Dilemma

When the recruitment consultant who got you your new job sends a bottle of champagne to congratulate you, do you break out the plastic cups from the water cooler and share with your colleagues, or do you save it for the dinner party you’ve been invited to on Saturday so you can look a bit more generous than you really are?

Or do you just take it home and drink the whole bottle yourself while you're lounging around on a lazy bank holiday Monday?

Open Letter

Dear Middle Class People,

What the fuck? You live in one of the wealthiest countries on earth during a time of unparalleled economic prosperity, and now you’re broke? After you spent the past ten years banging on about all the money you were making from property? Aren’t you lot supposed to be well educated? Shame you pissed away that opportunity on some worthless humanities degree instead of something useful like basic maths.

Spend less than you earn, fuckwits.

Sincerely,

LC.

ps – Please tell Rosie Millard* to shut the fuck up – no matter what she thinks, she did not invent being poor.


* Has anybody else noticed that the Indy runs her bleating columns about the impoverished middle classes on the same page as its regular spread on shiny, expensive toys? This week's column was directly opposite a review of a £3000 ping-pong table, a £200 pair of sunglasses and a £500 digital radio/cd player.

Finite

Gran’s sister died. I never knew her, but I’m very fond of Gran and they were close, never having lived more than a couple of miles away from each other for their entire lives. I’ll have to call her tonight, but of course I haven’t got a clue what to say, as if anybody ever does.

I can make sympathetic noises, but I can’t say what I really think. What I really think is that it’s a fucking miserable state of affairs that after loving somebody for a lifetime you ultimately have to watch them die. No matter how I look at it, I just can’t find anything positive in the situation. Sure she had a long and happy life, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about the fact that the unique, special human being that meant so much to my Gran has now simply been snuffed out of existence forever.

If you’ll excuse the melodrama, it really makes me want to keep everybody at arms length more than I already do. I don’t have any kind of faith to reassure me that the people who matter will be enjoying a jolly old knees up on the Other Side, just waiting for me to join the party* and I find the idea that something as wonderful as a human personality can be permanently erased completely depressing.

A good few years ago I was flicking through a copy of the Manchester Evening News while I was visiting my dad one weekend. Out of boredom I started scanning the obituary page and I noticed a small one which said simply: I will never forget today, the day I looked into your beautiful eyes for the last time.

I’ve never been able to forget that line and the picture it paints. I can handle my own mortality easily enough, it’s other people’s that I have a problem facing up to.



*How old are you supposed to be in heaven? Do you have to spend eternity at god’s side with the grumpy, senile old man version of your soul because that’s the state it was in when you died?

Settling in

It's been an intense couple of weeks with a lot of late nights and early starts, and the learning curve has been steep, but I think I'm going to like my new job. I spend most of the time knocking around ideas with a bunch of smart, funnny guys, and thinking up creative ways to spend the client's budget (whilst being utterly blasé about the massive sums of money we're talking about), ripping the piss out of each other and generally having a laugh, while good looking women in short skirts do the filing and bring me cups of tea - just like nature intended.

My bicycle, I like to ride it

My new office is exactly 7 miles away from my flat and there’s no easy way to get there using public transport. I thought about getting a shiny new motorbike for the journey, but on balance I’d rather keep my cash in the bank at the moment, at least until this whole ‘global economic catastrophe’ thing blows over. So the only other option was a trip to Halfords to get myself a bicycle.

There are several advantages to cycling into work:

Thanks to the late, great Red Ken, London now has plenty of cycle lanes, so it’s a lot easier and safer than it used to be.

Cycling 14 miles a day gives you a free pass to eat lard, drink beer, and be idle with impunity for the rest of the time, safe in the knowledge that you’re still going to look fairly presentable in the buff.

In the mornings I get to see flocks of colourful wild parrots as I ride through Gunnersbury, and herds of deer in Richmond Park, which is a nice way to start your day.

In the evenings I ride through Kew, which has a nice villagey feel to it, especially when there’s a cricket match on the green.

I have, however, identified one small drawback to cycling 70 miles per week:

My arse is fucking killing me.

I can't think of a good title for this post

The reason behind my first-day-freakout was that the first task dropped on me my by new boss was to develop a plan for a pan-european publicity campaign worth hundreds of thousands of Euros for a new audio product launch. I would have expected this kind of thing to involve brainstorming sessions, a few days of research and some sort of planning meeting - but the new boss seemed to think that I'd be able to cobble the plan together in an afternoon, entirely by myself, on my first day.

My natural reaction was, of course, to soil myself. There appeared to be a significant gap between his expectations of my professional abilities and the making-it-up-as-I-go-along reality, I just didn't know how to produce the plan in the kind of detail he was asking for without doing at least a couple of days of research. It could only be a matter of time before I was outed as a complete fraud and sent packing - I didn't sleep a wink on my first night, absolutely convinced that I'd bitten off more than I could chew and I wasn't going to make it past my first month, or even week.

So I winged it - played for a little extra time, asked a few stupid questions, and cobbled a plan together which I was certain my boss would mail to London Zoo along with a note requesting that it be used to wipe the elephants' arses. Boss didn't actually get round to looking at the plan until Friday, but instead of scrutinizing it thoroughly and pulling it apart piece by piece, he just gave it a quick scan, made a few minor changes and said it looked fine.

I made the classic mistake of assuming that, because I'm working with a massive multi-national corporation and handling quite substantial budgets, there are rules, procedures and sophisticated strategies for doing everything, when the truth is that everybody else is just winging it too.

Now that I'm settling back into some sort of routine after Japan, Scotland, the new job and everything else, I should have the time to start posting a bit more regularly again. But for now, the weather's glorious and the park's full of slags in hotpants. Laters.

Bigishoo? Bigishoo?

Last week: "Meh, how hard can it be? I'll just wing it for the first month and pick it up as I go along."

Tonight: "I am sooooo fucked."

Seriously, I know most people feel a bit out of their depth on their first day, but if today was anything to go by I'm going to need to invest in some mountaineering gear to get up this learning curve.

*crawls under the duvet with a bottle of vodka*

Highland fling

My name is LC and I have a problem with alcohol. After a couple of beers, a few glasses of wine, half a bottle of champagne, aperitifs, digestifs and maybe one or two whatifs, I find myself far more enthusiastic about the prospect of Scottish dancing than is considered decent in polite society. The Willow was Stripped bare, the White Sergeant Dashed like there was no tomorrow, and Gordon was so Gay they gave him his own parade. Obviously I'd prefer to avoid any sort of folk dancing entirely, but if people are going to insist on it then I'm giving 100% commitment. I roll deep, innit. My feet ached like fuck the morning after – I'm just glad I stuck with sensible shoes instead of wearing heels (transvestitism is rife at Scottish weddings, I was tempted to join in but thought better of it).

All in all a good wedding, a nice short ceremony, quality nose-bag, and a gorgeous setting - although holding it in two castles was possibly just a touch showy (ceremony here, reception here). The best bit, of course, was spending a few days hanging out with chums surrounded by the best scenery Britain has to offer. I'd happily relocate to the highlands tomorrow if it wasn't for a few trifling concerns like having a career and social life. Incidentally, if you're looking to taste the best fish and chips in the world you'll be hard pressed to beat this place.

I'm now slightly sunburned, aching all over (from all the dancing and hillwalking and drunken ninja-skillz demonstrations), and feeling extremely unhealthy after spending the last seven days stuffing myself stupid and drinking heavily - perfect condition for starting a big new job in the morning. Go me.

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodbye

So that's a fairly big chapter of my life closed. My life has changed more in the past three years than in the entire preceding decade, and the linchpin of everything that's happened to me over this period has been the job I've been doing, so it feels very strange to be leaving. The whole blogging thing has largely been a result of my taking this job, and that in itself has had some pretty far reaching consequences for me, both personally and professionally.

The next step is a big one, it's the kind of gig that can make your career, if I play this right it's going to open some very interesting doors. But I've not really had time to think about it, I've been so busy focusing on what I'm walking away from that I've not given much thought to what lies ahead.

That changes now. Next four days in Scotland for the wedding, Bank Holiday Monday sitting around in my pants playing Grand Theft Auto IV*, and then on Tuesday the next chapter starts.

Onwards and upwards.



*They got me the game as one of my leaving presents - this apparently involved trawling half of London for a shop that hadn't sold out and then dispatching an office junior to stand in line in order to secure one of the few remaining copies. Thanks guys - whenever I'm jacking a car, or popping a cap in a pig's ass, or just smacking my ho around, I'll think of you all...

Two for the price of one

“Oh that’s lovely!” said the elderly Asian woman on the checkout at Sainsbury’s as she ran my purchase through the scanner. The three foot tall Ficus elastica was on sale in the supermarket’s house-plant section for just a fiver and I thought it would look good in my living room.

As she ran the rest of my groceries through the scanner we had a friendly conversation about what a bargain the plant was, the best way to re-pot it when I got home, whether it might need a cane to support it, and how nice it is to brighten up the home with a little greenery.

I like to think we shared a nice little moment of mutual understanding that crossed all the barriers of age, gender and culture. And her smile barely cracked as she scanned in my final two items – a couple of bottles of Durex Play lube – although the conversation did sort of grind to a halt at that point.

Funny how if you buy one bottle of lube, you’re a normal sexually active adult, but when you buy two bottles you’re suddenly some kind of deviant…