...ruffles...

Dramatic developments in Secret Santa-gate. There's been a lot of chatter on the networks and some frantic shuttle diplomacy at a very high level (seriously; senior members of staff meeting in dark corners throughout Friday trying to find a resolution, apparently).

A decision has been taken to allow people to opt into Secret Santa and to allow those on a temporary contract to take part... but they're still banned from the Christmas party. A major climbdown, according to one.

Many agents died bringing you this information.

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Labels: Work

Here we go again, it's Secret Santa time at work. I don't know the official rules of Secret Santa, but I do understand its principles.

There's a bit about not spending too much. A few years ago the limit was set at a stellar £30 - the reasoning being that rather than buy 6 people £5 presents you spend £30 on one person.

Then there's the bit about generating a sense of gentle Christmas jollity. A couple of years ago we had wish lists because someone got really upset with the benign fun throwaway novelty I bought them the year before.

There's the community spirit. This year it's being centrally organised. We've had an email circular about The Rules; everyone is automatically opted in, so everyone goes into the hat. Then a draw will be made, but you're not under any obligation to buy the person you draw a present.

Brilliant. So when the draw happens, people who have willingly participated will give a present, and there's every chance the recipient will be someone who has chosen not to be involved. The generous will miss out, whilst the tight arses gain. This'll get everyone in the Christmas spirit.

Everyone? well, not everyone, because only permanently contracted staff are allowed to be involved. Those on temporary contracts, even those who have been working for us for months, no matter how willing they are to be involved, are banned.

I feel a revolution coming on.

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Labels: Work

There’s this horrible concept of ‘being deep’. People in reality TV shows claim to be ‘deep’ or that they ‘like to get deep’ sometimes. This is assumed to mean that they like to get a little conceptual and think about what things truly mean.

I’m coming to the conclusion that people are built in layers. When babies are born the hospital people do an APGAR test; it’s actually done twice, the first time most babies score at least 8 out of 10, and for the second test they’re expected to get a cracking 10 out of 10. It’s basically an assessment of skin colour, number of legs, heads etc. It’s the only thing you can truly assess, it’s the only layer they have.

This is pretty much all there is to a baby. They feed on liquid and liquid comes out the other end. It’s a simply little ecosystem. Then a cold might come along; they sneeze and snot comes out; this is laid on top of the liquid-in-liquid-out concept. Then they become more aware of their surroundings and react to things around them. Then they recognise people they know, or will make different noises to indicate tiredness over nappy or feeding. This evolves until speech eventually comes along. When they start feeding on solids, carrot goes in; orange things come out, but the viscosity changes depending on their milk intake, or there may be variations resulting from sickness. It gets harder to isolate why things are happening.

Millie has started teething and she has a cold and a bit of conjunctivitis; because she’s at that age, its winter, she’s at nursery and in contact with other babies. She can wake up, but we don’t know for sure why, it could be nappy, cold, food, conjunctivitis, teeth. So she now has Medicied to help her sleep, eye drops for the conjunctivitis, CalGel for her teeth, Sudacreme for her nappy, and albus oil for her cold. It’s another layer on top of everything else she’s developed over the last six months.

As things progress, more layers will be added – biological, sociological, economic, psychological, physiological and so forth. Which all leads to the conclusion that TV reality contestants do have the capability of being ‘deep’; going back through the layers that they’ve built over the years. The ultimate conclusion of this soul-mining of course, is to find that they’re a bag of bones which is full of shit.

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Labels: Babies

The Ashes start this week. Ah, the Summer of 05, who could forget it? Flintoff, the captain, y'know the one with the pointy nose, the slightly tubby blonde chap, the bloke with the shaven head who did that reverse swing thing. Was Monty Panasar in the Ashes team?... yeah, probably. I was totally there with The Boys.

Inevitably, there's been a lot of hype surrounding the series, which has sparked a degree of interest deep inside me. Thing is, I've been told that Australia is a long way away, meaning they're a day ahead of us and have to play at night just to keep going.

You can follow the action on SKY throughout the night. But there can be few people who can reverse their lives to be on Australian time without actually being in Australia. Most people, like me, will probably watch the first over at about 11.30pm then go to bed upon realising that every advert break will be promoting a lateral thigh trainer. The actual TV watching nation will predominantly be men with a penchant for staying up all night who don't spend their time texting Babestation asking the models to do things that are strictly prohibited by OfCom. Only for the dedicated, then.

You could at least follow the action from the warmth of your bed on Radio Five Live and Radio 4 longwave. I'm not sure why both are covering it. Perhaps Radio Five do it in a regional accent. Failing that, you could request a text of the score from the BBC at a time convenient to you.

Or, you could watch the highlights the next evening on Sky or the BBC, but you'd have to wait a full twelve hours after the close of play. This is better than reading it in the papers who will be reporting the first day's play just as the second day's play is finishing.

It'll be an Ashes for the dedicated, those of us on the margins will be following from some considerable distance. Which, given that it's likely to end in pretty humiliating defeat, will allow us to claim that we never really cared about it in the first place.

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Labels: Sport

Working at home today meant I was unfortunate enough to stumble upon the GMTV magazine show LK Today, which is complicit in a fraud that engulfs all the creative industries.

Basically, the creative industries need to continuously reinvent their products in order to maintain their income stream. The product is so disposable, the industries can't afford to stay still. The thing is, customer expectations move quicker than the changing trends; people expect the New Beatles on a weekly basis. This is why the music industry basically veers from guitar music to electronic music and back again even though the music press will insist that its post-industrial-krautrock-riotgrrl-shoegazing-jazz-funk-trip-hop. I mean, Klaxons are neo-rave, NEO-R? A? V? E?

The fashion industry is slaved to the same cycles; it has to find new ways of representing the same things. LK Today is a platform on which these ideas are presented unquestioned. Even if they did say 'Are you sure this is influenced by early Byzantine masonry tooling because it doesn't half look like a pair of jeans held together with pegs'. The resident expert will give the Pavolvian response '... and if you throw on a pashmina and pair of sling-backs its a great evening look.'

Today they proudly announced that the Chav look was in, which might surprise Chav-wear magnate Dave Whelan who's £200 million JJB sports empire is basically built on selling Ecko hoodies to faux-gangsta teenagers. Along with some awkward in-studio models they proceeded to scan through a series of stills of Caprice with her hood up and Lilly Allen (great examples, apparently).

"Who's this", said Lorraine Kelly, who's mumsy image hides a murky seedy catalogue of sexual depravity. "This", said resident expert, "is [alpha-chavs] Mike Skinner and Lady Sovereign. But they really haven't got the look, they've really overdone it".

Haven't got the look? They are the bleedin' look. They invented the bloody look. Good god, what is the world coming to?

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Labels: Music, TV and radio

In conversation with a colleague about a woman who we met at a corporate schmooze.

"... she kept showing me pictures of her cat posed doing different things; one of him helping her work, one of him doing the washing up, that sort of thing. His name's Bilbo."

"She's a Lord of the Rings obsessive, her house is called Rivendell"

"She'd definitely been drinking, she was completely Legolas."

Later in the day, during a marketing meeting we were discussing changing trends within the business;

"We seem to be attracting many more women, especially younger women, we're not sure how it's happened."

"Yes, we do seem to be achieving a high degree of young female penetration."

Ooh missus!

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Labels: Work

This charmer has recently been suspended from the Tory party for circulating a racist poem to her Tory mates and, it seems, to one bleeding heart Liberal who dobbed her in. Ellenor Bland is not a racist, she says, although evidently her husband must be, after all it was all his fault, which should make dinner tonight somewhat frosty.

Like most racists, who, in justification for their actions, will also claim they know lots of "the blacks", Bland said that she didn't know why there was a lot of fuss about a bit of humorous name calling, after all, people call her a 'short blonde twit'.

... except of course, the poem was offensive stereotyping and this is an obvious statement of fact.

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Labels: News

I'm no technological numpty. I embraced digital DJ-ing, iPods and the Internet fairly early. Some technology is, quite frankly, beyond me; mobile phones in particular. Phones are rude, I don't like them, they interrupt what you're doing. I don't consider a mobile phone as a desirable thing to have, it's just a necessary evil.

When my old one packed up I checked out the Orange website where a handful of phones met my criteria - a) I could afford it, b) I could phone people on it. Having ruled out about 3 phones from their range, I needed to narrow it down further; a camera - yep I could use that, 3G, MP3, Java capable, polyphonic ring tones... it all sounds terribly good, but for I all know this could be the equivalent of telling me that one of the features of buying an iron is that it has a plug on it.

So, I handed myself over to the Internet masses; other people know, and care, about phones. Surely I could get some guidance from Google. Sure enough "Sony Ericsson K610i" returns no less than 2,370,000 references.

I found reviews with phrases like:

"Display is made by TFT technology, earlier on it was a TFD-matrix. Diagonal was slightly increased, from now on it is 1.9 inches."
"you will find a Li-Pol battery BST-37 with the capacity of 900 mAh"
"Though these devices made one more step forward – user is able to run two Java-applications at a time and switch between them. This may come in handy, in case you use an ICQ-like mobile client."

If I was to use an ICQ-like mobile client this was the phone for me, so in the end I though fuck it, it looked pretty, so I bought it. So far I have phoned and texted people and taken a few photos, but only as a test. I can vouch that it's been terribly good at all these things, and the Li-Poi battery has used all its 900mAh.

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Labels: Technology

During our time in Harrogate, we went to a curry house that was recommended to us. A recommendations from someone who could only have ever visited one restaurant in the town. It didn't help that the recommendation was given to P, a very beautiful blonde girl who effortlessly attracts slightly plump account managers that will say pretty much anything (including recommending ropey restaurants) to strike up a conversation (including denying the existence of wives or children).

"WADDAYAWANT?" barked the waiter in a thick, barely comprehensible, Indian accent. It took us by surprise and he barked it again. This set us up for a catalogue rudeness and incorrect orders. The only consistency was that we were consistently served by someone different and each one was equally rude and abrupt.

The food was pretty average; the Malayan was a Korma with one chunk of banana in, the Dhansak was a Korma with a chilli in it, the Korma, was a Korma, thankfully.

We'd asked for a jug of water; but it didn't come. P beckoned over the slightly dishevelled table cleaner. "Could we have our water" she asked.

"MEAT OR VEGETABLE?" was the reply.

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Labels: General me

It's been a funny week; slap bang in the middle of it was a trip to North Yorkshire for an exhibition for HR professionals. It's a bloody long way and practically all of it on the M1, so it was the dullest journey. The Gloom descended.

The exhibition was rammed full of women in tailored black suits and natty shoes, it's like an HR uniform. None of them were interested in what we had to sell.

The week is bookended by sociable weekends. We'd spent Sunday at Dan and Lucy's having lunch and hanging out; it rained as we sat in the conservatory. The pounding on the glass sounded like we were in a tent; it was a good feeling. Russ and Sam called and we've arranged for them to come over tomorrow. Something to look forward to.

But this made The Gloom deeper. I don't typically get too morose about work; I like working hard and being busy and achieving things, but Millie has helped alter my perception. I'm more aware that getting paid is compensation for not being able to do something more interesting with your week; it's not a bonus on top of the privilege of working your guts out. We have great friends and seem to have a better social life now Millie is around than before, I'd rather work.

Then, on Tuesday, when I was in Yorkshire a chink of light appeared. Out of the blue, Katie texted, she's coming back from Australia at the end of next month. Penny, Mike and Lottie are over for Christmas, Willy and Leo and baby Joseph as well as Simon and Islay should be around, and, of course, it's Millie's first. Australia Jo isn't back until January, but Christmas is going to be great, The Gloom lifted and took me all the way to now; the weekend. Bring it on.

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Labels: Friends

My dad and sister once had a discussion about the cheapest food (no, I don't know why either). Dad said it was chicken, my sister said it was baked beans. My dad's selection was based on certain criteria e.g. the cheapest food which didn't sacrifice tastiness, nutrition, versatility and so on. My sister simply picked the cheapest food in Tesco.

They were both correct in their selection, but even though they appeared to be having the same discussion, they were arguing to different hypotheses. It reminds me of this veil debate. Most women do not wear a veil to cover their faces, in fact, few Muslim women wear the veil. Therefore it is not the norm to do so. Norms offer comfort areas in which most people (within any given society) are happy to live. People covering their faces is not the norm and therefore the custom moves people out of their comfort zone. Therefore, Jack Straw et al are simply stating that it is not something they're comfortable with because perceive that it offers a barrier.

And it is a barrier. I don't know much about Islamic law, but my understanding is that one of the purposes of the veil is to put a barrier between the woman and any unmarried man, therefore it is correct to say that it's a barrier. It is also a barrier in the sense it confirms, in no uncertain terms, the difference between a Muslim woman and non-Muslim.

This is a simple anthropological point; in UK society anything which is perceived as a barrier is outside comfort zones defined by the norm. The response, however, is made in religious terms. People like Aishah Azmi argue that this is demonising their faith. To be honest, I'm guessing the number of people with serious intentions of bringing down the Muslim faith in the UK in tiny. Most people just don't want to feel uncomfortable.

In other words, there isn't a shared understanding about what the debate is, let alone the resolution. It's like me turning up to a rugby field in cricket whites and getting upset at the rough tackling.

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Labels: News

This week I have driven twenty miles on little more than petrol vapours, spent three days with no charge on my phone (and a broken phone charger) , five days with no ink in my pen (not a euphemism, I literally have no ink in my pen), and two days without my wallet or any cash. I need a rest, or a visit to the shops.

The broken charger (or broken phone, I can’t work out which) has finally forced me to buy a new handset. Whilst I wait for that, the old phone is in my rucksack; it can’t make or receive calls or text messages, and the little battery sign is white e.g. no juice at all. There is still enough charge to keep the screen going and for it, from time to time, to make a forlorn ‘I have no battery, you’re killing me’ beeping noise. It’s been like that for at least three days but it still won’t die.

Perhaps I could assist this long and slow death by turning it off.

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Labels: General me

I like blogs that describe every day experience, in some ways the more mundane the better. That's not to say my blogroll is full of really boring blogs, it's just they tend to be people who can take the normal, and describe it really well. I can relate to that.

I took part in the greatest big blog history thing, although the search engine is pretty rubbish and I can't find it now. It aims to describe a normal day by normal people and record it as a snap shot of social history.

Some of the entries are really good, I like the person who complains that her breakfast is ruined when she finds there's only the dusty detritus at the bottom of the box. Others have been a little self conscious about making a historical statement. From those writing as though talking to an alien - 'I did the ironing, which is using an electrical appliance with an heated iron base to smooth out clothes we call shirts..." to the horribly ostentatious "I awoke as the sun yawned over distance horizon singing the chorus of a new day. I turned to see my husband who had drool all over his gaping maw". What history will tell us is that not everyone should be allowed to publish.

So, trying to avoid these pitfalls, I waxed lyrical about meetings in the Holiday Inn car park in High Wycombe and Leighton Buzzard and setting up exhibition stands in Birmingham. I became a bit unstuck with the question 'what does history mean to you'. At that point I came over all Bill and Ted and thought 'Um dunno, it's like, the past, isn't it?'.

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Labels: General me

Thank God for North Korea, now we've really got something to worry about. It's been halcyon days for No News, so something with a bit of substance is a relief.

Following the death and near death of Steve Irwin and Richard Hammond - both enjoyed top billing on the 10 o'clock news - came the football bungs scandal. This all sounds terribly exciting. In fact, this is about managers taking money to sign players. Given that there's no evidence that these managers sign bad players for money there is little net effect on the credibility of the game itself. Which, in essence, means we're talking about it a less than thrilling story about tax evasion.

Then comes Jack Straw who, we're told over a period of 3 days, has asked Muslim women to remove their headscarfs when meeting them. He doesn't tell them to or force them to, he asks them to. So screams the press: PRESCOTT IGNITES RACE WAR BY SAYING "IT'S A TRICKY ISSUE, I'M NOT SURE WHAT I THINK ABOUT IT".

Then... BOOMSHANKA, here comes Kim Jong-Il, I never thought I'd be pleased to see his face.

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Labels: News

They call him Jez, sometimes Doughnut. I've known him as Jem, but always called him Jeremy. And I've known him a long time; all his life, in fact. He is my cousin.

Weddings are all about declaring love for one another. But a modern wedding declares much more; it unpacks your whole life; revealing, of course, your friends to your family and your family to your friends. The speeches disclose stories of the past, expose you to the ordeal of public speaking - in this case the little boy I played football with 25 years ago is now an accomplished presenter and effortless comedian.

The tables are named after something special the couple share (dive sites), the venue reveals notions of perfection and romance. Even the time of year and unearths much; semi-pro psychologists could probably open a pandora's box of subtext.

And then there are the personal touches - a card and personal message to every guest, a cartoonist and best still, choosing the theme from Rocky over the wedding march. All very Jez Jeremy and Flemeny Helen.

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Labels: General me

It's 2016 and ITV is the only channel left on TV. The BBC was closed down due to a row that erupted when the government insisted that the Corporation's Charter include the sentence "...for the public good" appended with the words "and Ant and Dec". SKY is technically still going, but Roman Abramovich bought every player in the world for Chelsea and then sold them to a submarine he then lost in a legal wrangle with God over who actually owns the sea. Now SKY is wall to wall coverage of Abramovich staring blankly from his executive box onto an empty pitch wondering why football isn't as good as it used to be.

Despite having not made a TV programme which hasn't involved clips from old TV programmes in eight years, ITV continues to thrive, after The World's 100 Greatest Clip Show Clips (number 1: Stuart Marconie remembers Curly Wurlies) is the show Where Are They Now? And this episode is about the world's first reality sitcom; Linhope.

Linhope, which ran from 2001 to 2006, centred on three thirty-somethings living in West London; loveable boffin; Dring, rip snorting bon viveur Baz and enigmatic couch potato Davis. It told the story a trio struggling to come to terms with being adults. The show attracted huge audiences including here, here and here.

As Friends insisted on growing up with its stars and audience. Linhope religiously stuck to its original, winning, formula. Blokes drinking, swearing, seeing bands, climbing mountains, playing computer games and making mess. Audiences loved it, living their lives vicariously through the threesome. It couldn't last, however, as viewers became laden with marriage, children, mortgages the reality gap between their lives and those of the three stars widened. Ratings reached a plateau and in 2005 the character Islay was introduced as the love interest for the hapless Dring.

Linhope's star shone brightly once more, the onscreen chemistry between Islay and Dring was immediate leading to much speculation from gossip magazine's that perhaps something was happening off screen. In an improbable twist on 'The Rachel' many women adopted 'The Dring' hairstyle and a single by the duo, a cover of Elton John and Kiki Dee's Don't Go Breaking My Heart, was number one for months.

Dring and Islay's increasing profile in the show coupled with the script writers failure to dream up enough plotlines for the developing relationship saw the show lose its initial spark; it turned out that a particularly hyped episode which featured a Islay/Dring 'bust up' turned out to be a brief discussion about which takeaway they'd get that night. Dring wanted out of the show that made his name, and the script writers hastily re-wrote the final series to conclude the story of the three bachelors. Dring and Islay moved to Cambridge in a ratings winning season finale, whilst Baz moved into respectability by buying a flat. Davis' own story remained inconclusive and the internet buzzed with hundreds of fan-stories of what might have happened to him.

Without any of the Linhope chemistry the spin off sitcom "Baz!" was a ratings flop; bottoming out with the episode "Baz concludes that Direct Debit is a cost efficient and convenient way of paying utility bills". A reunion film was mooted to conclude Davis' story but the three stars couldn't agree contracts, and, with Dring in particular, storylines; rumours were rife that the key sticking point was that the writers couldn't contrive a way of including a Training Montage in Siberia for Dring "like what they had in Rocky IV".

The legend of Linhope ended on 30th September, will we ever see the like again?

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Labels: General me

Following Tony Blair’s joke about Cherie not running off with his neighbour at the Labour conference yesterday, Radio Five Live were inviting other ‘wife jokes’. After a series of slightly stale, broadly sexist jokes presenter Shelagh Fogerty stepped in…

“Are men, can’t live with ‘em, can’t chop them into little pieces and boil ‘em”

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Labels: TV and radio

I'm trying to avoid my web logs, it's too easy to be obsessed with them. Sometimes its hard to ignore some entries. Like the person who Asked Jeeves to find a site which displayed "Respectable adult baby nappies".

It begs the immediate question of who might this person be. It might, for example, be someone with acute incontinence looking for a resolution to their delicate problem without having to trawl endless sex sites.

Somehow this seems unlikely, so perhaps it is a baby adult fetishist looking for something to wear under their normal clothes, so he can secretly enjoy their guilty pleasure whilst presenting to the board the details about startling 3rd quarter growth.

And here's another theory. Perhaps its one of those zealots campaigning for their right to wear adult nappies without persecution. Perhaps they're planning to, one day, just turn up at work in a big diaper and maybe they're looking for something suitable, with a sharp crease, and maybe a double cuff.

Whatever the reason, it turns out I'm the third site you need to look at to find them.

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Labels: General me

So, I get a phone call from Government Department A because we mention Government Department B in a piece of promotional literature. Why have we done this, she asks, because Government Department B report into Government Department A under some new government initiative (and one which is incomprehensibly named – its all letters – like Swahili translated into text message language).

Because we worked with Government Department A to develop the product, I say, 2 years ago, I say. She then proceeds to try and change things that have been in place for the last two years, things that can only be achieved if we go back in time. For example, the original decision by Government Department B to develop the product. She tells me we should have developed the product with Government Department A, even though when it was developed Government Department’s A and B weren’t linked and, it turns out, she wasn’t working for either. Also, on the same piece of literature, Government Department B are named as users of the product. Who are the people who have used the product, she asks, was it officially sanctioned by the department? When was it? Who authorized it?

I have no idea, I say, after all; they are merely contacts on our customer database. They’ve bought the product, but I have little understanding of what was going through their heads when they decided that the product was for them.

She then proceeds to tell me that they should have been authorised centrally and that they have no record of this happening, etc. etc. Unfortunately I can’t tell her who the people are due to the Data Protection Act.

Why is it that people in government departments seem to assume that you know how they work? It’s like you’re being held responsible if they don’t follow their own protocols and bureaucratic processes. I’m very glad for the government; the roads they lay, the lighting they put up, the criminals they catch. But I’m not really interested in the minutiae of their inner workings, or the endless restructuring. If something is not working at their end. That’s surely their problem.

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Labels: Work

So what is Music Of Black Origin if its not every genre of popular music over the last 50 years? The key contribution that ‘whites’ have made to popular music (specific individual talents not counting) is the ability to sell music as a product and speed up its tempo so you can’t dance to it without the help of drugs – for this read: speed metal and hard house.

We’ll put aside the questionable racial divisiveness of the set up, the spirit of the MOBOs appears to be to give ‘black music’ a platform and a voice, which assumes black music can be defined and doesn’t currently have a voice (try telling that to Beyonce and Jay Z). It also assumes there to be some sort of clear divide between blacks and whites and that one needs to sell its vision to the other, which may lead to the millionaire Beastie Boys' to question how they've got away with their 20 year career.

It would be easier to accept the MOBOs if the music it represented was absolutely incomprehensible and/or unlistenable because it would, at least, allow music that is otherwise not heard (because it is so unpalatable), to be heard. In fact, MOBO music is so desperate to maintain its mainstream appeal, most of its contenders remain stuck in the Mariah/Whitney school of vocal gymnastics, what was known as ‘soul music’ and is now called RnB despite it having no blues in it and precious little rhythm.

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Labels: Music