Had a work party last night. We said farewell to Unilever House while they set about renovating it for the next 2 years. The party theme was 'through the ages' - 50's 60's 70's and so on. I am hungover, margheritas, vodka mules, champaign cocktails, brandy, wine and beer all participated in stripping my stomach lining.

There were Elvis' on stilts


there was a lounge with lilo chairs and a dude with a sitar


and some bling...


and a chocolate fountain, yes you heard right, a chocolate fountain


and 50's bee-bopping ladies...


and some really funky colleagues...

Yesterday was almost hell. A few weeks ago I overheard an office conversation, my manager was organising a team-task day out. Sad I know, there is after all no 'I' in 'Team'. I suggested the following that in my opinion are almost always successful at bringing an equalising smile to everyone's face: paintball, go-karting or the pub, or better still, nothing brings people together like a huge dinner with wine-a-plenty.

I don't know how the final decision got passed everyone without anyone objecting but my manager, being the social-centric commie that she is decided that the best way to get us all to bond was to drag our asses to an inner-city wooden hut of a nursery school to paint its innards. Community service... I didn't do anything wrong, I'm an upstanding member and participant of society, why then should I be subjected to something that pains me, in the name of team spirit.

In my blatantly obvious discontent I was assigned the task of blogging the occasion and taking photographs so that I can publish them to the intranet for all to see how shiny and happy we are and how clever we all are to have learned to paint together, in harmony. I had been out the night before to The Comedy Store in Piccadilly - it was a rip of a time where jugs of poisonous Stella Artois stripped my wiring and had me escaping my crowd who were intent on furthering their drinking. I bolted somewhere near the statue of Eros, disappearing deep into the underground system and safely found my way to the Bakerloo line. The nature of Stella is that it only kicks in hours later, or the breweries have a time delay on the release of the alcohol. Like I said, it's poison. I have no recollection of the ride home or the walk from the tube station - I must have walked at least an extra mile swaggering down Elgin Ave.

To get to the point I woke up drunk. Nothing is worse, the hangovers I can deal with but waking up still pissed is hell on earth. I now had to make my way to Highbury to paint for chrissakes, paint, sticky, smelly, brushes, turpentine, ladders, sandpaper, rags, shit. I got to Highbury and found a top greasy spoon cafe to nourish my suffering body with fried bread, bacon and eggs. The proprietors looked at me in a very strange way when I requested that no sausage or beans of the baked variety should end up on my plate. After a grounding breakfast I headed off to meet the others at Starbucks.

The school was as I described earlier; a wooden hut in the middle of a small square in Islington. On arrival confusion set in as no-one had read the beautifully produced manual on our day-out-and-about with colleagues. The manual had everything, health and safety tips on painting, how to paint, the most effective way to use a roller, the importance of masking tape, face masks and what to do in an emergency, don't drink the paint and no eating the kiddies crayons. The first thing I did was search for the glue, nothing takes me back to my days in nursery school like washing down your crayons with some paper glue.

The tasks were as follows, there was a mural that needed removing, the entrance, the kids lavvies and a spare room all needed a lick of paint. Everyone stood around goggle eyed like sheep and I waited for the baaing to start. I realised that there was a management problem so I proceeded, as Jocelyn tenderly pointed out at the end of the day 'yelling' at everyone. Quite a few of my colleagues are Indian, direct imports who are clearly of higher cast, they must have more servants than rich South African families do because never before had a DIY implement looked so foreign and out of place in someone's hand. I had to deliver lessons on using sandpaper and paint brushes. I am not tarting this up for the purposes of blogging. I realised that I was in for it when a group of people stood around me staring as I shook the paint up and gave it a stir. I looked up as they exclaimed in amazement that I had clearly done this before.

Everyone bunched up into the same place trying to get the same work done. A lesson on distribution of hands would ensure that we would finish the day's work. I was now painter, sander, blogger, photgrapher and manager. The lady who ran the nursery school let me on to a little secret that would make my self designated task easier. The wall with the mural is going to be taken down next summer. I set about getting my colleagues to give the wall a token sanding before we began the painting. Her message was clear... 'don't put in too much effort dear, the wall's not going to be there next year.'

I felt terrible all day, stomach pains and the hangover had me wishing for the day to end. We got it all finished in the end, an hour and a half ahead of schedule. We were then forced to fill in a satisfaction survey. I fucking hate shit like that, I cannot express myself strongly enough here. I cannot lie when I am forced into filling in a pampy questionnaire. I was confused as everyone else was because this was supposed to be a team-building exercise but there was not one single person who admittedly wanted to be there. This was community service, charity work, it had as much to do with team building as shovelling shit.

The questionnaire asked me:

Q - What was the highlight of your day?
A - Finishing.

Q - What was the low point of your day?
A - Starting.

Q - What do you think you and your colleagues got out of today?
A - Giving the kiddies a fresh wall to scrawl and scribble on.

Q - Have you learned anything about your colleagues today?
A - Yes, they need to be yelled at, they love it, they need it.

The best part of it was that the person who forced us all to go was on holiday herself. All of this in spite of that we are in the middle of a warehouse upgrade and there is actually a lot of work to do because we are weeks behind schedule.

I'll give you all a few pics to get a better idea of the day.




This the ghastly enamel mural that the poor kids had been subject to. I asked if it was being removed for fear of encouraging the youngsters to squander their young lives in pool halls.




This is the freshly painted wall they can set about wrecking with crayons.




The highlight of my day was finding a miniature phonebooth and fireman's hat. I was instantly transported back 25 years. Fantastic!

I have just been to the gym. It works wonders for the rage. All the deep breathing and counting to ten has a calming effect; endorphine city.

I rememeber what happened last time I started gym. I woke the next morning unable to move. I started with 15 minutes running on the treadmill, 5 minutes on the kayak machine and then I dabbled with the leg and chest machines. Slowly slowly catchy monkey. I just yearn to feel fit.

I've just been told off for ranting in an open-plan office. I may not express my discontent in such a loud and verbose manner as I have been. It's not the coffee girls' fault that the coffee is over-priced, and it's certainly not their fault that the little brioche buns that should cost about 50p are 4 times the price.

Human sales interfaces should be trained to deal with my sort. I understand why my father expresses his displeasure at dealing with substandards in restaurants and any other kind of vendor.

Has exercising one's basic human right to voice an opinion or object to the plain unjust become the new cantankerous?

I bet it's the HR people sitting next to the coffee bar who complained, they are a pampy looking bunch. I can add HR people along with those in marketing and advertising to the list of people who should hang themselves immediately.

I need to become my own boss, or get as far away from communist office workers as possible.

I went to survey the gym yesterday. It's a super slick gym with more machines then I have ever seen. There are machines I've never heard of, the kayak is one of them. I'll hopefull start today depending on the work load in the office. The gym has a distinct lack of testosterone in the air, which I appreciated. Usually in gyms you have out-of-work-and-high-on-steroids gorillas hogging up the free-weights area, the hierarchy is determined by the diameter of the arms. Not in this gym, no way. It's a corporate gym, city types, and the free-weights area is over-run by fags getting off on each other's sweaty chest.

I won't be found mincing about round the free-weights. Use the machines, get the fuck out.

me in our new offices

I went to Lillywhites this afternoon after work to buy clothes for gym. Tracksuit pants as I couldn't face flashing my sexy, bright-white legs to those present. It's a proper city gym full of city workers (I still consider myself an imposter), slick metal everything and a TV for each cardio run-the-life-out-of-you running thing. I'll need to find the quietest time of day so that I can slowly ease myself through the pain so as to work my way up to confidently operating the aparatus without fear of my arms and legs snapping.

Lillywhites was hell. No, it was like a collapsing lung, of hell. It is one of the places responsible for the infamous Golf Sales. It was full of greasy chav bastards looking for the latest reject or counterfeit Adidas swag, or sleeveless sweaty shirts and other assorted smelly shit. I got my cheap clobber and legged it for the tube. I stopped by Solomons to get some ingredients for lamb keema. Chillies, ginger, garlic, chapati and lamb. That's slow-cooking in the oven as we speak.

I'll settle into a quiet evening with a cold brew, match of the day and the Soprano's. Do not try anything more on a Monday night.

post 100...

ode to Schwannoma

i am the darkness
from inside
i am part of you
i am you
you are me
we need each other
i am new
but as old as time
i have not always been here
i have, but not in this state
i am born of the darkness
your darkness
and that is where I feed
you nourish me
you need me
and I need you
you try to reject me
but you don’t know how
self destruction
your means of finding me
identifying me
but this is my food
this is what makes me strong
stronger than you
you begin to destroy yourself
irrational and unexplained
everyone sees
what I want them to see
they don’t see me
it’s you
and your darkness they see
not me
I will feed off you
you destroy yourself
to destroy me
but it makes me grow
strong
stronger than you
i am darkness
i am you

We took the train to Waterloo yesterday morning and from there another train to Kempton Park race course. Waterloo station was manic, as it always is. That's where one would get the Eurostar as well as other main line trains to national locations.

There was not much time at all and we all flirted with the deadline. Martha and Luke were also going to the races and we were to meet Martha on the platform at a given time. To our surprise we bumped into them amidst the chaos that reigned over Waterloo station. We all managed to get tickets and cash. Standing watching the train time monitors, I saw an old boy wearing a huge red coat, black hat and trousers. He was mumbling about the fact that with 2 minutes to go, they had still not informed us of the number off the platorm we would be leaving from.

The old man was of course a Chelsea Pensioner. The Clelsea Pensioners are ex-service men who are taken care of and supported by the community. They are given free housing and are sustained in return for showing up at certain charity events with all their medals pinned to the red coats. Something I'm sure anyone would find endearing. Martha took an instant liking to the old boy, asking him if he too was going to the races. He attended some 40 meetings a year I heard him tell her. When she said that she would be his date for the day and did he have any tips for her, he bolted, saved by the platorm number now printed on the screen. The old boy ran pretty fast for someone of his age.

On the train Luke, Martha's brother told us of an incident that occured whilst waiting in line to buy a ticket. There was an American youth in front of Luke, wanting to change here and there and get the most out of his student discount when he heard a rather Churchillian voice rumble over his shoulder, Luke turned around to see a man who looked rather like Patrick Moore, in a striped blazer and panama hat:

(in best Churchill accent)

"Young man, can I offer you some advice, never, never stand behind an American teenager in a queue, they never, never know where they want to go and they never, never have any cash."

And so we all sat and waited for Kempton Park to stop outside the train window.

I was quite excited as I had never been to the races, or done something so quintessentially English as spending a day at the races, apart from betting on-line from the sofa on Saturday mornings. I had the appropriate racing clobber on, corduroy trousers, brogues and collared shirt. We paid for premier seating, or standing so as to draw a distinction between us and the scum on the other side of the fence. The hierarchy at horse races is something else, strange that we all use the same bookies. Phil insisted that we were in the premier area as this is where the finish line was.

We headed for the bar and given that I had only had a croissant for breakfast I thought it might be a good idea to eat something more substantial. I handed my guinness to Phil and arranged to meet outside and begin discussions on 'the day's business'. The day's business included all bets that would be pooled. We would set up a pool, each of us giving equal amounts for the bets and at the end of the day we would split the winnings, or together mourn the loss.

I headed off to find a sandwich or baguette to eat before the libations began. Instead I found a place doing very good looking fish and chips, and it had been while since I had fish and chips. The chips were clean, chunky and crisp - the fish was crispy and fresh. I ordered a couple of portions, drenched them in vinegar and headed off to find the others. Everyone enjoyed the fish and chips, the guinness went down a treat after that.

Horseracing is weird. People mask their betting habits by dressing up and pretending to be involved in some upper-class affordable activity. There is no distinction between the scum on the wrong side of the bookies fence and the wannabe uppety toffs on the right side of the bookies. We were all scum, united in not wanting our money, deciding instead to throw it into the dustbins used to stash grubby, sweaty wads of cash. I could not believe that the bookmakers actually used lined bins full of money. Place a bet of a fiver, hand over a tenner and his hand reaches into the sweaty pit of cash to retrieve a smelly note for your change. It's a grubby business, the business of cash, cash is king.

I headed back midway through the events for another portion of fish and chips, it was that good.

After the races we were about £25 down which was not as disastrous as I thought. It was worth the experience, given that I spent more on fish and chips than I did on the horses. I doubt I'll end up throwing my pension away on the horses or the dogs, but it's given me something to write about.

We left Kempton Park suitably entertained and took the train back to Waterloo, which was full of Chelsea fans and scum. We changed at Kingston before one of us started crying from the unpleasantness. The change was a good move and we got an emptier train for the rest of the journey.

Since the sun was setting we decided to head off to the Royal Festival hall for drinks on the balcony and watch the sun set over MI5. We each had a couple of gin and tonics, Martha opting for tea. The Australian circus was performing at the Festival Hall and we all wondered what was so cultural about the outback circus.

After watching the sun set over the Thames and MI5 turning from stark white to pink we made our way over to the embankment to Gordon's wine bar. Now if any of you have not been to Gordon's before, please remind me to take you there. It is a fantastic, very old cellar with arches. I have known about it have been going there for many years, it is still one of London's best kept secrets. We shared a couple of bottles of chilled red and a cheese board with cheddar, taleggio and various pickles. In good London style there were rats the size of small dogs scampering about in the dark bushes behind us, first 3, then four then an army of them waiting for us all to leave so they could raid Gordon's. We left the rats to their business and took the no6 bus back home. A good day was had by all and I've woken today with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. A day off was put to good use.

This is my 99^th post, 99 posts and 35,875 words later I think my blog has been a success. I will have to compile a celebratory 100^th post.

It's a blazing day 26º, could be the middle of summer. We are off to race the ponies today which I am looking forward to as it is something I have never done.

I am quite upset about the iron I bought. I tossed the box and receipt, cleaned the house and set about ironing my shirts. I got two shirts in and the bloody thing stopped working. I checked the fuse in the plug and had a poke around. I know Argos is not going to change it for me, but I'll take it back anyway for them to keep; it's of no use to me. Let that be the first and last time I buy something at Argos.

Working in Walton was a nice change, even though it's very quiet and boring down there. I actually managed to be productive. They have a staff shop there selling products that Unilever owns, so you can buy buckets of Marmite and tons of soap powder. I took the opportunity to stock up on household chemicals.

I need to post a blog about a few things I did in Sweden. Watch that space.

Working in Surrey, Walton on Thames. The offices here are really dull and noone likes a noise, £10 fine if your cell phone rings and you're not around to answer it. It's nice down here though, today is hot and sunny and there is a massive water garden surrounding the building. There are freezers hidden in every corner in the building and there is free ice-cream available to all staff. I am going to see if I can eat my salary in ice-cream.

Off to the ponies tomorrow which should be a laugh. Phil won £150 pounds last weekend, so I'll hand over whatever amount I am willing to lose to the gamblers with weird theories on multiples and numerology of horses names. It's not that bad, but they do understand the handicaps and performance stats of the horses. The objective is to make enough to pay for the entrance fee and drinks.

Back to work then.

This is our last day in Unilever House. As from Monday we'll be moving into the building next door for 2 years while they disembowel this decco giant and stuff it full of metal, glass and plastic shit. I am sure it'll be spectacular when it's finished. Tomorrow I go down to the offices in Walton-on-Thames do help them finish off the warehouse upgrade, when it comes to money, the more the merrier, even if I have to travel to Surrey.

I spoke to Ulrika last night, she gave me her good news... she got a hot-shot job for a huge company in Götegorg. The perks of her job make mine seem pale in comparison, she racks up 6 weeks paid holiday - you have to love Sweden. She was worried about not being able to find work in her field, which is the quite a new and vague field of corporate event marketing (at least in Sweden). So good luck Ullis, knock 'em dead!

30 something and it starts taking shape. So do we now make a mad rush to own houses and kids before we're 40, decide that it's all too much and escape the city to live in the country, buy a tractor and look after the orchards? Let's hope so!

I am back at work today and feeling out of sorts. Sweden seems far away and I can't even remember what happened, how I felt or why I felt that way. It's a good thing I posted the blog entry otherwise I might never have held on to the search for the source of my discontent. For readers out there, the hospital scenario is an attempt at the beginnings of a book - if I get enough of it written down I could put a frame-work together and fatten it all up. Once I have more will post it up on a seperate link so that chapters can be read.

I decided I needed to buy an iron and ironing board since my collection of clothes that require ironing has grown. There is nothing worse than wearing clothes that should be ironed and aren't.

Hassan and I went to a Thai restaurant for lunch which made a decent change from the shit they serve up in the canteen. Since the boss was away for a couple of hours we took a stroll through the city to browse windows. I went to Argos to get the iron and board. I have never been to Argos before and it turned out to be quite an experience, the fast food of applicance stores. You find what you want in a catalogue, pay by means of a machine and collect your goods, as I did mine, in 1 minute and 41 seconds.

I ordered an ironing board with black and white cow patterns on. When my domestic clobber arrived, I got handed a board with purple and white polka dots on. I had no choice but to take it. Walking back to work through the city, Holborn, Temple and Blackfriars I was getting some strange looks. I walked past a row of builders sitting on a wall, me with my polka ironing board and fancy shirt, I wanted to explain to them that I was a normal straight guy but thought it better not to.