10 things I didn’t know about London

Well I realised it had been a while since I wrote anything on here but having been inspired to have a look at my last entry by the marvellous Con Carlyon’s discovery of the ex-Voxer’s page on Facebook, I was a little surprised to discover that the last time I wrote anything was last October. Even for me that is a pretty piss poor performance. So, here is a very short catch up on what has gone on since then:

Ex husband moved out…still with new boyfriend who isn’t really very new any more…mid divorce….working in London during the week and travelling back to Manchester every few weekends to keep up with friends…been in new job for nearly a year. And tragically, that is pretty much it. Still, since ‘news’ in my world was generally related to something going tits up, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

And semi-moving to London has proved to be a strange experience. Mainly because it’s a strange place. So here are five things I didn’t know about London until I came here:

1. Everyone drives like a fucking arsehole. It’s true, they do. They either drive like they have eaten their own bodyweight in amphetamines then stolen the car or like they have never been in a vehicle before. It explains why they are incapable of driving down the M25 without hitting each other. The M25 is a pretty much straight bit of road yet every single day a psycho knob-head will hit a halfwit, resulting in you  getting home three hours later than planned. Nothing says ‘fun’ like spending another evening parked on the M25. In case that didn’t translate in writing, it was sarcasm.
2. It has parrots. Green parrots to be precise. They flap round the trees making screeching noises. Thanks to the green parrots I am now able to identify four species of bird instead of just three. I am practically David Attenborough.
3. Everyone in Putney is improbably attractive and creepily fit. While jogging along the banks of the Thames, puffing and blowing like a damaged steam train and wondering if I was going to have a coronary or whether the pain was just due to muscle damage, something occurred to me – I was the only one out of all the joggers heading along the towpath towards Hammersmith Bridge who looked like this. Everyone else was glossy, shiny and gorgeous, jogging swiftly along with head and legs high, like expensively coiffed, lycra-clad gazelles. The fuckers. there are times when the urge to trip them up becomes almost overwhelming, it’s only the fact that if I then discover that they even bounce off gravel with style and finesse it may be too much to bear that stops me. The only conclusion I can take from this is that the people of Putney have all been replaced Stepford-style with perfect size 10 robots who don’t have roots, split ends, wobbly middle bits or a respiratory system still a bit fucked from 13 years of Marlboro Lights. I like this explanation better than ‘everyone in Putney is just better looking and fitter than I am’. So I’m sticking with it.
4. The impatience on public transport is catching. You arrive in London a normal person. When someone pauses in front of you at the ticket machine or the Tube barrier you wait patiently for them to move. If someone stands in the middle of the escalator at a station you politely ask them if they wouldn’t mind moving and if someone is walking slowly in front you, you either slow down or amble round them. This lasts less than a month. Within that month you will find that you too have started responding to anything that slows you down by a fraction of a second with a sigh that registers on the Richter scale and a dramatic roll of the eyes. You too will view any dawdling by people in your vicinity as a personal insult. London public transport turns the most normal and rational individual into a creature with all the personal charm of a badger with a wasp up its arse. Odd but true.
5. No one on public transport ever acknowledged anyone else. I don’t know why, but on London public transport, the main aim of the game appears to be to studiously ignore everyone else completely. There will be no eye contact, no chit chat, no passing the time or making new Tube friends. Nope, you are to completely ignore the person whose armpit you are wedged in and make like they’re not there. Difficult when their armpit hair is tickling your nose. However this has given rise to the most fun new game I have found in ages – making conversation with strangers. The rules are simple; first you make eye contact with someone, them you smile, then you talk to them. I guarantee that they will assume you are a dangerous lunatic and start to sidle away as if you are going to bite them. The aim is to get them to shift all the way to the far end of the carriage before you have to get off. Childish but fun.

So there you are, five things I didn’t know about London until I arrived. I don’t doubt there’s more to come…

10 ‘awesome feminist halloween costumes’…

Hello folks, as a few people have pointed out, it’s been a while. I have been AWOL and a lot has gone on, new job, end of marriage, painted the hallway, been to London quite a lot, it’s all been going on in the couple of months since I last wrote anything. But all these are subjects for another day because today I have been distracted. By what? By ’10 awesome feminist halloween costumes’, brought to my attention by a feminist friend, naturally. Anyone wanting to read the full article in Bust magazine can find it here: http://www.bust.com/blog/10-awesome-feminist-halloween-costume-ideas.html but anyone who can’t be arsed, and I’m guessing that might be most people, can just look at the pictures below.

So what are the 10 awesome feminist halloween costumes according to Bust?

They look like they’re going to nick your car

1 – Pussy Riot.

What they say: Get a couple of girlfriends together, put on some colorful ski masks, and run around causing trouble! This costume is cheap and easy to put together, would be easy to recognize, and is totally topical.

What I say: I come from Manchester. If I saw a group of women dressed like this heading down the street I would not think ‘hey, there’s some feminists dressed as Pussy Riot, how imaginative!’. Feminists should perhaps be aware that while in Russia a colourful balaclava may just scream political activist making a stand against the oppressive state regime, in your average UK city it says psycho bitch high on crack who wants to steal your shit. And it’s going to lead to unpleasant incidents involving pepper spray and the emergency golf club from behind the front door. For the love of god don’t go trick or treating in Manchester dressed like this, you’ll get killed.

2 – Having it all.

What they say: The Atlantic cover about women having it all: Just dress up in professional office clothes and carry a baby doll around in a briefcase. When someone asks what you are, reply, “I’m ‘having it all.’”

What I say: No one is going to ask what you because they’ll assume that you’ve come straight from work and one of your kids left a doll in your briefcase. Either that or you’re a corporate version of the childcatcher. Neither of which are particularly impressive. If for some reason someone does ask what you are and you explain, unless you’re at a feminist party they are going to think you’re a twat and avoid you for the rest of the evening. They will also tell other people you’re a twat and so you’ll be left alone, downing gin and tonic after gin and tonic on your tod until finally cracking around midnight, standing on a table to howl out your version of ‘I will survive’ and then being found under a sink in the ladies at 2am crying because no one loves you and you can’t find your lipgloss. Don’t chance it. Avoid.

3 – A minge.

What they say: If you really want to scare some conservatives, bring the fear back into Halloween; conjure the specter of their worst nightmares: BE A VAGINA.

What I say: Are conservatives more scared of vaginas than other groups? I didn’t know that. Conservatives scared of vaginas, labour ambivalent about the the lady-garden, lib dems positively minge-happy. Is this how it works? Every day is a school day round here. I have to say I quite like this one, I mean pretty much everyone looks like a twat at a fancy dress party, actually turning up dressed as one is a fabulous idea. Next time I have to go to a fancy dress party I might just see if I too can fashion myself a vagina-suit. Along with the label of course because otherwise you just look like a big pink hotdog.

4 – A piece of meat.

What they say: This one’s a good commentary on all of the sexy banana/sexy can of soup/sexy barf bag costumes out there that have women parading around like a piece of meat. Be a piece of meat, literally. (This one is for the feminist that likes bringing up sexism and politics even when she knows people will roll their eyes and say they’re ‘just trying to have a good time.’).

What I say: There’s a reason people roll their eyes and say they’re just trying to have a good time when some lass pissed up on chardonnay starts hammering on about sexism and politics. It’s because no one wants to get into a row with an aggressive piss-head about the number of women in the Department for Transport when they only came out for a cheeky drink and a dance round the living room. Besides, it looks like you tried to copy Lady GaGa’s meat dress but didn’t quite pull it off. People won’t find out their error until they actually speak to you and then you’ll have to endure that horrified look in their eyes if you start banging on about the oppressive regime when they only came over to demonstrate their rendition of ‘Pokerface’. Avoid.

5 – Catwoman.

What they say: Yes, technically she’s a sexy kitty, and yes, the costume is skintight, but let’s not forget that Catwoman is a total badass. She does what she wants, she kicks Batman’s butt, and she lives alone with a bunch of cats. (Disclosure: this blogger loves Catwoman and has been her for Halloween about five times.)

What I say: Unless you are a size 8 with great boobs and an ass like an Olypic athelete, a skintight PVC costume is always going to be an error. Plus it’s not exactly a breathable fabric so by the end of the evening you’re going to be as sweaty as hell. Living alone with a bunch of cats doesn’t make you a feminist, it makes you a hermit with a house that is registered with the local council as a place of interest due to the complaints from the neighbours about the heavy duty quantity of catshit in the area. Lots of people kicked Batman’s butt, you don’t see people calling The Penguin a feminist because he only hangs out with birds do you? This one is illogical and unless you are as described above will make you look like bloody awful. Avoid.

6 – A Strong woman.

What they say: All of these costumes, and any other feminist-friendly costume you can think of, have something to do with being a strong woman – so why not get literal, simplify, and just go as “A Strong Woman?” You can find some fake muscles at just about any costume shop.

What I say: This one is just shit. It’s not even funny and shit. Avoid.

7 – Rosie the Riveter

What they say: An oldie but a goodie, one of the most universal symbols of feminism (and a cheap and easy costume: just a blue collared shirt and a red polka dot bandana). You can amp this one up with some fake muscles, and then change it up halfway through the night to go as #6.

What I say: Unless all the other people at the party are aware of the Rosie the Riveter poster, and if you’re not a feminist party I’d say that’s unlikely, everyone is going to assume you’ve come dressed as an Eastern European farmhand. And while I’m sure farming in Poland is no picnic, it doesn’t really say ‘halloween’ does it? Avoid.

8 – A budding feminist.

What they say: One great thing about costumes is that you get to bring into the world things you’d like to see more of. So dress up like a little girl that’s not confined by stereotypical gender roles. Do the pigtails and the lacy socks and whatever else denotes little girlhood, but rub some mud on your legs, carry around a toy truck, and maybe a book about engineering. (More girls in STEM!)

What I say: How does wearing lacy socks mean you’re not confined by stereotypical gender roles? Have you ever seen a pre-pubescent boy in them? And neither little boys nor little girls read books about engineering, not because of any gender bias but because they’re full of tiny writing, long words and complicated scientific shit that most adults can’t understand let alone someone who still watches kids tv. Also, I’m not really getting what this has to do with halloween. I mean if you were dressed as a muddy girl with a chainsaw or fangs it would make sense but engineering textbooks are more dull than scary. And even with a chainsaw it’d probably still be a shit costume. Avoid.

9 – A pair of brides or grooms.

What they say: A good costume for a pair (whether you’re really a couple or just friends), go as two brides or two grooms.

What I say: Now the thing about dressing up for halloween is that you’re supposed to be going as something that is scary or horrible. You go dressed as someone getting married and this means you’re stating marriage belongs in a horror film. This leaves you running the very real risk of getting cornered by the bitter divorcee, and there’s one at virtually every party, who will be hammered on cheap pinot noir and who will spend the entire evening bending your ear about ‘that bitch’, how she won’t let him have partial custody of the dog and how he has been replaced by a chartered accountant with an Audi. No one needs that. Avoid.

10 – Elizabeth I

What they say: A classic embodiment of self-confidence, this historical badass just went around telling people she was the queen until it became the truth. Dress up as her on Halloween, and then carry that attitude with you through your everyday life.

What I say: It’s a fairly cool costume, if not entirely in the spirit of halloween. however there are a couple of problems with it, the first being it’ll cost you an absolute fortune to hire, leaving you with very little money to spend on drink and a taxi home, the second being that unless your party is being held in a mansion, that costume is going to be an absolute nightmare to go for a piss in. I once got married and had to accomplish this feat in a wedding dress, believe me anything involving multiple underskirts and any variety of hoop arrangement requires a decent sized area for you to go for a slash unaided. You have nay chance in a cubicle in your local club. So unless your party is at Chatsworth, avoid.

So what we have learned today is this: extreme feminists are shit at fancy dress.

Don’t say I never teach you about the important things in life.

First Day Nerves..

So, I’m sitting in the car park waiting for my first day at the new job to commence. I’ve already managed to forget my notepad, which is a marvellous start. Things to remember: don’t swear, try not to let it show if you think someone is a twat, don’t spill coffee on the boss, don’t use the gents by mistake, think before speaking and hope the guy who saw me fall over my wheelie suitcase in the hotel carpark last night isn’t one of my new colleagues. That should just about cover it.

Oh fuck. The guy whI saw me fall over the suitcase IS working here. He’s just pulled up and parked next to me. So parked on one side is someone who has already seen me make a twat of myself and on the other is the guy who conducted my interview. Better get out of the car then I suppose.Wish me luck!

Bad Manners and the Cesspit of Lunacy.

Well, a fortnight to go until I leave this hallowed place of bullshit and pointlessness for pastures new and it still feels like I’m wading kneedeep through a sea of lunacy and idiots. Emails for stuff I’m quite blatantly not going to bother doing are still coming in thick and fast and are being filed in the ‘can’t be arsed with this nonsense’ box. What is really annoying me though is that no one further up the food chain than the Framework Manager has bothered to acknowledge that I’m leaving. Managing Director, who I have worked a lot with recently fixing some cock ups that happened on site, didn’t bother to speak to me all last week about anything at all. I assumed he was on holiday. He wasn’t, he’s just an ill mannered twat who doesn’t even have the common to acknowledge receipt of the resignation letter from someone who has worked for the company for nearly ten years and who recently has put in countless hours of unpaid overtime to pull his organisation out of the shit. He’s on holiday now mind you, for a fortnight so won’t be back before I leave, meaning he at no point had any intention of saying anything to me about the fact I’m leaving. Wanker.I have heard nothing from the massed hordes of eejits at Enterprise’s ‘Shared Services’ about whether my resignation has been accepted and filed (not that I give a tiny flying rat’s ass if it has, I’m off anyway, eventually someone will stop paying me I’m sure) and what I do with the company car when I finished. Am thinking of emailing employee assets on my leaving day to inform them that their car is parked outside my house and the key is taped to the inside of the wheel arch, along with my company mobile phone. Whether they then choose to collect it or not is entirely up to them.

Tomorrow I have to drive all the way to Durham to attend a meeting about how the integration of the two companies is progressing and what the plans for the future are. I asked if I could be excused from this as there seems little point in me doing a 5 hour round trip to find out information that will have sod all bearing on my life or working practices but the answer was no, because Boss Woman, who it has to be said is utterly batshit crazy and who never does any work beyond sending emails demanding stuff off the rest of us, wants an ‘update’ from me. Why I can’t just email this update is completely beyond me but hey, I don’t pay for the fuel and it’s a day out so what the hell.

I can’t imagine why I didn’t resign earlier. It’s not until none of it matters any more that you realise just what a tidal wave of shite had been washing over you. Really, adding your boss to your spam list is something that everyone should try, it’s very liberating and frees up enormous amounts of your time.

I’ve been AWOL

In more recent times I have been AWOL from my little blog, life working for Enterprise (time to name and shame) has been so unbelievably depressing and stressful that I haven’t even had the energy or inclination to bitch. A sad state of affairs indeed. I have lost touch with the day to day musings of charming folks such as Brennig, GOM, GOF and Flamingo Dancer. I have not ripped anyone a new one since the lovely Samantha Brick crossed my path. But this may all be about to change because….

I have handed in my notice.

I have a new job. No longer will I be Corporate Wankery’s Bitch, the person who is desperately trying to keep up with the vast array of bullshit, nonsense and time wasting crap that is flung my way, now I am leaving and I no longer give a fuck. I don’t even bother reading half the shite that lands in the inbox and if Ms Bigshot, who I think may be my boss (chain of command got a little bit hazy since my previous boss left), thinks that I am going to bother my arse to fill in all her tracker sheets; locate,deliver an Enterprise induction to and send all the training records of every agency staff member I have to training services and bother my arse to to arrange audit management system training for all my site supervisors, she can get fucked. Notice is in, I leave here on the 14th and until that date I shall be doing a) stuff that needs doing so I don’t land my successor in too much shit and b) stuff that looks interesting like sitting in site cabins drinking tea and gossiping, the way I used to before the Corporate Wankery descended. I have been transformed from the grumpiest person at work to a cheerful soul who will soon be earning a salary it’s actually possible to live on without having to go foraging for food in bins by halfway through the month.

This, ladies and gents, is what freedom feels like. And it is good.

Getting cross on email.

Finally I have discovered the secret to getting people to leave you the fuck alone and stop pestering you with their incessant demands. Get cross on email.

From: Subcontractor bint                  Sent: 20 June 2012 14:15
To: Some People                                      Subject: HSEQ Issues

Afternoon All,

Further to our meeting last Tuesday (apologies for the delay), please find attached the list of subcontractors I am going to make non payable on the system due to not receiving a HSEQ.

The first Tab details the “outstanding issues” and I have added a notes column of my own, providing feedback on what action I am going to take.

The rows highlighted in grey are new subcontractors that weren’t on the gap analysis originally.

The second tab is the overall summery for H&S and I have also included my actions on this page.

If you do have copies of HSEQ’s for the subcontractors in the first tab, please can you forward over to Vicky or myself ASAP so we can update the system and make them payable again?

I have included the “contract” column so you can see which contracts these subbies are assigned to, if you feel they are no longer working on your contract, can you advise so we can remove them from the list?

Hope the table is pretty self explanatory, however if you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact me.

Kind Regards

Jo

 Subcontractor bint.

From: Commercial Manager                 Sent: 20 June 2012 14:19
To: Framework Manager; Vicola
Subject: FW: HSEQ Issues

Framework Manager / Vicola

Not checked yet, but from those I saw at the meeting there are some that we need

Commercial Manager

From: Vicola               Sent: 20 June 2012 14:18
To: Commercial Manager; Framework manager
Subject: RE: HSEQ Issues

Hi,

I am well aware that we are getting behind in terms of HSEQ assessments on subcontractors but I will be honest here. I have not got the time to do everything that is currently being asked of me. I cannot deal with subcontractors, Enterprise incident investigations, all the extra stuff that Enterprise have piled on to the department, asbestos management plan for the yard, outstanding audit actions, a raft of upcoming HSEQ audits on every NW site from New Company and getting everything out to site and done for the client’s Olympic torch initiative as well as getting out on site to try and make sure we don’t have any more major catastrophes. There aren’t enough hours in the day to currently do everything that I am being expected to do. Either I am going to have to be given more assistance to do everything that is required or everyone is going to have to lower their expectations of what I can achieve as my hours and my expected output aren’t currently compatible. Sorry to go off on one but I’m getting grief from all directions here and I can’t make everyone happy at the moment.

Cheers

Vicola

Now they are staying the hell out of my way and not even making eye contact, let alone sending me emails about stupid subcontractor evaluations. Thank fuck for that. Now perhaps I can get some bloody work done.

Running

Well , Saturday is the day of ‘The Run’. Best Friend, C and I are doing the Race for Life in Tatton Park and we’re trying to RUN all of it. Anyone who has not seen me run will be unaware of the amazing spectacle it presents, not only because previously I only ran when the last orders bell went but also because anatomically I’m just not designed for it. I am all legs and arms and me running looks like what would happen if you filled Bambi with gin and sent him off trying to move quickly in a straight line. I am a disaster running, I look like I have some sort of problem and I’m hopelessly unfit. But we’re going to give it a go in memory of my dad and of C’s lovely mum who died of leukemia 5 years ago. Wish us luck, I don’t know about the other two but I’m sure as shit going to need it. Anyone who makes a joke about ambulances or CPR is in trouble…

If anyone would like to sponsor us, you can do so at  http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/beardy-mans-coven  . If you sponsor us I make a solemn promise not to give you any abuse for at least 1 calendar month and to never call you a tight arse. Go on, you know you want to….

A year on.

I have to confess that I’m half cut. I’ve been out for a friend’s birthday party and drunk more wine than I’d usually go through so if there’s any spelling or grammar errors, I apologise. But I write better when I’m pissed. Or, more accurately, I write more honestly when I’m pissed. I wrote my dad a letter when I was pissed and he was dying. I’m much more honest when I’ve had a few and I’m typing, it feels like there’s just you and your writing there, no audience, no one you have to play to, just somewhere to write what you feel. And so here I am again, after a night filled with wine and other people’s problems to write it down again.

It’ been a year since my dad died at 58 of metastatic non small cell lung cancer. Well actually it’s been just over a year, May the 27th if you’re concerned with dates. The funny thing is that a year doesn’t seem the milestone that you think it will be. When someone dies unexpectedly and before their time, you grieve. This is the natural order of things. But in that grief, you look at ‘a year’ as some sort of pivotal date, like after that everything will be easier, you will no longer feel responsible for your mum, you will no longer feel like something is missing every time you go into their house, you won’t be hit with that sudden longing to go backwards to a time when they were there and you could see them. You think that at a year you reach some sort of acceptance with what has gone on. I don’t know why you’d believe that this marking of a calendar year would make the blindest bit of difference but you do. And the realisation that it doesn’t is pretty hard.

I still miss him. I still struggle to deal with my mum. I still find it the hardest thing in the work to ignore it when she says things designed to get at me and my brother because she’s hurting. Patience is not a virtue that has ever come naturally to me and the passing of a calendar year hasn’t changed this. I am a practical person, give me a practical problem and I will offer you seventeen solutions, stand a person in front of me crying and saying their life has fallen apart and I’ll shuffle about like a twat, saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing and making everything worse. A year of people crying in front of me hasn’t, as it turns out, moulded me into Oprah Winfrey.

Tonight I went out for a friend’s birthday. She’s a very  old friend, in fact she’s my oldest friend, our mums made friends when they were pregnant and lived in the same street so we’ve been friends since before we could walk or talk. So inevitably our parents have been friends for that 32 years too. Since my dad died, relations between my mum and my friend’s mum have been more strained and less spontaneous than they used to be. I don’t know exactly why, maybe my mum resents that her husband died and her friend’s husband didn’t, who knows. But tonight, after we’d all had a few, my friend’s mum opened up to me and confessed that she felt hurt by the way my mum has acted, the way she’ s been avoiding her in recent times. She was also hurt that when my mum and me/ my bro had a bit of a set to the other week, we turned to another friend and not her for advice. And at that point my taxi arrived so I said I’d phone her tomorrow and arrange to go round for a brew and a proper chat. At which point my slightly more sober friend asked if i would please do that, so it must have been mentioned a bit round their house.

The upshot is this: A year on isn’t a magical date at which the grieving stops. It  isn’t a magical time at which any strained relations will suddenly be fixed either. All it is is the end of the ‘firsts’, first father’s day, first birthdy without him, first christmas, first 23rd December (his birthday), first anniversary. What I can say is that a year on I recognise that other people outside our immediate fmaily are hurting too. My friend’s mum is hurting, not just from the loss of him but the loss of her best friend and the potential loss of the closeness we all had before the lung cancer blew it all apart. I recognise that her husband has lost his best friend and that if you watch him at group parties you’ll see him wander aimlessly fron group to group, never settling, never quite fitting in because his wingman, the one he always chatted to, is gone now and you can’t replace 30 years of friendship and shared history in a heartbeat. I recognise that I now have a responsibiity to try and make  things easier for those I care about, which is why tomorrow I’ll do   what I said tonight I would do, I’ll ring my friend’s mum and go round for coffee to try and reassure her that everything will be ok. And it’s a lie. I don’t know whether it will or it won’t. All I know is that at some point around the diagnosis of cancer the roles were reversed and I became the responsible one, the one people round here turn to for answers about my family. I never asked for it, I didn’t want it but I’ve got it and now I have to try and make it ok for other people without any knowledge, training or aptitude. It’s not easy.

Disappointingly a year on isn’t a magic date. I wish it were. A year on and we, or at least my brother and I, have accepted what has happened and are trying to rebuild things but that doesn’t mean we don’t still hurt, or get angry, or feel like our foundations have been knocked. We do. But now we are starting to see that other people are hurting too and that brings its  own set of challenges and problems that have to be faced.

 

Jubilee Weekend commentary

Hot on the heels of my new resolution not to get so angry about work because I’m in danger of getting sectioned and people were starting to flatten themselves against walls and avoid suuden movements or eye contact as I walked down the corridor, we get a long weekend! How lovely is that. So did I go down to London to join the crowds in the Mall, waving flags and cheering, did I wander round St James’s Park making conversation and watching the concert on the big screens, did I stand outside Buckingham Palace in the hope that Prince Harry would suddenly find my beauty irresistable and take me out for a cracking night on he champers round the posh bits of London?

Not exactly. I woodstained and assembled two flatpack shoeracks. This took up most of my long weekend with a little break in the middle to go to a friend’s house and stay over there. On the plus side, this means I saw most of the jubilee celebrations on the telly while swearing at the woodstain, wrestling with the flatpack assembly and wincing at the muscle damage I acquired while wrestling the new shoe racks into the car. And my thoughts are thus:

River Pageant – It’s quite remarkable how dull the BBC managed to make 1000 boats travelling down river. Now I will give them the fact that the weather, in typical British fashion, was shit, but really, was it that likely to be brightened up by the application of Fearne Cotton, a presenter who has fewer IQ points that she has fingers and who is fully capable of dumbing down literally any event. Highlights of Fearne’s performance on the day include addressing a war veteran as Jim, when his name wasn’t Jim and by describing another guy’s survival of the bombing of his ship by clinging onto the body of a dead shark as ‘wow, amazing’ in the same tone she used to describe the Jubilee sick bags. More of which later. I genuinely have no idea why she keeps getting wheeled out for live broadcasts, they require concentration and thought, which let’s be honest, aren’t Fearne’s strong points. Throw a sparkly bangle across the road and you’ll lose her as she scampers after it like an eager spaniel. Girl’s as thick as two short planks.

The Concert – I liked the concert. The concert was good. Not too sure why Will.I.Am featured so heavily, like a small  grinning gnome in fancy dress, since he’s American and as far as I’m aware, America hasn’t been part of Britain’s commonwealth for quite some time. As is Stevie Wonder but then at least Stevie Wonder has some musical talent, unlike our own Cheryl Cole who succesfully managed to prove that talent doesn’t necessarily follow beauty and sometimes miming to a track that’s been fed through the autotune machine isn’t a bad thing. Cliff Richards looked most intriguing, like a stretched marshmallow balanced on top of two pastel coloured pipecleaners and Elton John seemed to have a brand new chihuahua stapled to the top of his head. Outstanding. Rolf Harris did supremely well not to slap Lenny Henry right off the stage after the ignorant git interrupted his song to get Stevie Wonder on. Listen Lenny, it’s ROLF HARRIS, which may not mean much to you but my generation grew up with Rolf, you ask anyone my age ‘d’you know what it is yet?’ and they’ll have flashbacks to Rolf’s Cartoon Time. You. Do. Not. Kick. Rolf. Off. Stage. EVER! Got that Henry?? Rolf was kindly filling in because Stevie Wonder was late, it wouldn’t have killed him to wait another minute till everyone’s favourite Aussie doodler was done. Show some respect.  And another thing, it wasn’t really the time to air your working class black lad shoulder chip. This wasn’t about you and your gripes, it was a concert.

Rolf Harris – legend. As opposed to Lenny Henry – bellend.

 Annie Lennox was as usual dressed in something weird and magnificently in tune, Paul McCartney was as usual dressed like he was still in the Beatles and mediocre. All in all, liked the concert and if Gary Barlow doesn’t have a knighthood before he’s 50 I’ll streak down Deansgate in nothing but carpet slippers.

Church thingy and various other bits and bats yesterday – What I particularly liked about the church service was that Prince Harry, Kate and Prince William were quite clearly hungover. Wills and Kate tried to hide it, Harry slumped in his seat like only a Big Mac and a pint of Sprite would save his life. Magnificent. This is what we want to see from Royals, a stinking hangover, as per royal tradition of hundreds of years.

Royally fucked – we’ve all had moments like this. Not usually in front of tens of millions of people mind you

 I didn’t really listen to the sermon because I’m not religious and I was having some difficulty with the assembly of my shoe racks at this point but I’m sure it was lovely, mostly because I like Rowan Williams, he’s delightfully beardy, looks like he doesn’t give a fuck which direction his hair goes in or what his clothes are doing and says the first things that pop into his very brainy head. This seems to get him into trouble but it is mighty amusing and so I like him. The rest of the stuff from yesterday wasn’t that interesting and was marred once again by a liberal application of the moron Cotton, who this time was with weirdy songstress Paloma Faith, a woman who started by plugging her album and then moved on to discussing the jubilee sick bag. Which apparently comes in two colours and according to the insightful Cotton, whose commentary on the affairs of the day never fail to impress, you can eat too much and then pick which colour you want to throw up in. Every utterance is a gem, truly.

Someone just cranked the level of stupid in the room up to ‘maximum’.

So, a lovely jubilee weekend, two shoe racks fully stained and assembled, only one hangover over the whole period and one personal injury. I count that as a raging success. When’s the next one?

Things which are stupid today.

Today, all the members of my team received an invite to a ‘safe digging forum’ from Corporate Wankery’s ‘Safe Digging Champion’. All the members except me. I was the only name not included on the invite list. So, he’s now on my ‘There are no limits to the number of ways in which you can go fuck yourself’ list. This links in with the HSE Director’s ‘thank you’ emails to each of the guys for their weekly inspection reports. Did I get a thank you? No. I got nothing. So, if he isn’t going to acknowledge them then I’m not going to send them. It really is that simple. I didn’t like the idea of having to fill in a sheet to state exactly where I’d been all week, what I’d seen there and what I’d done about it anyway.  If he doesn’t like it, he can feel free to email me to let me know and I will promptly ignore it. I’m beginning to think that perhaps the warning I was given by someone way back at the start that Corporate Wankery aren’t really very keen on women in roles that don’t comprise solely of filing and counting paperclips might be true. If I was intending to stay here for any length of time this might be an issue but since I’m planning to stay for precisely as long as it takes me to find alternative employment and work out my notice, it isn’t altering my sleep pattern too drastically. To be honest, I’ve given more thought to the fact that my toenails need repainting. Possibly I offended the ‘Safe Digging Champion’ when he asked whether we risk assess every man before he digs each hole and I laughed, assuming he was joking. Big silence descended round meeting table. He wasn’t. Oops. That’ll be a no laddy, we don’t. Never mind. It’s not as big a fuck up as after the meeting when The Boss and I were discussing how one of our co-workers had turned from a top bloke to a corporate wanker since Corporate Wankery took over. He had definitely still been in the boardroom when we left it. He was not when we left The Boss’s office, he was in his office, which adjoins The Boss’s office. And from the reasonably impressive death stare he gave us, he’s quite clearly heard every single word. Oops again. Still, perhaps it’s better that he knows, after all everyone in the company is calling him a corporate twat and no one wants that. It’s like the theory that if you have a colleague who smells of old cheese, it may be mortifying to tell them but it’s the kinder thing to do.

So now I’m off to hide under my desk because the Group Director, who is exceedingly cross with me for something that mercifully this time wasn’t my fault, has just announced he is coming to visit The Boss and she has advised me to be very quiet and pretend I’m not here. Just another day in the Batcave of Insanity that is this office…