, but my saving grace was committing my calamity behind my lofty dividers. I was able to have a quick wipe with an important document before slinking out to the lavatories to remove the rest. I was spared embarrassment, but would still rather the dividers had been absent, seeing as I soon after emailed numerous friends to share the rather ridiculous story that I had managed to spill yoghurt in my eye.

P.A.R.T.Y.

2008-06-26T20:30:00.002+01:00

Moving to London as a young person brings with it many comments from those remaining in the home village about the nights out I must enjoy. I remember older work colleagues reminiscing about themselves as recent arrivals and how they would be out all nights of the week till 2am, following each madcap mash-up with a day of steaming alcohol stench in the office. “I don’t really go out that much,” I tell these people, much to their surprise. Part of the problem is not knowing where to go: being raised on a staple diet of cheesy clubs in Guildford or Oxford, the choice is a bit overwhelming. Most of the problem is not really being able to afford it. Everyone knows London is expensive and I’ve no interest in complaining about it. Maybe if I actually did some work in the office instead of writing this I would be on a higher wage and raking in the disposable income that would enable me to bop till I drop.

But occasionally the TV has to be switched off and abandoned and my presence is required out and about: friends’ birthdays. Email or message arrives with an invitation to ‘My Birthday Drinks’ and a date is scribbled in the diary.

I have varying levels of success with birthday parties. A close work friend was throwing an animal magic party for her daughter’s seventh and I was very excited to be among the invited attendees. The weather conspired against us, with flooding washing away most of the first petting zoo’s animals and a replacement company being used at the last minute, and with the rain continuing so that thirty screeching kids had to have their interactions with nature in one crowded living room. On arrival, I realised I had forgotten how loud and energetic children could be. I want to say I haven’t been near a child in ages, which makes me sound like a certain type of offender on the road to recovery. What I mean is that in my young person’s lifestyle, I don’t have any dealings with anyone under the age of twenty.

Nevertheless, before long, I was leading the pack and getting involved, drawing on experience as a teacher in Germany and a Cubs helper in Surrey to keep some semblance of order. The nice farm lady put me in charge of holding the albino hedgehog which the children were invited to come and stroke. This was difficult as, kneeling down as I was, it kept trying to bury itself into my crotch. I held it in outstretched arms, only to realise it had begun to relieve itself over most of my hand. The children recoiled in screams as warm browny hedgehog poo tumbled onto my forearm and jeans. Internally I was panicking and wanted to fling the hedgehog off of me but instead I had to remain calm as its gritty faeces slid into the folds of my clothes. The nice farm lady calmed things down by explaining to the children that all animals do in fact poo, even snakes; and I was given a wet wipe.

I seem to fare better with celebrations for those around my own age. Other parties and birthday drinks have seen me traipse all over London. Vauxhall’s popular Roller Disco proved eventful. From waiting for friends at the Tube station in retro short shorts and long socks with hair poking out of a sweatband, to the birthday girl’s inability to balance on her skates leaving her flailing her arms wildly until striking me smack in the face at the same time as I lurch to catch her as she tumbles over, it proved to be a memorable evening. The disco is a huge amount of fun and the diverse crowd adds to the amusement. The combination of booze and wheels-on-feet means you can’t drink too much because you’re skating and you can’t skate too much because you’re drinking. Nevertheless, I didn’t want my fun to end, and in the early morning, as my friends opted for bedtime, I informed all that I would stay by myself. Which I did. For an hour, during which time I completed hundreds of moronic circuits of the rink before finally queuing up alone for shoes and looking like a keen-bean weekly solo skater.

The common or garden birthday drinks can be carried out with varying degrees of success. My own in Hoxton Square probably weren’t aided by the generosity of the host’s friends in getting one in for the birthday boy. Another close friend selected a bar in Covent Garden for hers. The music was so loud nobody could hear what anyone was saying. I rarely listen anyway so this was no problem. The fact that I was returned from a trip to see friends in Oxford and therefore suffering from indulgence in a cheaper nightclub than any of those to be found in London, culminating in some choice chundering in a train toilet as we pulled into Reading station, meant that I was not touching a drop on the night itself. A flatmate was also keeping it teetotal, having given up alcohol for Lent. However, he made the mistake of asking the rather flash barmen for one of their virgin cocktails. For those not aware, these are found in most cocktail menus, often for bargain prices, somewhere near the back. By ‘virgin’ they mean boring and no-one is expected to buy them. It took my flatmate a good deal of explaining as to why he wanted an alcohol-free cocktail and, funnily enough, the barmen were pretty much disgusted. So whilst they mixed the drink with the usual performance and flair, one of them brought in a new move which he must have held in reserve only for those after such a drink. He stood up, a leg on the bar and a leg on the surface behind. He positioned the cocktail shaker somewhere around his crotch and proceeded to make a thrusting motion with his hips and a stroking movement with his hand, effectively simulating masturbation as he poured out the drink into its glass. Offended and bemused in equal measure, my friend retreated with his drink.

But normally it’s not the staff who are debauched and behave poorly, it’s the people I’m out with. A friend from my home village began her night with drinks at Porterhouse in Covent Garden before we were dragged through a great deal of Soho, haemorrhaging partygoers from our group hither and thither until the decision was made to grab a taxi to Turnmills. The hardcore few that made it there danced away, the boys taking it in turns to bring in rounds of alcopops to the small area where we were twitching away to the banging beats and awkward pauses of such trendy music. Apparently enjoying myself so much, I refused to head to the bar for my round, instead handing over my card to a friend to fetch it in for me. The joys of chip and pin meant I had only to give him a four digit code to enable him to access my overdraft, but I don’t think holding up the corresponding number of fingers in order to convey this was a wise move: four fingers, three fingers etc. Luckily, I did not become the victim of PIN-surfing. I emptied my account myself.

Totally Firm

2008-06-24T19:29:00.002+01:00

What one might imagine to be one of the perks of working for a relatively large and self-important firm is the company conference. The firm sees this as a chance to perk up morale and tell everyone ‘well done’ while at the same time reiterating more emphatically that important message of ‘work harder’. Employees see this as a chance to get wankered and enjoy another jolly on expenses.

Nevertheless, the blooming into being of the credit cringe saw the firm go some way to cut some corners on expenditure. Support staff were left at home in Blighty while the rest of us jetted off to a four-star hotel in Monaco. But perhaps jetting off is the wrong word, given that further pennies were pinched by shipping the firm out on a low-fares airline. “I don’t see why we should have to submit ourselves to EasyBucket,” one plummy partner declared within clear earshot of the airline’s usual clientele, attracting glares from beneath shaven skulls and baseball caps. It was amusing for us office drones to see immaculately coiffeured partners, more used to a welcome-on-board glass of champagne sipped at their fully reclinable seat, elbow-jostling on with the rest of us great unpaid, squeezing past beer bellies and trying to catch the eye of Eastern European air hostesses to order drinks for their row as if in some pricey wine bar. At least they were faring better than the staff of the Hong Kong office, who were apparently saving the company thousands by being stored in overhead luggage compartments for an eight-hour flight on an economy airline that has since gone bust. “It’s fine – they’re Chinese,” one partner was overheard to say, “they love being squashed together.”

I have nothing against the cheaper airlines - it's my only hope of going anywhere, and of getting the true pre-abattoir feeling our bovine brethren experience.

Our few days there were filled with tedious seminars and cringeworthy presentations, with obligatory chuckling at company in-jokes peppering most sessions. During one group session, a partner even called me a ‘cheap asset’ with reference to my graduate-tastic wage. And indeed, we were urged to work harder, grow faster, arrive earlier, leave later, phone more often, ignore spouses, sacrifice weekends, forget dinner, skip lunch and stop wandering around the office with a bowl of muesli for all of fifteen minutes in the mornings. I had long ago decided I didn’t really share this ethic and so looked on, serenely planning my escape. I already stuck out due to my personal dress policy. The firm had agreed on business casual and of course, some of these people had never been near a pair of jeans and, more than likely, had never passed more than the time of day with any character who actually owned a pair of trainers. One associate’s outfit for the plane, some chinos and a plain shirt, was met with another partner asking if he was planning on doing some gardening. Defiant in my white high-tops and slim jeans, I did myself no favours professionally or interpersonally, but screw them, I was on holiday. And I had been planning my resignation since my first day.

The nights were given over to the excesses of inflated salaries and competitive networking. From the moment we arrived on the first evening, female associates draped themselves and their cleavage over the bar and partners’ laps, eager male researchers shook hands with anyone they could get near and minor consultants tried to outdo one another by being the last old soak to crawl up the stairs to bed at 5.30am. Given the average price of a drink in Monaco, and the prospect of having to talk to these people without being remunerated for doing so, I was quite often tucked up in my king-size bed watching French music television by a very reasonable hour. Brought up on the comprehensive school trip, I was staggered to find out we didn’t have to share rooms…

“You look jolly rough – up late?” one batty old partner asked me during a morning meeting.

“Thank you very much,” I said, before spitefully informing that I had received a full eight hours.

I was starting to feel like I was simply trapped in the office for a few days, rather than by the seaside in the Mediterranean. We did manage to sneak off for a dip in the freezing March sea, during which a fellow associate told me how she had seen a frisky old partner at the bar poking a female consultant in the nipples repeatedly until his EA had scolded him suitably.

The climax of the whole operation was a gala dinner somewhere exclusive. I found myself on the table for the ‘leftover’ staff and begun to suspect the firm was as keen on me as I on them. Wine was poured, the toilets were nicer than my family home and we were treated to premiers of the corporate videos we had spent the previous day making, turning the hotel into numerous filmsets, much to the protestations of its staff. Unable to afford the bar, I did a few rounds finishing off unattended drinks, berated in slurred sentences the partner who had called me a ‘cheap asset’ and then followed the leering and jeering crowd out for our exclusive night at Jimmyz, Monaco’s most expensive nightclub. On the way, I also watched a septuagenarian image consultant employed by the firm tumble roly-poly down a flight of stairs, landing like an upturned woodlouse with legs flailing for a surface, after slipping off a heel. She was fine and was later seen strutting her stuff among the wealthy men and Russian prostitutes on the dancefloor at Jimmyz, all lips and shouting.

Fuelled on rip-off booze, the firm shimmied and staggered to some cheesey Europop, the managing partner stalking the crowds in a gold lamé jacket and too drunk to focus, cameras flashing, bottles emptying and seasoned Monegasques staring on in disbelief. Once again outpriced by the bar and reluctant to schmooze drinks off better paid partners I normally avoided, I headed back to the sanctity of French music videos.

A brown-nosing associate on her way in spotted my overly prompt escape. “What are you leaving in search of?” she called.

“Better company,” I spat, rather pathetically, and dashed off.

Dry Clean Dating

2008-06-22T15:57:00.002+01:00

Sometimes things happen to you that you had previously thought absent from real life, and these, of course, at the most inopportune moments. One winter evening after work and following a good old sweat in the gym, I emerged from the shower in the flat, dripping and towel-clad, to catch the dying ringtone of my mobile. Once in my slippery wet grip, I was able to spot that this wasn’t a number I recognised and, out of intrigue, phoned straight back. A young lady answered and sounded bewildered.

“Did you just ring this phone?” I asked, cutting straight to the point.

After some hesitation, the girl mustered confirmation. “Is now a good time?” was her next question.

“Depends what for,” I said, in little or no mood for telesales at this point in time.

“I’m sorry,” she went on, “I don’t even know your first name.” I then very cruelly left an awkward pause which she filled with, “I feel so bad – I’ve stolen your number from your receipt.” Alarm bells started to ring and my emergency guard began to go up. This was all a little too invasive for my taste - what was going on? “You know the dry cleaner’s?” she asked, I confirmed. “You know the girl in the dry cleaner’s? Well this is her.”

I had been in the previous week with a number of items: suit trousers on whose crotch I had spilled tuna oil and also my formal suit which needed vomit removing from the sleeves after the work Christmas party. The establishment was only across the road and therefore my cleaner of choice, by dint of proximity alone. Run by a delightful Jewish matriarch, a flatmate and I had been in there for a while, making friends with the staff and eschewing questions about what the stains were on my formal suit. “Don’t worry,” the matriarch had said, “I know how you young boys like to party at Christmas”. When I had stopped by one evening to collect the trousers, now free of the fishy stain over the fly (the formal suit was, understandably, to take longer), the girl, who had also been there the previous time, had served me as I shelled out my cash. As I was departing she had suddenly said, “Nice jumper.”

Taken aback by this abrupt comment, I had responded, “Oh thanks – I work in a cold office,” before heading off, giving her outburst no further thought.

And now she was phoning me from the number I had written on my receipt in case there had been problems cleansing my formal suit of the company bartab regurgitated. “Oh yes, I know who you are,” I said to her.

“Well I was just wondering, er, if you would maybe, um, like to go for a coffee some time.”

I weighed up the situation in an instant. She was a sweet girl, brave enough to ring me out of the blue, but she had thieved my number unprofessionally and I felt very vulnerable standing there in a towel and a smile. “I’m sorry, I have a girlfriend,” I found myself saying, before finishing things off with a conciliatory “take care” and hanging up.

Confused, I strolled into the sitting room to share the experience with the flatmates. They all laughed and told me I was horrible, apart from the one who had come to the dry cleaner’s with me in the first place, who asked, “Why didn’t she want to steal my number and phone me for a date?”

Blsz Prk!

2008-06-19T19:23:00.003+01:00

As the city fills each autumn with former students embarking on various grad schemes, seasonal progression gradually brings one particularly significant event to rear its ugly head: The Office Christmas Party. Too much has been written on the inherent clichés and catastrophes, but not being one to heed these warnings, nor shy of a thing to say for myself, I shall wade in with my version of my event.

My firm had black-tie dinner and dancing at Kensington Roof Gardens booked for mid-December and I was terribly excited. Colleagues laughed at me tracking down a real bow-tie for the event, finally graduating from the old strap-on that had served me well through college, and assumed I was taking ages getting ready on the day itself when I was late into the office that morning, even despite my valid reason of a delayed Victoria Line service. In fact, that was the largest hassle: having to work a full day beforehand. The coaches were due to collect us from the offices in St James’s at five, but when was a reasonable time to sneak off to the gents and get changed, or should I just have thrown caution to the wind and stripped down while performing a quick-change behind the dividers?

We all arrived at the event in our constituent pieces and what follows should serve as a cautionary tale to anyone unable to withstand the charms of an unlimited free bar. Ninety per cent of Britain’s televised output is currently telling us to stop binge-drinking and emergency services the land over plea with young professionals to exercise caution at their office shindig in the run up to Christmas. I myself had been determined to avoid the pitfalls. “I must behave myself,” I had repeatedly told my colleagues, aware the letting-one’s-hair-down that had gone on in my college days might raise more than a few eyebrows.

“No, get wasted,” had replied the majority of partners at the firm. Indeed there had been encouragement from all fronts that I would impress if I achieved a party animal reputation.

I remember the welcome drinks. I remember resolving only to have two glasses of champagne before the sit-down dinner, and then having three. I remember the sit-down dinner, and despite the banning of spouses and significant others, still not knowing the people I was sitting with because, as a linguist, I had been assigned seating among characters from our European offices. I remember thinking that I would finish this one glass of wine and then I would know I had had one glass of wine and then I would know whether to tackle another and that way I would pace myself well and remain charming throughout the evening. But I also remember the staff being so attentive that the glass was refilled within minutes of my every sip, swallow and gulp, until it seemed as if I were racing them to finally empty the glass before it got topped up again, just so I could be sure that I had had one glass. By the time chocolate constructions were wilting in our plates by way of dessert, I was finally confronted with the accusatory void of my wine glass’s empty status. In my mind, I had finally quaffed my first glass. In reality, more than a bottle and a half must have been poured in there over the course of the meal.

We moved through to another room for speeches while the room was relaid. I remember some clapping and hope that I am not blocking out any heckling on my part. I later asked a colleague where she had been for the speeches, only for her to respond that I had been standing next to her the entire time.

Therefore, at this point, things were taking a turn for the blurriest. Next, there was dancing, and I remember being so amused by two very proper partners shaking their junk, lumps and humps all over the dancefloor, that I may have joined in with disproportionate enthusiasm, occasionally remembering the free bar and heading up for another whisky and coke, and then spilling that while trying to dance with it.

In my recollections, there is no music, just faces bobbing around in contorted joy. At one point we may even have formed a circle but I’ve no idea why. I have an image of me talking with the IT staff and telling them I don’t do anything all day other than email my friends and did they read my emails and were they funny and what happens if I write a swear-word.

Witnesses have testified that I was “very funny”, which is no help at all in working out what I actually did or said; one EA admitted to taking drinks off me for my own safety which I of course thanked her for, and a fellow associate recalls leaving in a taxi and seeing me staggering along in the street with the support of a wall.

My lack of restraint was jeopardising my first job, and now it was to prove equally hazardous to my personal safety. During my college days, realising that bacchanalian overindulgence was best remedied with a hasty retreat home, a party, club or festivity could be snuck out of easily, and tiny Oxford town strolled across in a matter of minutes to the sanctity of mattress and duvet. More often than not, it was a simple case of crossing a quad to evade self-embarrassment and seek recovery. But once in London, these instincts persist, despite the unsuitability. As the party wound down, I decided it best to get myself home. Kensington to Belsize Park after midnight? Alone? No problem.

On the street outside I found a bus stop and a bus. I recall getting on and luxuriating over tapping my Oyster. I had no idea where the bus was going but at least I was on my way. After several stops I hopped off and I was no closer. Next, I staggered along the edge of the street, a thumb held out and waiting for a life. I think a minicab came along and off we set. Waves of nausea began to set in before I’d even left the postal district but, thinking myself a genius, I wound down the window, turned my head and vomited out of the window. Only it turned out I hadn’t been very successful and had mostly covered the inside of the window and a lot of the door in hot drunk sick. The driver was irate and, in a thick African accent, started lamenting the state of his car. “Don’t worry; it’s fine,” I remember saying by way of reassurance.

He throws me out after pulling over and I dash off chuckling while he whips out tiny pocket tissues to mop up my mess. The thumb is back out and I’m soon in a new cab. “Belsize Park,” I slur, only without any vowels, and off we set. We’re soon there and the driver quotes me thirty pounds, while asking if I’m sure I’m ok. “I need a receipt,” I say, still frugal enough in my debauchery to know I can claim back expenses if I have documentation. I fetch money from the cashpoint opposite my flat while the driver handwrites my receipt.

“That’s only a tenner,” he says when I return. Right, sorry, I go and fetch some more. “That’s another tenner,” he points out, “I need one more still.” Back I go, somehow successful for a third time even with drunken finger mashing on the number pad. “Are you sure you’ll be alright?” he asks as we separate.

“I’m fiiiine.”

I gain entry to my building without hitch, but the front door to the flat proves a more skilled opponent, possibly because I am shoving the wrong key in the wrong lock. Whisky-strength sees me snap the key apart and whisky-brain damage has my mind tell my hand that I can still push the key through somehow. I end up gauging open my thumb on the shard of Chubb still protruding from the keyhole. With chance of rescue fading fast, I begin to hammer on the door. In the darkness, a flatmate’s dismayed expression appears. I tumble onto him in a hug and tell him I love him. He points me towards my room and goes back to sleep.

The next morning there is a knock at my door: the same flatmate, “Rob, it’s 8.30.” I need to be at work in half an hour. I remain inert among the pillows for the rest of the morning, listening to my mobile vibrating and failing to address it. There is blood everywhere from my thumb. Around twelve I surface, sip some water and then am violently sick. For the rest of the afternoon, I wretch and wretch and wretch if I go anywhere near the slightest consumable. I don’t even phone work. A colleague is worried I’m dead and has asked the whole office if they’ve seen me, helpfully alerting all to my truancy. I struggle and struggle and am filled with remorse. I am sick so much that in the end I just sit on the toilet and lean over the bath. This is where my flatmates find me after their days at work. They also bring worse news: today is Friday and it is our flatwarming party. I have invited all and sundry to make a mess of the place, but the last thing I want to do is entertain, drink or move too far from a suitable receptacle.

I survive the party sipping on cola while my friends deride my terrible form. I dread work on Monday and face repeated humiliation for the state I was in and my no-show the next day. I hear how I missed being taken to exclusive members’ clubs, how one partner kicked a tray of drinks out of someone’s hand while demonstrating how high she could get her leg and how two associates danced for hours in a bar where there was no music.

But what is the benefit of just another drunken story of stupidity and sick? For one thing, my odyssey home is another example of ridiculous episodes in my life and therefore belongs among my other tales. It’s not my intention or responsibility to deter others from binge-drinking to oblivion once in a while – people can do what they want. But it is here to remind me that I am a small clueless fish in a great big pond, that I am very lucky not to have encountered more serious mischief on my struggle home and that only idiots fail to withstand the dangers of the office party.

Priorities

2008-06-18T22:22:00.002+01:00

Moving to London, a city of apparently boundless possibility, one of the first things I wanted to sort out in our flatshare was a decent-sized TV, much to the chagrin of my more highly cultured flatmates. Knowing I would be on a budget, I wanted a decent source of free entertainment and company, well, free apart from the license fee. For the first couple of weeks we made do with the old portable telly from my room at home, perched on a stool and looking a little isolated and miniature in its corner of the living room. We had the four channels and could gather round to view our favourite shows, although it began to dawn on us that maybe the screen was too small for our needs.

“Who just got chucked off X Factor?” someone asked, only for the rest of us to respond that we weren’t sure either.

“I think it was a man,” one of us eventually piped up. So the screen was too small and we had no idea who or what we were watching.

“We need a bigger telly,” someone stated.

So the next weekend, a quick trawl on Gumtree revealed an impressive incher going begging at a bargain price just down the road. Phone calls were made and we agreed to come and pick it up that night. It’s not that far away, but we realise it’s too far to carry and I can just see us arguing about who gets the heavy end of the flatscreen, inevitably dropping the whole thing while crossing the road and watching a bus run over it. Stroked by genius, I suggest we get a shopping trolley from the supermarket opposite. We put our pound coin into Budgens’ biggest and begin trundling down the hill, drawing a few confused stares from passers-by. One particular elderly lady with bright white hair is ostensibly eyeballing us as we pass.

We reach the flats in the depths of Belsize Village where the TV finds its current home. The rattles of the trolley and its wheels over the shoddy surfaces of the pathways draw plenty of attention and I’m worried my flatmate and I look like a pair of youths up to no good. As we enter the forecourt of the house, the same white-haired lady appears, having taken the bus one stop along and caught up with us.

“Vat are you boys doing?” she asks in a rich European accent. She is that glamorous that I immediately assume she is displaced royalty from the Hapsburg Empire.

“Buying a TV,” I respond.

“Oh, I thought it was some kind of bet.” She turns out to live in the same building and lets us in. Another very friendly woman agrees to our price for her set and before long we are planning our way home. The TV is not going to fit in the trolley but can only balance on top which, given the rattling and shaking of our contraption, probably means we will have destroyed the appliance before reaching home safely.

We decide we shall have to absorb the price of a taxi and seeing as no minicab services will answer our calls, my flatmate is out in the street trying to flag down a Hackney. “None of them will stop” he wails. I watch him and notice his wild gesticulations are being focused on occupied cabs.

“If the light’s not on, they’ve already got someone in,” I explain.

“Oh right,” he says. He’s been in London a year longer than my five minutes and has not grasped this basic principle.

Half an hour later, we are back nestled in the living room watching big screen X Factor in time for the results. We had found a lovely taxi driver, got our pound back on returning the trolley to its herd, and the elderly European lady had wished us well on our way, hopefully pleasantly surprised to find two polite and well-spoken young men engaging in trolley banditry on a Saturday night, rather than them hooligans you read about in the paper.

Blush With Fame

2008-06-17T23:32:00.002+01:00

One of the best things about leaving behind the home counties for London Town is the chance to add value to my tiny life through the occasional spotting of celebrity faces here and there on the golden-paved streets. Fair enough, I may have shared a home town with Michael Caine (though I’m sure he, like most residents, avoided the hideous high street), I may have shared a fleeting glance with Emma Watson on the streets of Oxford while studying there and I may be an acquaintance of Dear Deirdre’s daughter, but the increase in encounter frequency that has accompanied my arrival in NW3 is nothing short of encouraging. And I’m not fussy. Any list of prominence and credibility is enough for me, from Hollywood A-lister to reality TV runner up.

I’m not rummaging through these people’s bins and waiting for them to come out of the dentist’s, I’m just keeping an eye peeled, having a squizz and then moving on. Bob Geldof outside The Ritz? Great, but I keep walking. Gaby Roslin in a well-known Japanese chain restaurant? Obviously looks after herself, but I’m struggling with soup. And so on. It’s a bit like endless bingo, only instead of a prize for a full house you’re rewarded for each spot with a bit of telly glamour nearly breaking into your personal bubble.

But then occasionally you don’t just spot Gail Porter in Hampstead, but a celebrity’s trajectory crosses and intertwines with your life’s own garden path.

Back in March, a very good friend came to visit: my German ex-flatmate from the year I had spent living in Freiburg as part of my degree. Sarah had been instrumental in my successful assimilation into Black Forest living and now it was my turn to show her London. Naturally, she had been many times before and was hard to entertain: “Why do your pubs shut so early?” she asked and “I don’t want to go on the London Eye” threw a spanner in my plans for the weekend. “Your kitchen floor is so dirty I don’t want to take my shoes off,” was another choice comment.

Nevertheless, a load of us went out one evening: a flatmate, some friends from the home village, some friends from Oxford and some friends of friends of all and sundry. We were quite a crowd and we were going to hit the East End and show my visitor a good time. I’m no longer sure how things began, but soon it was gone midnight and we were traipsing the streets for a club. Two hours later, we are still outside, stone cold and sobered, wandering down streets and apparently chasing an elusive house party in Hoxton. Sarah is not impressed, my nipples are like bullets and we’re running out of bemused Middle Easterners to ask for directions. Just as I’m on the verge of grabbing us a taxi, another friend pleads for me to stay as it’s just round the next corner. And luckily enough it is.

We pile into a tiny flat, doubling the numbers at what looked like a small gathering in its dying stages. I apologise to the host on the way in for not knowing him. We settle into sofas and I think right, time to tank back up and show Sarah how to keep a party going young professional-in-London-style. The best part of a bottle of wine later and I’m chatting to some of the other guests. “And what do you do?” I ask two lads sitting nearby after some initial chat.

“We’re actors.”

“Wow,” I exclaim. I’ve had my fair share of am dram board-treading and I am impressed by anyone daring enough to make a career out of being the centre of attention. “Real actors?” I ask.

“Well, I’m a PA as well,” one admits.

I don’t care. “What have you been in?” I demand. They both list off a stream of prestigious roles. “But have you been in The Bill?” I ask, recalling that all British actors appear in Sunhill sooner or later. One of them has and I’m very excited; “My parents love that show.” I’m sure he’s thrilled.

So I’m drunk and embarrassing but I’m having a lovely time. And Sarah seems content to be smoking out of the window. A home friend comes bounding in with news: she has just spotted a very famous actor in the hallway. I don’t believe her at all until I need the toilet myself and find myself squeezing past said individual en route to the lavatory. Under a dark cap and in a casual jacket is a Best Actor Oscar-winning, seminal role-playing, respected, Hollywood A-lister. I have decided not to reveal who due to later behaviour but I think most educated guesses should come pretty close.

I return to my friends with confirmation. I’m in a tiny flat, merry as you like, and a very famous face has just strolled into the room. This is big news. Though strictly speaking, it’s not the first brush with celebrity of the evening. One of our crowd and a friend of a friend from Oxford appeared on a successful BBC3 reality show where young chaps competed in tribal games around the world. He comes over with some wine in a bowl, something picked up on his travels no doubt, and offers me some, which I willingly accept. It’s lemony and actually jolly nice.

“Why are you drinking wine out of a bowl?” an American accent drawls at me. Right, ok, the big famous actor is now speaking to me. How is one meant to behave? I proffer the bowl and ask “Do you want some?”

“Sure,” he says and promptly wanders off with it. That was strange yet exhilarating, a brush with fame. I text my sister to gloat. But then he reappears. I’m sitting on the edge of the sofa arm and he has positioned himself right in front of me. My friends seem to evaporate out of the way. “I’m sorry,” he begins, “I took your wine without introducing myself. I’m *****,” he says and offers me his hand.

We shake and I manage to say, “I’m Rob.” So it’s not unlike meeting anyone really. Apart from I want to explode in a drunken mess and gush in with his surname and a list of films of his I enjoyed and say “Of course I know who you are, you’re…” But I hold it together with all my might. “So, who do you know here?” I ask. He looks older in close-up real-life than in the films and I start to wonder what someone in his forties wants with a party of twenty-three year-olds at three in the morning.

He explains he works in a theatre with ‘some of the guys’. I volunteer that I don’t know why I’m there or what my connection is. Then his little tiny dog he has brought with him runs up and we talk about her and I’m sure I’m behaving and remaining lucid but I’m starting to regret the lemony wine and then he’s off talking to someone else. Never mind, HE introduced himself to ME, and I’m no-one.

“He liked you!” one of my friends points out. Then I realise his attention is focused on our friend from the BBC3 show, who is good-looking. Then I notice him smoking out the window and Sarah trying to engage him in conversation but he’s looking straight through her at other lads. It dawns on me that I was being chatted up by an actor who I think is ‘out’ in the industry but not in the press.

We eventually leave as all are tired and drunk, even though I’m protesting in hopes of gaining my first Hollywood friend. We talk about him loudly in the taxi and the driver must think we’re fawning idiots, which we know we are. The next day I ring a friend who stayed longer. She reveals the actor is known as ‘the boy eater’ and describes how he only spoke to our handsome friend off the telly for the rest of the evening, much to the annoyance of his long-term girlfriend. I swear I could have got his number and probably would have gone as far as dinner, just for the interesting stories alone, but Sarah wants entertaining and I say goodbye.

But I dine out on that story for months to come and make sure it spreads round the office that A-list actors fancy me. Well, one. Maybe. Oh well, my parents are vaguely impressed. I didn’t just spot a Z-lister crossing the street, but this actor was interested in me enough to introduce himself to ME and yes, I am shallow enough to find this cheering. Ridiculous.

Becoming A Commuter, Part III

2008-06-16T20:16:00.000+01:00

So the tube is now short of one more gentleman who allows others to sit before himself (although only out of self-interest) and the roads have gained one very careful cyclist. Each morning I pull on my shorts and t-shirt, (no skin-tight lycra as I am taking an amateur approach), fasten the helmet and drag my old bike down two flights of stairs. The commute in is all downhill through Primrose Hill, Regents Park and Mayfair, the sun shines, the breeze cools, I stop at traffic lights, enjoy the scenery, anticipate hazards, whiz down hills and pause at crossings, I signal and position correctly, I watch other cyclists break rules, I gulp as taxis almost clip my handlebars, I wince as vans turn left in front of me, as pedestrians step out in front of me, as the lights change just as I’m getting there, as motorists ignore my intentions to change lanes, as electric cars pull out without looking, as… So hang on, this is proving to be just as stressful as the Tube. Multiply the impatience by ten for the uphill journey home and instead of risking accidentally jostling a Tube passenger in haste, I’m tempting fate at the back of a bus and prophesying my own broken legs in head-on collisions. I do cycle safely, but there is no accounting for what others get up to; whether they have seen you, whether they are anticipating your moves or whether they are on the phone to Barry back at the office saying they can’t find the address but some Johnny-pedaller is getting on their wick. But the journey itself is the easy part.

Remembering to take all the right work clothes to the office is where real care and attention must be paid. I am supposed to wear business formal, with a tie for all external meetings, but I just keep to shirt and smart trousers and don’t really go to meetings. My office is filled with Jermyn Street’s finest tailored shirts; my back is clothed by Oxford Street’s cheapest polyester numbers. Nevertheless, it is still my ‘uniform’ and my cycle wear is my ‘vest and pants’. So if you are going to wear vest and pants to work, it’s best not to forget the uniform. This I did on only my second day of cycling. Pulling a wrinkly shirt from my rucksack while standing there clad only in boxers in the disabled toilet, it dawns on me all of a sudden that the trousers I meant to extract from the wardrobe are still hanging serenely among off-the-rack suits, conspicuously absent from my bag at work. I am inert and stunned for a few minutes while all sinks in.

I am luckily forty-five minutes early so I do have time to play with. I cannot wear my shorts with my shirt, even if I hide under my desk, because I never stay at my desk for long. There are always teas to be made, snacks to fetch and mobile phone games to play in the cubicles. I cannot cycle back because the homerun is sufficiently uphill to guarantee sweat on sweat and then I will be all the later for showering. I cannot afford to buy new trousers as there is not enough cash in my account and I cannot borrow from colleagues who keep a wardrobe at work because they are predominantly giant in stature. And mostly hate me. I put back on my vest and pants and traipse back to the tube to blow £4 at the beginning of my money-saving scheme on a heated and pointless commute without even a book to read.

An hour later, and fifteen to twenty minutes after my contracted start time, I am at my desk, fully dressed in regulation dronewear and hoping I have escaped the partners’ keen eyes. “Problems with the train this morning?” innocently asks a colleague and deskfellow, evidently not spotting the bicycle helmet I am carrying.

“Not exactly,” I sigh.

Becoming A Commuter, Part II

2008-06-16T20:02:00.000+01:00

Having mentioned that I don’t like being groped by people, I should probably point out that this isn’t an occurrence I deal with all that often. On the Tube, I’m sure the odd menopausal lady may have brushed my buttock more than was necessary but that doesn’t really bother me. Ever since a friend’s drunken birthday party at a raucous Greek restaurant in Hersham where a hen party of older ladies left my sixteen-year-old bottom bruised after some over-enthusiastic pinching, it would take a great deal for me to associate the words ‘sexual’ and ‘assault’ with any covert crowded Tube shenanigans. Nevertheless, one particular incident alerted me to the fact that it was probably time to head above ground for my daily commute.

My ratrun took me through Camden Town station, where I would watch skinny-jeaned teens and excessively pierced skinheads head off to live their alternative lives from my vantage point within the carriage. After several weeks, I had worked out the best place to stand in order to be nearest the exit to the lifts on arrival at Belsize Park and thereby reduce my journey time further. So everyday around six, I could be found near the doors at the back of the second carriage from the front. On a particularly busy day earlier this year, the train pulls into a slightly emptier than usual Camden Town station, juddering to a halt as the doors lurch open. Everyone breathes in and steps aside to allow one more passenger to board, and from behind my earphones and novel, I notice the space assigned is more than one might usually inspect. Looking up I see a common or garden tramp, the smell of booze emanating from his brownish clothes setting multiple noses wrinkling throughout the area. They may have banned drinking beyond the barriers, but that doesn’t stop tanked-up vagrants descending the escalators and inflicting their rotting livers on your average battery-farmed commuter.

Everyone returns their attention to free paper or eye-contact evasion when I begin to notice a youngish girl next to me I sort of leaning into my space. Then I realise the tramp is reading over her shoulder but in such a way as to be quite aggressively pressing onto her. She must be getting the full frontal of his booze-breath and nobody seems to be doing anything. I wonder if this counts as assault and without looking up, I step to my left, opening some space between me and the divider, and allow her to retreat into my wake with her free paper. At this point, I cannot hear anything but the music in my headphones and my eyes are firmly on my page. The tramp is right in front of me but this is London and I live here and have done for several months now and tramps don’t scare me and I’m an adult and I’ll give him what for if he tries anything anyway.

Then I feel a hand stroke my face, coming down from above, through my hair and down one side over my cheek to my chin. In one movement, I have pulled out my earphones and grabbed this old boy by the wrist with a pretty firm grip, surprising even myself.

“Don’t touch me,” I say firmly, only then relinquishing his arm and becoming aware that people are looking. He chuckles.

“That’s what I like to see,” he begins to slur, “a man of learning, actually reading a book.” I decline to point out that I am in fact reading a bestseller aimed at children and looking at him, decide that he is harmless and smile in response. “But you shouldn’t be having these,” he mumbles on, pointing at my earphones.

“I can do what I like,” I point out patiently, enjoying the exchange of opinions.

“You gotta be aware of your surroundings,” he says before making a hand into a gun shape and holding it to the centre of my forehead. “I could have a gun to your head and you wouldn’t even realise,” he says, and I twig that the hand is illustration of this. I’m not sure if this is my real life or some scene from an obscure art house film. I consider the situation.

“Do you have a gun?” I ask.

“Well, no,” he says, bringing his hand down.

“Well then,” I say, noticing we are pulling into Belsize Park, yelping ‘bye’ and slipping out the doors the moment they gape open. I am a bit shaken up but also proud I came back with decent answers and possibly even entertained fellow passengers with my tramp chat.

Headphones back in, I’m at the front of the lift, waiting for it to fill up and for the doors to close us in. By the tenth time I hear “Please do not obstruct the doors” over my music I finally deign to turn around, and through the crowd of heads, I see old trampy standing exactly where the doors are trying to close, externalizing the fact that he’s “not gonna be crammed in there like sardines!” Everyone looks peeved and I’m on the verge of shouting over to him, as if we were old friends, and telling him to behave. Luckily a more seasoned commuter spells out the tramp’s options in no uncertain terms and he eventually gets in the lift and out of the way of the doors. By this point, my pride in my performance has turned into panic that he is now following me home after my conversation with him, and living above the shops next to the tube station, I speculate that it wouldn’t be hard to track down my address and to wait for me and then to do whatever it is tramps do to the people they hunt down at night…

I’m out of there like a whippet after a speeding sausage and I don’t look back till the flat door is closed behind me. Thousands of people get on the tube every day. But of all the doors on the train, of all the trains going through the station at that time, this character chanced to encounter me and I him.

Becoming A Commuter, Part I

2008-06-16T19:59:00.000+01:00

With the onset (at last) of some nicer weather, I have finally taken the plunge and opted to trade in my monthly Oyster card for an oversized cycle helmut and two wheels. My eight months as a tube commuter has taught me a lot about myself: mostly that I don’t like being groped by strangers. But half an hour each morning trundling from Belsize Park to Green Park via a quick change at Euston, and half an hour at a slightly hastier pace on the way home most evenings did have some advantages. It was a good chance to listen to some music, to get involved with a book and to stare at the various unusual people with whom a carriage may be shared for any number of stops (they usually get out at Camden Town).

But I do not like who I become on the Tube. It’s as if the muted beep and little flash of green light that accompanies an accepted touch-in of the Oyster instructs the user to leave chivalry at the barrier and suddenly allows all license to behave like a pillock. Not that I ever got too carried away – on the way to work I would mostly dawdle, obviously doing my best not to be that slow walker on the platform who delays those in more pressing a dash to their desk, and this would mean allowing others to board the train before me, to go ahead at the escalator and to squeeze their generous portions into whichever fleshy gap they thought might accommodate them. But the way home became a different story. This was my time now, and I mastered beating a passage to my front door like some deadly art form. I would cut people up, dash through gaps like a rat out a drain pipe, kick people’s bulkier shopping bags out the way and stare evils at anyone threatening my reign of terror. And I was not the only one. Worse offenders than me would board trains before allowing passengers to get off, would bark at map-ogling tourists, refuse to move down the carriage and tut at volume whenever they saw a mother with a pushchair. I justified my behaviour in that I only dealt out punishment or harshness to those lacking sufficient common sense to commute without causing let or hindrance to others. So I would still let an old boy board before me, even if I had got their first, I would take up as little space as possible, nestling my book somewhere inconspicuous rather than spreading a full broadsheet across half the floorspace and I would happily always step out at busier stops to help speed up disembarking commuters. But woe betide anyone who provoked my lack of patience by standing somewhere stupid or stepping off the train and standing there craning a neck for exit signs while suits and ties pile off onto them or who failed to respond to my polite ‘excuse me’ when I needed to exit and therefore got shoved out of my path.

This is all very naughty, unpleasant and unnecessary and I wanted to stop but I couldn’t. Nothing altered my journey time by more than a few minutes but I couldn’t escape the feeling that every delay to my arrival was unforgivable, even if all I did once in my flat was sit around in my underpants and watch music television. I feel I gained some redemption through my attitude towards sitting down on the tube, though this was not motivated by any estimable altruism, but rather some curious attempt at self-protection from a curse I imagined had befallen me.

During my very earliest commuting weeks, when I had been in the office less than a month and I was still looking at station names as the tube train rolled through Oxford Circus and Warren Street, I was thrilled to spy for the first time a seat in which I might legitimately sit, having resigned myself to standing during all preceding journeys. No granny or expectant mother was there to challenge my claim and I sunk into the over-warm soft furnishings of the Victoria Line with a smuggish grin drawing itself on my face. At Euston I hopped up and off, jollied along by a pleasant journey. As I walked along the platform, I felt for my Oyster as habit dictates, groping my own buttock for the hard card that resides in my back pocket. There was nothing there. Time slowed down as I turned on my heel and slipped back between the closing doors. Peering at the floor near my former seat and ignoring the inquisitive glances of other commuters querying why this idiot had clambered back aboard so soon after slinking off, my heart leapt to spot my little blue Oyster nestling among shoes on trainers on the grooves of the floor. I reached down, muttering ‘excuse me’, elated to have the blighter and its value back in my hand.

How on earth it had managed to slip out remained a mystery, but as I got off at Kings Cross only to go back in the other direction, having been forced to go one stop too far, I came to the only logical conclusion I could think of: sitting down must bring me bad luck. I vowed from then on never to sit down on the commute ever again, happy to hang and hold onto various protrusions of bar and handle in order to guarantee my Oyster’s safe passage. In the process, I had also lost my security entrance card for work and I now like to imagine a little white rectangle of plastic travelling up and down the Victoria Line with my full name stamped across, as everlasting evidence of my idiocy.

Why now?

2008-06-15T18:44:00.001+01:00

Not that I would ever assume that people have nothing better to do than to read about the banalities of my day-to-day existence, I have decided it is finally time to write down some of the nonsense that fills my weeks. So I've set the timer for twenty minutes while my dinner is in the oven (admittedly, very banal) and now I only have two minutes left. Oh well, the feed-your-family-for-a-fiver tuna fishcakes can burn while I have a little vent here.

After eight months in an office, I know that we desk fodder would rather do anything than get on with what we are being paid to get on with: the furtively tapped out emails, the minimised windows of online newspapers, the instant messenger services. The number of times I have written out a full and frank description of a particular episode of my life and clicked 'send' multiple times to fellow fulfilled staff members has exceeded the sensible. So it's all going to end up here. Not that I'm suddenly going to become more productive workwise. In fact, I resigned on Thursday...

There is a wealth of cringe, wince and reddening of face, a fair helping of chuckles and some personal therapy for me. And that's just what's happened so far...