Two unrelated events and a mad coincidence nail home the hypothesis that all is not well on our planet. Firstly what is going on with the weather? I know it’s autumn, streets disappearing under crinkly brown carpets, significant lack of light during morning and evening and the strengthening of cooling winds. Fine with all that, no meteroligical issue at all with standard seasonal conditions, but the rainfall, well that’s quite another matter.

It never rains all day anymore; oh no, instead we get torrential downpours more suited to a tropical storm, and then just as the rain is properly lashing down, it stops and the sun comes out. Ten minutes later, badoom, huge crack of thunder, rain bouncing off the street to eye level, creation of inland seas. Sorry, it’s just not right and a strong letter of complaint will whiz off once the correct government department to whinge at has been established.

Secondly, Chiltern Railways have unbelievably been awarded a prize. Suspend that disbelief for a second to reconcile their being first at anything except shoddy service, when you realise it was voted for by holiday makers“. As a friend at work says i.e. old people who only ever travel off peak, have all day to kill, enjoy the scenery out the window when the train stops for hours, and rate any experience as preferable to an imminent death!“. He’s right of course but either “ and I can’t credit this “ every other train franchise is somehow worse or they’ve blackmailed the judge’s with heavily photoshopped pictures of deviant sexual practices involving goats. Goats I’d wager.

Now to the co-incidence, as the horror of Chiltern Railways being awarded anything but custard pies to the face sank in, I was reading this:

The three toed sloth rests or sleeps on average 20 times a day” [CR trains] It’s only real habit is indolence“[CR staff] The sloth is busiest at sunset, although using the word busy in it’s most relaxed state” [CR ability to get two trains off in one hour about 7pm]. It moves at a speed of 400 metres in one hour” [Yep, sounds about right unless Rickmansworth Signals are involved]. When motivated it can crest speeds of 250 metres an hour on the ground. Unmotivated it covers four to five metres in an hour” [See previous point re: Rickmansworth signals]

There’s more, oh yes. If you come upon a sleeping three-toed sloth, two or three nudges should suffice to awaken it” [CR ticket inspector]. It will then look sleepily in every direction but yours. As for hearing the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound“[sorry mate, no idea, can’t help you”]

It finishes with a jolly “How does it survive you might ask?“. You might indeed. Un-bloody-canny or what?

A small prize for anyone who identifies the blatant plagiarism of which book?

To pull together the strands of this world gone bonkers, I’m increasingly turning to the rather splendiferous bullshit generator which spits out such gems as:

Do you think he’ll mind if we repurpose the synergistic interfaces and redefine the granular channels so we can innovate global infrastructures? We’ll probably need to harness cross-platform relationships, expedite distributed mindshare, empower revolutionary convergence and scale extensible architectures to achieve our goal of world domination through the structured agenda, but it may just be possible if he gets on board!?

I’ll not let on who provided this mastery of nonsense or the original link; suffice it to say he occupies a lofty and senior position in our organisation.

Today I’m feeling a. bamboozled and b. ready for a drink. Option b, I think.

The lifts adjacent to our hamster pods are ironically termed the Fun Boy Three“. This is an oblique reference to their inability to travel vertically without shuddering to a lengthy halt, or maliciously crushing a limb in their claw like doors. The closest one has a ground state of broken; occasionally it judders into life to cheekily abandon passengers between floors, before being immobilised by a weary collection of excuses. Can’t get the parts mate” or too many fat people on the upper floors have knackered it“.

This leaves just the two operating although today one was in obvious mechanical distress. There was a disturbing combination of bumping and grinding likely to trigger a sequence of catastrophic events, ending in a plummet to, and probably through, the ground floor. For anyone familiar with the lift plunging, cable slashing scene in the original Omen, the parallel was obvious. Entering that lift could only end in a fatal anthology of blood and entrails. Still, being more than a little keen for a quick shower, a large coffee and an entraily bucket of fried food, it seemed worth the risk.

The doors made three abortive attempts to close before slamming shut in an ear bleeding crash. Anyone venturing an unguarded arm, in an attempt at holding the lift, would have been reunited with their withered stump on the ground floor. They would have had plenty of time to bleed down the stairs though as the lift attempted a bold sideways move, clearly aggravated at being rigidly secured in it’s perpendicular prison,. It put me in mind of the elevator in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory except with less glass and more potential for imminent death.

More victims ill advisedly added themselves to this boxy death toll, and the lift responded with a mechanical death rattle as the doors finally wheezed open on the ground floor. Pondering the possibility of spending my entire morning waiting for a non lethal encounter with a rising lift, I jumped both physically and metaphorically out of the box and made slow but safe progress up the fire-stairs.

Shaky legs and rasping lungs apart, this proved to be a shrewd decision, as the entire Fun Boy Three had joined their striking brothers in the shower and ambushed about half the firm between floors three and four. There’s a book running on whether the coffee machine or lifts will be repaired first, but, based on historical precedent, I sincerely hope those trapped are provisioned with sandwiches for at least a couple of days.

In the same way that people begin to resemble their pets, these lifts remind me of some of our less auspicious working practices. I’ll not enumerate these in all their glory, but take slow, difficult, inconsistent, frustrating and bonkers as examples and I think you’ll get the idea.

It’s hard to credit that an apparently sane man can get properly annoyed at both showers AND lifts in the same week. Unless you’ve met me, in which case you’ll be nodding sanguinely, muttering once a nutter, always a nutter“.

In a doomed attempt to clear the half written backlog, I’m switching strategies in favour of shorter de-fluffed articles starting with this one. So in terms of a punchy opening, that’s a close approximation to events in the changing room this morning.

We’re down to one shower now; no-one knows why and since the facilities helpdesk is peopled by those whose objectives include saving money” and being apathetically unhelpful” but do not include fixing the problem“, it’s unlikely to be sorted any time soon. Adapting to this watery uni-jet, we’re all selecting the quickwash option to ensure a decent throughput.

Except for the bloke in front of me. You could tell he worked for tax; all his clothes were laid out as if he were waiting for his funeral, which wasn’t far away unless he hopped it sharpish out of the shower. But no, entirely incognisant as he was to the increasing backpressure of sweaty and late individuals, each body part was three times meticulously and laboriously washed.

Honestly, anymore selfish and he’d have ripped the showerhead off the wall and taken it with him. I was defiant, ignoring the normal protocol of staring at the ceiling or partaking in a spot of urban archaeology, nasally dating abandoned socks. Instead I fixed him with my best Paddington Bear Stare and willed his shower gel to morph into drain cleaner. But, of course this was wasted, him being a member of the dull numerical class, his myopia was confirmed by a pair of dustbin lid sized specs perfectly aligned on his towel. He was clearly washing by slow touch and memory.

Finally, probably sensing a build up of barely restrained violence, he vacated the shower area wrapping himself in a square root of towel. I was showered, dried, dressed and outta there before he’d even clothed himself in appropriate trouserage. I’m sure he was ticking each task off in a book pants on, check, plum line from nose aligned with Y-Front, check, talcum powder nostrils, check, etc“.

God Alive, it was bad enough sharing a ten minute fetid space with this denizen of the accounting hoard; so I couldn’t help thinking as he put on his wedding ring (polish three times, twirl, examine in light, make constipated face, polish once more, slip onto finger, twirl, check positioning, complete double entry book keeping“) what it would be like to be his wife. Not in a kind of kinky, cross-dressing homo erotic fantasy (oh that’s me screwed with the google-bot indexer now) rather in a has his wife been selected for canonisation kind of way“. And if not, why not?

It was only the thought of his poor family that wrenched away the happy slappy fist of doom that was bunching subconsciously. If I’m caught behind him again though, I’m going to hide his glasses, mess up his clothes and eat his wedding ring. Just to check if this really does make people like that explode.

Trust me, he’s earned it.

I’m unsure if any of you plumbed the same levels of despair as I, when brutally confronted with the infamous ˜non delivery of the chocolate‘. If you did, then please cancel the therapy session, this one had a happy ending.

Awaiting me at the office, occupying pride of place on my desk, was a chocolate of gargantuan proportions hand delivered by a guilty Sarah of my working parish. It’s worth stating for the record that Sarah is really terribly nice whilst most of the dysfunctional family who work here faced with a similar dilemma, would have nonchalantly deposited a steaming donkey turd on my chair. Or set fire to my desk depending on their proximity to matches.

Sorry, were you starting your breakfast? I’ll try and devise some kind of warning sign in the future.

I’d like to say that this “ and I don’t think this is any way an exaggeration “ historic chocolate has been hermetically sealed in a glass display box with a small hand written note of providence added to create the impression of a shrine. Visitors could marvel at both the size of the chocolate and the heart warming story behind it.

I’d like to say that. But it’s just not the case; in a moment of ˜h’mm feeling a bit peckish’ I ate it. Lovely it was too, with a hard chocolately coating briefly protecting a slightly softer but still satisfyingly calorific chocolate inner core. Not a praline in sight.

This should not be thought to, in any way, diminish the act of selflessness on Sarah’s part. I like to think I’ve internalised the issue.

Carol has often speculated on my inability to write anything that offers more than a cursory nod to the rest of my life. Bikes this and commuting that, very nice but not really touching on the joys and otherwise of parenting and real life; you know normal kind of everyone-else-does-it stuff. I did offer up the grouting article but she rightly objects since that’s nothing more than a thin veneer of nonsense barely covering yet another riding entry.

So I’ve written one, but from the stormy face I left back at the school, I don’t think she’s going to like it.

Tonight was the School Bingo Night. It was, predictably, fucking awful. Firstly, the worse thing to give kids, when they’re in that dangerous transitional state between hyperactivity and total shutdown, is a ton of sugary sweets. Even before the first number was called, the noise level effortlessly crested the pain barrier and kept on going.

The good news was that there was a bar, the less than good news was my mood was so foul, I dared not risk playing the alcohol may be a depressant card�?. This had the potential to get violently embarrassing ending in a manic laying about myself with a copy of the register. So instead I shouted at my kids, supported my wife not at all and fired up the inner grumpy.

But honestly Bingo – fuck it’s dull. Old people wait for God playing Bingo along with Whist Drives and Football Pools. At least card games provide an opportunity to cheat, and the pools require some modicum of skill. Whereas bingo is about as interesting a game of chance as shouting out random words from the newspaper and trying to construct a sentence. No actually, that’s more fun, in the spirit of comparative experimentation, I’ve just tried it and come up with Blair, crisps, Iraq and leafy mildew. Blair’s leafy mildew crisps Iraq” – I may be on to something here.

The poor bugger doing the calling was drowned out by a background hum of a hundred do-gooders asking to repeat the last number, ably supported by a cacophony of children being noisily sick. Still on balance it serves him right. because he was trying to be a character steeped in all the Bingo lore that 10 Internet minutes of novelty calling can provide . Pick up sticks, number six�? he’d project out to his allegedly adoring crowd. Well all except one who was spluttering Dog Ball Licks, number six. A few other potential crowd pleasers were tragically missed including:

69 “ do yourself a line
22 “ who put the poo in the loo?
74 “ declare martial law.

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