I am, apparently, Rosa Parks

I blame Phil for what happened on Wednesday. We were sitting at our desks idly chatting about our plans for the weekend. Mine involve going out for dinner on Friday night and heading to Oxford on Saturday to watch Shakespeare in the quad of the Bodleian Library. And going out for dinner. Yes, I know it’s a theme but there are a lot of restaurants out there and I’m worried I might die without eating at all of the good ones. Phil on the other hand is then off to stay with friends for a lads’ weekend. He has quite a way with words but I wasn’t really expecting the spin he put on his plans:

“It’s going to be like Weekend At Bernie’s. Only without the corpse.”

When I had finished laughing (which took some time) I changed my Instant Messenger status to reflect Phil’s immortal words. Shortly after that I heard from my friend, the legendary David. New readers who want to check out why David has earned his quasi-mythical status should stop by here.

DAVID: Who are you quoting there?
MLS: My colleague Phil, describing his plans to meet up with friends on Saturday.
DAVID: I would think that “Weekend at Bernie’s, but without the corpse” would imply quite a sedate weekend where not much occurs. Is that what he meant? Or does it mean a riotous weekend of bacchanalian excess that stops just short of gangland murder?
MLS: The latter would be my guess.
DAVID: Blimey. He'll need some of the former to recover from that latter then. Are you backgammoning this lunchtime, perchance?
MLS: Sadly not, no. It is lined up for tomorrow. The online Backgammon Federation has linked to my blog!
DAVID: It'll be like Weekend at Bernie's tomorrow then. Except without a corpse. And with more backgammon. And less hi-jinks. And more canteen. And less dubious coincidences to advance the plot. And more leskol.
MLS: Yes, let's not forget the leskol.
DAVID: Is the situation in Backgammon comparable to darts and boxing? Is there a Backgammon Council and a Backgammon Organisation out there too? Are there turf wars? Do they send the heavies in to upturn rival tables? Is there an underground bareknuckle version?
MLS: The first rule of Backgammon Club is...
DAVID: Do gypsies use industrial estates to force starving staffies to play backgammon at weekends? They should do. I'd pay to watch that. ITV3'd snap it up.
MLS: True. They show poker on telly now, but no backgammon. It's just prejudice.
DAVID: You are the Rosa Parks of backgammon. Stay strong, sister.
MLS: I had a Rosa Parks moment on the funbus today. I went on with my mocha and Donald Pleasence gave me a funny look. I said "how many times have I got on this coach [I nearly said "bus" but I stopped myself] with a hot drink?" He said "And how many times have I found coffee stains on my seats?" I replied "Those aren't coffee stains." and walked away.
DAVID: That's EXACTLY the same as what happened to Rosa Parks. You are right to compare your experience to hers.
MLS: Now that the civil rights movement has made this much progress it's time to stand up for coffee drinking coach riding backgammon players. Maybe one day we'll get one in the White House. We'll probably just get one who doesn't mind the occasional latte, has been on a Greyhound once and likes back bacon. But the media will act like that's enough.
DAVID: Yes, he'll just be an Uncle Tom. He'll be like an Oreo - backgammon on the outside, but white at heart. I'm feeling let down by him already.

I’m very conscious that July is over and so this is my last chance to post this song which I really wanted to put on the blog. It’s especially apt because August not only represents the height of summer but it’s also the earliest I have ever seen Christmas cards and decorations on sale in the shops. It happened in Henley a couple of years back and I was genuinely shocked to see windows festooned with tinsel. It was thirty degrees in the shade for goodness’ sake. So here is the magnificent “Christmas In July” by Sufjan Stevens, one of my favourite artists (or he would be if he showed any danger of putting out a new bloody record).

Sufjan Stevens – Christmas In July

In the end I didn’t play backgammon at lunch yesterday. Instead I finally managed to go to lunch with the cool kids. I was expecting highbrow conversation but it turns out that they talk about filth just like I do at lunch (I am overlooking the extremely remote possibility that as the common factor I might be the bringer of smut. I think we can safely rule that out.) In the process, I learned a valuable lesson about tolerating alternative lifestyles.

I discovered that Mandy and her boyfriend Steve don’t live together, as I had previously thought. Mandy and Steve, it turns out, both still live with their respective families even though they have been together for well over ten years and Steve is in his forties. I was a bit baffled by this.

“Don’t you regret the fact that you don’t live together?” I asked.

“No, it’s fine. My mum and dad really like Steve so it’s fine.”

“But don’t you miss getting to share a home and do all the domestic side of things?”

“Not at all. Actually it works out very well. I don’t have to pay a mortgage and I get all my meals cooked for me and my ironing done. And if I want to cook we can cook for Steve’s dad round at his house.”

I never cease to be amazed by the diverse range of living arrangements that couples opt for. Some couples live in separate houses. Some live in the same house but in separate bedrooms. Some, as in many of my previous relationships, live in the same house and the same bedroom but on separate planets.

“But what about…”

Nothing came out of my mouth. I couldn’t understand why Mandy didn’t feel like she was missing out, but I couldn’t come up with any compelling reasons why she might be. Well, I could only think of one reason. The gutter, as always, was gently calling to me with its siren song of smut.

“Well, I suppose it means you never get to have noisy sex.”

Mandy smiled sweetly and floored me without a moment’s hesitation.

“Oh no, we do that all the time. Steve’s dad is quite deaf.”

The mod scientist

The classic test of whether you’re good at looking on the bright side is the time honoured glass with water in it. If you say “that glass is half-full” that means you’re an optimist. If you say “that glass is half-empty” that means you’re a pessimist. I always say “Well, it depends what you’re doing at the time. If you’re filling the glass I’d describe it as half full. If you’re in the process of emptying the glass I’d describe it as half empty. Which is it?”

This apparently means that I am an irritating pedant who thinks about things too much.

Despite this, I am often accused of being a tad gloomy but in my defence there are loads of little things that make me happy. Breaking the foil on the top of a jar of instant coffee with a judiciously placed teaspoon, for example. The intro to California Dreamin’. Paying for something with exact change and clearing out all the shrapnel in your wallet. Mornings with unexpectedly mild hangovers, or unexpected sparkling pints of cider in a sunny beer garden straight off the funbus at the end of a terrible working day. Not to mention Kentucky Fried Chicken.

KFC is probably my biggest weakness, my guiltiest pikey pleasure. And, since I had to start watching my cholesterol, it’s one of the things I miss the most. Some men live their lives rueing all the wasted opportunities with all the women they could have shagged. They cram them into their wank bank and for all I know they mourn them on their deathbeds. For now, I am saving all my regrets for an altogether different type of appetising bird that I can't have.

I love the crunch of the coating, the hit of the salt, the firm white flesh underneath. Mmm… KFC. How can it be wrong, when it tastes so right? I remember having a discussion once with Neil in our Manchester office where I said I was going to have KFC that night. After the briefest pause, my instant messenger pinged with his judgment which I feel sums things up pithily:

“KFC. That’s proper dirt food is that.”

Some people like the burgers, personally I prefer the clammy cardboard box full of indiscriminate body parts you pull apart with your fingers, overlooking the weird black sinews close to the bone and wolfing the whole lot down until you look like some kind of chav Henry VIII. Come to think of it, with all that bling and the multiple wives I reckon Henry VIII was the chav of his day. Who knows, if he’d had access to chicken gravy and a side tub of coleslaw maybe he wouldn’t have been such a cheeky roister doister. Consequently he wouldn’t have got into all those scrapes and we’d probably all be Catholic.

Despite this, I still maintain that KFC is a good thing.

I find nearly everyone has an opinion about the stuff. I used to work with an insane woman who insisted that Colonel Sanders used to be black but over successive years and rebranding they had made him whiter and whiter like Michael Jackson. What absolute nonsense. First of all I could never remember a black Colonel Sanders, but more to the point if he had been black surely he would never have reached that rank in the army in Kentucky. The only thing that would have been flame grilled was him – by a bunch of rather dogmatic gentlemen with pointy white hoods. Or maybe his ability to provide delicious poultry based snacks is what saved him from a lynching. We may never know.

The reason I mention this is that KFC was in the air last week. First I accidentally had a mini fillet on the way home from one of those unexpected sparkling pints of cider I was telling you about. But then on Friday Mikey came bounding over to my desk with momentous news. They had, he said, discovered the recipe. It had been published in the Guardian newspaper (it must be the first time they’ve published something decent since my friend David’s letter of complaint).

Mikey, you see, has very different taste in food to me. Back when he was single he used to like nothing more than stopping at Marks and Spencer on the way home and picking up a chicken Kiev, some potato croquettes and a packet of sprouts before scoffing the whole lot for dinner. This has largely abated since he got a lovely girlfriend, largely because she understandably wouldn’t want to go anywhere near him after that little lot. Or, for that matter, stand downwind of him. Mikey doesn’t like cheese either, which strikes me as plain unnatural. But one thing we are agreed on is that chicken in a box – more than the wheel, more than space flight, more even than home shopping channels - is one of the crowning achievements of Western civilisation.

So I asked him to send me the link to the recipe and I devoured it eagerly (since I no longer devour the real thing). This turned out to be a mistake as it shattered the mystique – because on paper it’s quite the anticlimax. Somehow I couldn’t see how the list of ingredients, there in stark black and white on the page, could translate into the wonder of that golden coating. There’s also some economy with the truth involved in referring to it as the secret blend of eleven herbs and spices, because – to my mind at least - calling MSG a herb or a spice is a bit like calling Coldplay “entertainers”.

I thought no more of it over the weekend, but yesterday I wandered outside with Mikey to keep him company while he had a cigarette. Since the weather picked up I do that from time to time on my way to or from making a cuppa. There’s nothing quite like standing outside a hideous office building inhaling someone else’s smoke, apart from possibly sitting in a meeting room inside a hideous office building inhaling someone else’s opinions. Cornish Rob was out there by the bins finishing a fag off. Mikey chose this moment to drop the bombshell.

“I bought it all this weekend.”

“Bought what?”

“The ingredients for KFC. I went to one of the supermarkets down the Oxford Road and I picked everything up. I’ve got a big bucket of MSG and everything. They say it’s not healthy, but it’s not like everyone in China’s got a massive headache is it?”

“You’re going to make KFC?”

“Yeh. [Mikey never says ‘yes’ or ‘yeah’, only ‘Yeh’] I might do it this weekend.”

“What are you going to call it?” said Cornish Rob, “Mod Fried Chicken? Southcote Fried Chicken?”

“That’s the one.” said Mikey. He appeared to be beside himself. He hadn’t looked this excited since the Specials reformed.

“You could take a chicken breast, fill it with garlic butter and cover it in the coating.” I said, “You could call it KF Kiev.”

“Yeh, it sounds brilliant.” said Mikey, “If you’re really lucky I’ll take photos and you can put it on your blog. When you come over for dinner some time maybe I’ll make it for you.”

We were still chattering about Mikey’s new mission – which by now we had dubbed “Project Sanders” – as we set ourselves down at a table in the beer garden of the Allied Arms after work with a cheeky pint.

“The recipe on the internet says you should poach the chicken in milk to make it more tender and make sure the coating sticks.” said Mikey proudly.

“You’re kidding me.” said Cornish Rob. “There is no fucking way that KFC poach it in milk. No fucking way. You’re trying to make something that’s a middle class version of KFC but it’s going to be nothing like the real thing. For a start, your version has got bloody chicken in it.”

Mikey then came out with the piece de resistance. He told us with cheery enthusiasm that he has even bought “one of those cool fryer things” in order to perfect his mini fillets. He has gone out and purchased equipment for the express purpose of pursuing Project Sanders. That takes devotion. You had to hand it to him, he was like the Jehovah’s Witness of fried chicken. His “cool fryer thing” was definitely half full rather than half empty.

“I might even use it for spring rolls.” he added.

Cornish Rob and I raised an eyebrow in unison - this was serious stuff. But there was nothing more to be said after that so we sat there awestruck, nursing our pints. And soon after we went our separate ways, back to our long-suffering other halves. So there you have it. I fully expect to have pictures of Mikey, Heston Blumenthal style in a long white coat, knocking up a Zinger Tower Burger in the comfort of his abode any time soon. Watch this space.

Two weddings

2004

Brighton in February is a curious place. Without the sun brightening the Regency architecture like nature’s Photoshop, without the tourists clamouring through the Lanes or stumbling along the pier, it seems somehow bereft. The creak of seagulls in the sky cuts harshly through the cold air.

We trundled into town on a slow train, laden with bags and anticipation. The day is spent wandering through familiar alleys and shops, posing awkwardly for photos, enjoying the fact that the city is completely unaware of the significance of us, of our plans. In the hotel room we try on our rings for the last time. They have been sitting in little white envelopes, and every few weeks we have got them out and put them on.

It feels sneaky, as if we’re pretending to be adults.

We go for dinner in the hotel. We talk about the plans for tomorrow, though we don’t really have many. Our sleep is sound and dreamless on our last night of freedom from freedom.

The day dawns and we walk through the North Laine to the station to pick up our first witness. She’s almost as excited as we are, but the whole thing has an eerie calm about it. We don’t really know what we’re doing, what it will look like or sound like. How much it will be like the ones we’ve been to, or the ones we’ve seen on the television.

We go to lunch by the Pavilion. Our second witness arrives. I have never met her before, she has only heard about me in emails and telephone conversations. My heart genuinely swells with gratitude that she can be this happy, that she could so want to be part of this. We all have gin and tonic. It seems like the right thing to do.

Back at the hotel our witnesses check in and coo at the rooms. We change into something more formal, more suitable. I have never worn this suit before because I bought it for this occasion. Somehow I feel like I’m dressing up in a way that dwarfs my first day at school, my first day at work, my last exams. This is the only concession to formality, to conventionality, that I will make that day. I omit to wear a tie.

The four of us meet in the lobby and walk along the seafront. The witnesses jokingly make me get down on one knee and propose. I do it willingly but it’s plain odd. There has never been a proposal, never been an acceptance. We both always knew it would be like this. Not start like this, not end like this, just be like this.

We have been together for seven months. We have lived together for two. Practically nobody knows we’re here.

When we get to the town hall, they separate us from our witnesses. They are taken into another room and we are completely alone with the registrar. That’s the point where money changes hands. They don’t tell you how jarring that is – or how, more than any of the vows, it makes you realise the irrevocable change you’re about to effect. I don’t understand how this doesn’t deter people who don’t love each other from going through with it, but it doesn't, every year.

Our witnesses are already seated when we go into the beautiful oak panelled room. Row upon row of gorgeous chairs lie empty as we make our way to the front. There are six people there. The two of us, my best friend, her best friend, the registrar and another lady. I assume she isn’t the registrar’s best friend. We are rattling round this opulent chamber like a pea in a whistle.

The words we say are short and sincere. Somebody picked them for us, but I marvel at how true they are. I don’t understand why people write their own vows when these are so perfect. It is done in minutes. The registrar’s friend has to leave the room and come back with tissues because both of our witnesses are crying.

“I do a lot of these.” says the registrar afterwards as we are signing something irrelevant at a big desk. “I’ve got a good feeling about you two. When you were exchanging vows it was like there was nobody else in the room.”

I want to tell her that there wasn’t, but I keep that thought to myself. I know my wife of two minutes is thinking exactly the same.

We are shellshocked and ecstatic as we leave. There are photographs by the beautiful white pillars at the front of the building. Photographs in front of the pier. Photographs on the seafront. We are gleaming with happiness and everything and nothing has changed. We go back to the hotel and text messages fly from our mobiles like bubbles of pure joy, bursting with a jubilant splat on the screens of the phones of our friends all over the country.

I call my mother from the balcony of the cocktail bar. She is walking home from work. She cries with happiness and has to stop to compose herself. I hand the phone to my wife and they talk for a long time. When she returns, we have run out of cocktails and my phone has run out of credit.

I can’t envy people with big weddings though I respect their choice. They’re all in lovely big houses, with special readings and a riot of friends and distant family. Pimms on the lawn, professional photographers, discos and fights and cake and camcorders. Pay attention, all the guests tell the happy couple, the day goes by in a flash. Who you spoke to, what you did, it will all be forgotten the next day.

But I remember mine. I remember everything.


2009

We are at The Vyne, a beautiful old National Trust property in the middle of the Hampshire countryside. The rain everyone was so worried about has stayed away and the long cool stone room is filling up with guests. More guests than anyone anticipated, as the air is thick with thunderbugs. They land on my hands, on my face. We give up trying to swat them off. Busts line the walls, a succession of withering expressions peering at the seated guests. They will be the only stony faces I see today.

Our friends John and Nish are getting married.

When the registrar asks if anyone knows of any just cause or impediment Nish glares into the crowd like a pantomime villainess and the room echoes with laughter. Minutes later the parents take the screaming children outside and everything is perfect. I like their wedding a lot. For such a stunning, historic building the ceremony feels informal and quick. They’re in too much of a hurry to be married to worry too much about getting married, and that’s a feeling I can identify with.


And I feel like they too have realised the simplest but most hidden thing about all of this. Marriage makes no sense. People do it to change everything and stop things from ever changing, and they are all missing the point completely. Forget all those tax breaks and ticking different boxes on a form. Getting married is plain silly. If it made sense, nobody would do it. It’s one of the few great adventures you can have nowadays. For people like me, who don’t ever want kids, it’s pretty much the only one left.

Kelly looks over at me.

“What are you grinning about?”

“Nothing.”

Mr London Street's adventures in the sex industry

Very few horrors in life can match that of the corporate team building or ice breaking event. Really they should just have wheeled a few whiteboards into Camp X-Ray and said “We’re going to split into teams of four, you have fifteen minutes and then one of you will have to present back to the group. Here are some marker pens.” and those pesky bearded mischief makers would have squealed in no time. They might even have owned up to some stuff they didn’t actually do, just to make it stop.

In the interests of forging closer relationships I’ve been made to do all sorts of rubbish. Make up advertising jingles, play naff games with rubber bands and ball bearings, get on stage and sing… the embarrassment of life in a big company never stops. I thought I had seen it all, but a year and a half ago my then boss (a very, very sadistic woman) managed to dream up something new and unusual.

Speed dating.

Everyone had to work their way round the room, talking about their job for three minutes and finishing with an interesting fact about themselves. As the exercise was announced you could see the beads of sweat breaking out on the brows of my colleagues and the looks of dread on their faces.

Me? I fucking loved it. Time just to talk about me? If you insist. Just the three minutes? Shame.

My colleagues frantically searched for something suitably captivating. Many of them failed, unless you redefine interesting to mean “slightly more interesting than assisted suicide”. I’ve always thought that there was at least one interesting thing to say about everyone, but that day proved me utterly wrong. Either that or there was something fascinating but they weren’t going to tell me what it was. Life would have been so much better if a succession of dour purchasing managers had said things like “I like to masturbate into a shower curtain” or “I’ve shaved every girlfriend I’ve ever had… down there.”

It’s easy for me to say this though. The reason why this exercise held no fear for me is that as I sat down opposite glum colleague after glum colleague, each time I looked them in the eye, I smiled and told them something about me which I knew they would all remember for a very long time.

“I used to be paid to phone sex lines for a living.”

The year was 1999 and I had just moved back to Reading. It was the high point of the information age, dotcoms were booming and telecoms companies were making pots of cash, fundamentally for doing bugger all. And I managed to get a job with a company in a grotesquely ugly building just opposite the station. It looked a bit like the obelisk in 2001: A Space Odyssey but was surrounded by much less intelligent primates.

The job title: Fraud Investigator. How cool is that? Never again will I be able to go to parties and tell people I am a fraud investigator. That makes me sad (nowadays I just say "oh, it's very boring" or pretend to be a spy). But I didn’t really realise until I started the job what my new vocation entailed. You had to investigate customers who had spent a considerable amount of money on phone calls in a single day. The idea was to find out what they’d been up to, whether it was legitimate and whether they were likely to run off without paying.

Some of it was the very height of humdrum. People ringing their families in Pakistan, for example. Or the occasional phone call to a holidaying relative on a cruise ship in the South Pacific, blissfully unaware that calls to a satellite phone cost about £5 a minute. Usually, the customers were really pleased someone was looking out for them. “Thanks so much for telling me, I had no idea.” they would say.

If that had been all there was to the job, I would have quit after six months and this blog post would not have been written. But believe you me, there are far more interesting ways to spend an awful lot of money on phone calls.

I’m talking of course about premium rate lines. All human experience is covered in premium rate lines – or was. Nowadays they are just used for voting on "Britain’s Got Talent", but back in 1999 the concept of phone votes on TV shows was in its infancy, so although you got the occasional nerd desperate to appear on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" that wasn’t the primary purpose for a premium rate number. In those days the internet wasn’t the all pervasive force for rudeness that it is today and premium rate lines – and you’ll have to forgive the rather obvious smut at this point – filled a hole. Hence the sweaty proliferation of chat lines, date lines and (if you were really lucky) sex lines.

How my job worked was this – every day I would print out and work through what was called a “High Usage Report”. Isn’t it great how businesses make up all sorts of fancy terms for things to make them look more professional? And they’re always basically lists; “Project Milestone Plan” is of course a to do list, “Risk Register” a list of bad stuff that might happen.

And, as it turns out, “High Usage Report” is a giant list of colossal perverts.

Although you can retrieve a list of the numbers the customer has phoned, and work out that the customer has spent a mind-boggling £80 in one night, there’s no way of knowing whether they meant to or whether something terrible has gone amiss unless you know exactly what they’ve been ringing. And there’s only one way to find that out – which is to ring the number yourself.

I know – a job called “Fraud investigator” and they paid me to call sex lines. Looking back I still can’t work out why I ever quit.

In the course of my time there I discovered a lot of valuable things. People ring a lot of sex lines. People’s kids ring a lot of sex lines when their parents are down the pub. People go to a house party, wait til the host has passed out in the corner and then ring a lot of sex lines before fucking off. I’ve seen it all. In one case a guy got very drunk on New Year’s Eve, rang a gay sex line and promptly passed out. He woke up on New Year’s Day £900 poorer and he didn’t even get any satisfaction. It’s got to be the most expensive non-wank I’ve ever heard of.

Not only have I seen the full gamut of human depravity, I’ve also heard things no man should have to listen to. One line featured an Austrian Dr Ruth sound-alike delivering a clinical paper on “The effects of colonic irrigation in the submissive male”. Chillingly, I’ve actually had a couple of dates that were even less sexy than that lecture. But the guy I was investigating stayed on that line for a full eight and a half minutes, which is easily long enough to work out that it’s a wrong number. Or reach a climax.

Another favourite of mine was the “Semen Sucking Slut Line”. It featured the voice of an allegedly sexy lady. “I’m going to ride you like a fucking rocking horse” she rasped, while in the background you could clearly make out slurping noises that were supposed to be fellatio but actually sounded like a pensioner with his dentures out trying to polish off a particularly stubborn plate of spaghetti. It doesn’t help that the woman talking was probably around 60, visible from space and sitting in a council flat in Bradford wearing a string vest and puffing away on a Rothmans. Because these lines are all about the mystique and once you strip that away you haven’t got anything. Well, apart from a stomach covered in jism.

The final straw was when I investigated a man who had been phoning some extremely hardcore sado masochistic lines, regularly every night around one in the morning. I gathered all the data and phoned up to speak to him. I can't say I was massively looking forward to the conversation, but I had no idea what was in store. The address was a pub, and his wife answered the phone.

“Hi, I’m calling from your phone company. Can I speak to your husband please?”

“He’s out at the moment, but I pay the bills on the line. Can’t you talk to me? What’s this about?”

“I’m terribly sorry, but due to the Data Protection Act I need to talk to him as the line’s in his name. It’s just about some recent activity on his account.”

“He’s done it again, hasn’t he?”

Silence.

“He’ll ring you back.” Then she hung up.

Her husband called back twenty minutes later. Appropriately enough, he was a very meek and submissive sounding man, but I suppose you would be if your wife was going apeshit and throwing plates at the wall in the background, which she clearly was. I didn’t quite understand why he was phoning these lines because you didn’t have to be Nostradamus to predict that he had several months of intense humiliation in store, probably starting around the point that my conversation with him ended.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said, “it was an isolated incident. It won’t happen again.”

“I can put a bar on your line for you if you like, it will make it impossible for you to call any premium rate lines in the future.”

“No. That really won’t be necessary.”

There was a pregnant pause, punctuated only by the sound of Denby colliding with a Welsh dresser at high velocity.

“I’ve been very bad, haven’t I?”

If I had responded in the affirmative I could see exactly where this little chat was leading and it was not a pretty prospect. That's the other thing that job taught me. Some people just never learn.

Interior monologue, or nine reasons why it’s probably best I don’t Twitter

i
Is being locked out twice in two weeks a sign that my mind is going? Is it sweet or weird that two of my friends texted me this morning to remind me to take my house keys with me today?

ii
I wonder if 700 calories is an unacceptable amount for a sandwich given that it's 4.30 and this is the first food I've had all day. I'm not sure it's possible to eat a sandwich with less dignity than this but I don't care.

iii
Why did nobody tell me how badly my fingernails needed cutting? The people I met today must think the new manager is a werewolf.

iv
Jesus, look at those balconies. Please tell me that's an office block. Please tell me people don't actually have to live in that thing.

v
I have a sneaking feeling I wouldn't offer to help you if you were hideous. I don’t think I like what that says about me.

vi
I have no idea why I bought a cappuccino and carried it onto a boiling hot rush hour tube train. I may be one of the biggest idiots in the world.

vii
Could I get my friends to text me when my fingernails need cutting?

viii
I bet she reckons that because she hasn’t heard from me all day I haven’t been thinking about her. But I always do. I can imagine exactly how she’ll smile when she reads this.

ix
They say it’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch. I suppose pornography must be the exception that proves the rule.

_________________________________

Don’t worry, I promise that won’t be the start of a regular series.

Anyway I ought to warn you that today’s post – aside from that bit - is somewhat of a mixed bag.

Right then, other news. First of all – awards! I have been lucky enough to get another award courtesy of the lovely AlpHa Buttonpusher. Now, as everyone knows I don’t really do awards but it’s churlish not to pass on some appreciation so I wanted to recommend a few blogs in return. I think they’re brilliant and don’t get anywhere near the readership they deserve, so if you have a few spare moments they are well worth your time:

A Beautiful Truth - Scarlethue’s prose is beautiful and expressive. I am a recent, but zealous, convert.

expateek - Some of you might already read this blog but if you don’t I recommend it. She is a naturally funny woman with an exquisite turn of phrase but every now and again she stops doing the jokes and lays you low with a humdinging serious post of incredible depth.

Grainne Maguire - I love Grainne’s blog. It’s perfect in that she seems to write it purely for her and doesn’t mind who reads it (and it’s scandalous that only two people follow it). But it’s always interesting and usually very funny. I just wish she posted more often.

Finally, my close personal friend Baglady. To celebrate her recent 100th post she went about listing a hundred of her favourite things. The sequence of posts is an absolute joy – partly a hymn of praise to Englishness, partly a meditation on finding happiness in all manner of wonderful randomness but mainly a celebration of the bonkers wonder that is Baglady. I salute her. Why not check it out?

But that’s not all. I have another award! I got a comment on my blog from some lady called Dani Cally telling me I had won an award and that I should check her blog out. So I scurried over to check it out. But do you know what? It wasn’t an award at all – it was a not particularly cunning trap! In fact, Dani runs a rather intemperate blog which is there to expose people she and her friends don’t like in the blogosphere.

It proudly announced that I was a “fucktard”.

Apparently I like to “leave nasty comments on other people’s blogs, never validating himself”. Which I have to say was news to me, I never bother commenting on blogs if I don’t like them. I mean, if I commented on every blog I thought was a bit bobbins I’d never have time to go to work or write my own for that matter. All very baffling. But Dani seems to have about five blogs of her own so presumably she has quite a lot of time on her hands.

But more was to come. The lovely ladies of “The Queens of Mean” also dubbed me “Mr. Gay London” and “Mr Little Penis London”. I know, my ego was in tatters after that clinical assault. It was almost as if Dani was channelling the late Oscar Wilde. Except of course that he would never have used the word “gay” as an insult. And I’m guessing he also would have stopped short of using multiple exclamation marks too - they betray a certain poverty of expression after all.

I really don’t know what I’ve done to offend Dani. Maybe she’s ginger or doesn’t like backgammon. Perhaps I’ve offended the only person in Bracknell who knows how to use a computer. Or maybe she and her lovely friends are trannies, from what I’ve seen that looks like at least a distant possibility. Anyway, feel free to go and see how much they love me, it’s here.

To be honest, it looks like they need readers even more than I do. I was hoping this little spam campaign might at least up my sitemeter stats, but sadly not. I can just about hear the sound of one hand clapping… slowly. Never mind – all these awards count, right? I suppose I’m a victim of my own success. And she’s written a paean of praise to me (and posted what I assume is a picture of her dad’s bell end) so good luck to her, that’s what I say.

In other news, I’m going to a wedding this weekend and it’s made me ponder my chances of getting invited to Cornish Rob’s wedding (it’s next April). I have been wondering how long you have to cultivate a friendship in order to get on the list. We all know there are several tiers of friendship. You get invited to the whole day if you’re an incredibly close friend of long standing. If you’re very good friends or close colleagues you get an invite to the evening do. If you don’t quite make the cut you end up in the twilight zone - on the standby list waiting for people to die or split up.

To be fair, I got invited to one wedding once where I didn’t make the list for the whole event and I was invited to the evening do which started at 9pm. With the speeches. I mean, good god – surely nobody is going to sit through the speeches unless they’ve had the sweetener of a three course meal first? So I didn’t bother going.

So I was sounding Cornish Rob out on the funbus and it sounds like my chances aren’t good. Even the incentive of having it written up, Hello! magazine style in the blog, wasn’t enough to sway him. It led Cornish Rob to bemoan the logistics of sorting out a list of wedding guests. You have to invite all of your aunts, uncles and cousins, even if some of them are sparkling company and the others will be drooling, twitching and licking the inside of a peanut packet by quarter to eleven. Then there are the partners, said Cornish Rob, you have to invite the partners.

“I know,” I said, “it’s not fair is it? You can’t have your friends at the wedding on their own. It would be like splitting the Krankies.”

“Exactly. They just wouldn’t be funny on their own. Just like you couldn’t have only one of the Chuckle Brothers. To me, to me, to me… – it doesn’t work, does it?”

I think he’s got a point.

Two more things before I take my leave of you.

First of all, I’m often asked how I can enjoy music that is badly sung or sung out of tune. And to answer the question, I have to take you back a couple of weeks to my epoch-defining karaoke performance of “Fly Me To The Moon” at Chi’s Oriental Brasserie a couple of weekends back. I’m not quite sure how my Chinese meal out with friends suddenly morphed into the terror of karaoke but I had started drinking with my friend Sarah at about 3 in the afternoon and by the time the crispy duck had been devoured, the wine had been sunk and the microphone was being handed down I had a very different view of my musical prowess.

And this is the thing - when the music has verve, or passion, or sheer exuberance you don’t really care. Some songs just catch you at the right moment and sweep you along in their wake leaving you completely unable to quibble minor factors like perfect pitch. At least that’s what I’m hoping the long suffering diners at Chi thought that night. Fortunately, no recording has survived of that magic moment (I think it’s for the best) so here is another example which conveniently popped onto my iPod as I walked home yesterday. Hope you enjoy it:

The Siddeleys – What Went Wrong This Time

Lastly, I’m incredibly honoured and proud to have reached 100 followers. I was going to thank my 100th follower (hello Judearoo) but that’s not fair because I couldn’t have got there without all of you. Actually, I would have got there slightly sooner but I did lose one follower along the way. Never mind, they know who they are and I’m sure they still read this anyway.

Fortunately, I did have something tucked away for this special occasion, so tune in next time when I will finally tell the tale of my adventures in the sex industry. It’s a true story.

Making a point

I’ve got this theory about roundabouts. Bear with me, I know this isn’t the most thrilling way to start a blog post. I know too that this would empty the kitchen at any party – because that’s where I always used to end up, back when I got invited to parties. But it’s true – I’ve got this theory about roundabouts.

I think they’re the modern equivalent of the moats and battlements of days of yore, but with one crucial difference. Those fortifications were there for a reason, to keep out marauding invaders. But roundabouts serve the opposite purpose. They are there to prevent the unwitting traveller ever penetrating the grotty perimeter of a new town to get to the disgusting concrete town centre. The classic example is Basingstoke, not far from where I live and, I suspect, Kabul’s ugly twin town. Its dark heart is almost impossible to reach because of a force field of roundabouts. Surrounded by superstores and giant warehouses full of consumer electronics they ring the town as if to say Abandon hope or, more accurately, Don’t bother.

The nearest town to where I work is the equally horrendous Bracknell. The drive from my office to the centre of town is one of the unloveliest journeys it’s possible to make. First, you have to drive through the industrial estate, full of dated looking buildings where it is forever 1975. I like to think they are full of people in faded brown suits pressing buttons on a mainframe computer the size of a playing field and covered in flashing diodes, churning out a tiny printout of zeros and ones on shiny white paper with ticker tape down each side. They may even have less interesting and fulfilling jobs than me. I suppose it’s possible.

Then you drive past the largest branch of DIY superstore Wickes that I have ever seen. It is dubbed “Wickes Home Improvement Centre”, but if you lived in Bracknell and were serious about home improvement you would not be going to a DIY shop, you’d be going to an estate agent. Preferably one that isn’t in, and doesn’t sell houses in, Bracknell. This seems to be lost on most of the residents (and they don’t take well to being told – I’ve learned that from bitter personal experience).

Then you hit the roundabouts. Bracknell too is endowed with many roundabouts and cars whirr repetitively round them like mindless lab rats in a wheel. Rumour has it that in the basement of a multi-storey car park by one of the roundabouts there is a gentleman’s private members club full of gyrating ladies. A lap dancing venue in a car park. It could only happen in Bracknell. Incidentally, I did some research (on the internet rather than in real life, I might add) and the club really does exist – it’s called "Angels". But the best thing is the website where I found this out. It’s called Stripadvisor – someone should sue.

One time the funbus took a detour through the roundabouts on the way home. As we stopped at the traffic lights I gazed out the window and to my horror I could see a pregnant woman with a frighteningly tight ponytail shoving a pram along the grassy verge. In it was a baby, and stuffed in the compartment underneath was a twelve pack of lager. She was clanging away on a cigarette. The whole thing looked like one of those 1980s BBC television dramas about life after a nuclear holocaust.

This is why for many months I refused to go into the centre of Bracknell without a tetanus jab.

Some people say that if they won the lottery they would still go into work. Some say they would never work again. Personally, I’d be tempted to go work for McDonalds and sneak ground up contraceptive pills into the hamburger mix. It may be the only way to save them.

You may, being a perceptive reader, have gathered from my finely nuanced prose that I am not a fan of Bracknell and you’d be right. But I still go into town every few weeks, because there’s one thing that makes it worthwhile. If you can make it through the maze of ring roads, drive past Wickes without having an irresistible urge to buy some grouting and can ignore the dubious charms of the lapdancing club, the goal is in sight.

Your car will reluctantly chug up the hill towards the train station, past high rise office buildings too disgusting to occupy and too ugly to destroy, and into one of the car parks. Getting out, you will walk through an unattractive mall full of the shops you only go to if they’re the only shops in town. People still wear shellsuits? you’ll think in horror as you force your way through the throng, but don’t be discouraged. You’re nearly there.

There, on the other side, you’ll find a branch of Waterstones. Try not to be distracted by the books – most of the residents certainly aren’t – and climb the stairs. You will find it just past the humour section, glowing benignly with the light of all that is good, and decent, and somehow not Bracknell.

Bageltopia.

Whenever Iain, Gemma and I go there we always order the same thing. Iain, true to his Scottish roots, has a “Highlander” – bacon and cheese. Gemma has a “Tijuana Tuna Melt” without the red onion on a toasted cheese bagel (I’ve had to order this many times, it’s like When Harry Met Sally when we go to lunch). And I have the “Reuben” – salt beef, gherkins, sauerkraut, emmental and a smidge of thousand island dressing on a toasted sesame seed bagel. And there, in the unlikely intersection of Mexico, Inverness, New York and Bracknell we have a good old gossip and smut session free of the fear that anyone at work will be within earshot.

Trips to Bageltopia have to be planned a day in advance, so nobody makes a packed lunch the night before. The diary has to be clear enough to allow the full hour for lunch. The pilgrimage is a matter of much anticipation and we look forward to it all day. So last Wednesday when Gemma stopped by my desk to check it was still all going ahead the conversation turned out to be very awkward.

“All set for Bageltopia at lunchtime?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t. I’d completely forgotten, I’ve got a prior commitment.”

“What are you doing that’s more fun than Bageltopia?”

I knew she would never believe what I was about to say. But I had to tell the truth.

“I’m playing backgammon in the canteen with my friend Fiona.”

I have to tell you that I have been picked on for many things in my time. Wearing glasses at 6, wearing horrendous cardigans at 18, liking music people have never heard of, not wanting to go clubbing, you name it. But I have never known vilification quite like the vilification I suffered for that confession.

I’ve always thought backgammon was quite a cool thing to do, though that might be based on hearing stories of my dad going on holiday to Turkey and spending the whole time sitting outside in the dust playing backgammon with bus drivers who couldn’t understand a word he said, smoking strong fags and drinking tarlike black coffee. Apparently, I was wrong. Gemma was so horrified that she had been stood up – for backgammon, of all things – that she organised a whispering campaign. People in the office were tutting at me and shaking their heads. Gemma referred to me as "well old".

At lunch Fiona and I carried on regardless – after all, I had brought my set in from home specially and I wasn’t going to let an opportunity go to waste. Maybe I’m being paranoid but I’m sure people who walked past our table were rolling their eyes.

Later that afternoon Abi walked past my desk.

“I saw what you were doing down there at lunch.” she said. She then mimed me throwing the dice with my mega posh pleather dice shaker. But she deliberately did it to make it look like cracking one off. I knew I was being mocked.

There was more to come. At close of play Gemma sent me a mail. “I asked a select number of people what they thought the acceptable age was to start playing backgammon on your spare time. Attached are the results.” she said. The attached spreadsheet was entitled Scientific Results. She had surveyed nine people. The average age? Over 50.

I had nobody to blame but myself. When they came for the gingers, I had held my tongue because I was not ginger. When they came for the trannies I remained silent because I was not a tranny. Now they were coming for the backgammon players and there was nobody left to speak up for me.

Actually that’s not entirely true because I’m normally in the vanguard gunning for the trannies and gingers but let’s let that pass for now.

The final straw came at hometime.

“Is that your backgammon set?” said my boss. "It’s quite nice, it looks like a little briefcase. Maybe I should get one.”

Ten years is a long time

The London Underground, like the mind, can play funny tricks.

Somewhere between saying goodbye to her on the Tube and leaving Baker Street I realised I was on the wrong line. This was not the friendly yellow Circle Line, carrying me back to Paddington, but the purple Metropolitan Line heading to Wembley and beyond to Watford. All the Ws. Wank.

In the centre of London successive tube stops can be mere minutes apart. Sometimes it’s not worth parading through the ticket barriers, past the zombies ineffectually doing the same, down the juddery escalators past tatty adverts for shows you will never see – it’s quicker to walk. But not so on the Metropolitan Line. The clue is in the name.

And so it was that I emerged from the tube to find myself in Finchley Road, three miles away from Paddington, just as the tube network packed up for the night and went home, something it had just made considerably more difficult for me. There are a lot of places in the world that I fully expect never to see, and although it would never have consciously made the list the underground station at Finchley Road was definitely one of them. Still, last weekend I did karaoke and I never saw that coming either. You live and learn.

Lights blinked on the high street. There were no signs of life, no late bars, no pavement culture. This was a part of London nobody ever saw unless they lived here, except by accident. The comforting crimson welcome of a KFC almost drew me in as I found my bearings, but I resisted. I had a long trek ahead of me, and besides, I had plenty to reflect on.

We had met at her office in Marylebone, at the ad agency she works for. I don’t know if it was a conscious attempt to impress me, but if it was it worked. Her office looked like the set of a TV show. Mine looks like a Portakabin designed by a war criminal. We started talking – about her family, my family, about finding being happy a work in progress. We had never had much time for small talk, not even back then. It should have been weird but it wasn’t, which was weird. If I had thought about that harder I would have got very confused.

We had seen each other once in the last ten years. When she mailed me, eight years after we split up, I had been surprised. She came looking for closure, but not being able to provide it ranks high among my many failings. I always expected each email, each exchange, to be the last and I didn’t understand why that made me sad. I probably never will. But it hasn’t yet and from that cagy correspondence something has cautiously emerged that I want to call friendship. I hope I can.

We stood outside with her colleagues and watched it hammer with rain as they smoked on the decking. One of them asked me how I knew her. We go way back, I said. It didn’t seem right to say any more than that.

“Aren’t you worried about her jacking it all in and moving back North to become a social worker? All those case files, all the pressure if you get it wrong. She’s got it buttoned down here, she does a brilliant job. Buttoned down. But you can be looking after fifty kids at once. Can she handle that?”

I wanted to feel proud but knew I had no right.

“Of course she can handle it. She’s very tough.”

Listen to me. I have no idea.

She looked how I remembered but somehow different. Not brittle any more, not uncomfortable. Funny, confident, successful, all those things I had never been able to convince her she would be all that time ago. I felt that not-allowed pride again. This hadn’t happened because of me, it had happened despite me. No, that’s not right either. It had just happened, and it had nothing to do with me at all.

We talked about everything in the restaurant. I love conversations that make me feel like I’m part of a book, part of a movie, and this one did. But it wasn’t my book, or my movie. I was the minorest of minor characters. She didn’t want me to take her photograph. But that was fine, I have other ways of capturing what someone is like these days.

On the long leafy walk through St John’s Wood I start thinking about how I’ll write this.

Paddington at half past one is a purgatorial experience. The drunk and the destititute sit on uncomfortable seats (if they have bothered with furniture at all) and stave off coma by staring at the increasingly spartan departure board. I cheat on my diet with a voluptuous bacon double cheeseburger. It is the first burger I have had this year and like all cheap pleasures it will be gone in minutes and regretted for hours. The train is a cacophonous zoo, packed with people who should have been asleep many hours ago and those who plan to be awake for hours yet. The carriage stinks of french fries and cheap deodorant. I have a surreal conversation with two credit controllers from Slough.

None of that matters. I am on my way back – to my home, to my life, to belonging somewhere.

A bad analogy

I used to think that relationships were like jobs. It was one of those pleasing analogies where the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense.

There were the ones I only planned to be in for a few weeks that somehow lasted for months. The temporary arrangements that were meant to keep me busy over the long hot summer, and come October time I realised I was itching to leave but was unable to hand in my notice.

There were the ones I did that, deep down, I knew were beneath me. They didn’t stretch me or make me think but they passed the time and I was bored and unambitious. Or those I loved but I somehow always felt I wasn’t good enough for, that I’d bluffed my way into. I suffered week after week of anxious waiting to be found out, followed by despair when I inevitably was. There were the ones I never quite applied for and when I look at my cv I wish I had. Ones that involved lots of travel to exciting places, and ones where I was homebased and watched four walls, slowly going mad. Ones where I spent my whole life on the phone.

There were messy ones and degrading ones, and there were the ones where I watched the clock. All the time.

There were the ones where no two days were the same, where I would long for a life less unpredictable. Or the ones where every day was, and I wished there was some variety. Because relationships are like jobs. Even when you have one it can be hard to feel like it’s a job for life and you still find yourself idly checking the paper on a slow afternoon. Keeping your eyes peeled.

And of course, relationships are like jobs because it’s easier to find one when you’re in one. When you have a job people want to hire you, when you don’t nobody wants to know. The headhunters stop looking for you. And when you leave one to pursue new opportunities it’s always ugly and leads to arguments about how quickly you can go and how much money people owe.

So I used to think that relationships were like jobs, but then I got your message this morning with its sad, awful news.

And now I know I was wrong. The end of a relationship isn’t like clearing your desk and going somewhere new. Going to a different office, picking up your security pass with its brand new unflattering picture, getting to know unfamiliar faces and fitting in again. Those are happy, exciting moments and thinking of you I knew the image doesn't work. No, the people who thought up relationship obituaries were right on the money, because the end of a relationship is like a little death.

There are the ones that are sick from the start and slip away to nobody’s amazement. Some live fast and are bound to die young. And some waste away over years until they are a shadow of their former self. When they eventually go, sadness fights for relief and neither completely wins. Not to mention the ones everyone expects to die virtually every day but somehow cling on forever. There are ones that nobody mourns, and ones that everyone mourns. One less place round the table at dinner, one less name on the Christmas card list and one less face at parties.

And then there is yours. Nobody had a clue. I’ve seen it happen many times to many people and every time I'm equally taken by surprise. It’s hard enough to understand a relationship from the inside, nobody will ever manage it from the outside looking in. It’s an alarming thought - how many relationships I know are holding the seeds of their own demise, ticking down to zero on the timer before my eyes? Is mine?

I wanted to tell you something comforting about your loss, and maybe when I see you I will. Perhaps I’ll have found some words better than this. Until then, this will have to do: cancel your plans. I will buy you cocktails at bright tables in noisy places. Or, if you’re not ready, we will drink pints in dark wood panelled corners. You don’t have to say a word about it or you can tell me everything. It doesn’t matter to me, whichever you’re least unhappiest with. None of it will end up here.

But come out with me. Let’s get drunk.

Pangasius and leskol

The vicious rumour doing the rounds about our staff restaurant is that if you eat there, and you’re a vegetarian, you might not be quite as much of a vegetarian as you thought you were. Words like “inspection” are being whispered in the corridors. But anyway, I’m sure it’s unfounded. I for one have never seen anything even vaguely resembling meat on sale there. The only way you’d ever get any is if an unfortunate rat got deep fried by mistake.

Our canteen doesn’t have time for meat anyway. It’s too busy specialising in discovering new ingredients nobody even knew existed. And they normally sound like the sort of diseases that used to claim millions of lives back in Victorian times before they were cured by a bunch of capital fellows with moustaches, monocles and microscopes. For instance, the canteen recently proudly proclaimed that it sold pangasius and chips.

Pangasius.

It turns out that pangasius is another name for catfish. They managed to find a way of making catfish sound even less appealing than it already does. But they don’t always trumpet their miracles of gastronomy. Sometimes they are hidden, as in their hilariously titled “Hey Pesto!” sandwich, the main ingredient of which is something called leskol.

Leskol.

Yes, they are selling a leskol sandwich in our canteen. I am not making this up. Like pangasius I had no idea what leskol even was until I did some research. And I’ve discovered that it’s a low fat cheese substitute. I even went to their website only to be put off by an inappropriately placed apostrophe on the front page. So if I wasn’t boycotting it before, I’m definitely boycotting it now. But you’ve got to hand it to them – normally they put some effort into the names of cheeses (Stinking Bishop anyone? Cathedral City?), and normally substitutes for dairy products at least try to sound exciting (Flora sounds all floral, Vitalite all, well, vital). So to come up with a name which looks almost as unappealing on a Scrabble rack as it would in a sandwich is no mean feat.

Funnily enough the July edition of our somewhat vacuous catering firm’s handouts (critiqued here) was far from forthcoming on the sinister origins of catfish with aspirations or chronically poor rapeseed-based substitutes for cheddar. Nor did it have anything to say on those pesky rumours about cross contamination.

Instead, it had a puff piece about the importance of eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day (the irony) and confirmation that the 21st July is indeed the National Day of Belgium. Will they celebrate with waffles? Moules? A nice foaming pint of Kwak in a glass shaped like a lab flask in a tasteful wooden rack? My money is on frites being the only thing to make an appearance. Like they always do.

It led to an especially surreal conversation last week when Gemma was reviewing the section of the pamphlet extolling the benefits of eating lots of different coloured vegetables.

”It says you should eat purple peppers,” she said, “whoever heard of purple peppers?”

“Isn’t that what Peter Piper picked in the nursery rhyme?” I said.

“No, that’s pickled peppers.” replied Iain. Then I realised something.

“Hold on, how can he pick a peck of pickled peppers? Surely if they’ve already been pickled someone has picked them first. They aren’t going to pickle a whole pepper plant just so Peter Piper can pick pickled peppers. Preposterous.”

Nobody disagreed. I’m not sure if that’s because I was right or because they were just so impressed that I managed to make it through the whole of that tirade with my tongue untwisted.

But worse was to come from our not especially vegetarian friendly leskol pushing chums in the staff restaurant.

There are all manner of disappointing experiences in life (having inflicted a number of them on ladies in my time on the planet I feel well qualified to speak on this subject). There are mildly disappointing experiences where you let out a little sigh - internally or audibly, it doesn’t massively matter which - and get on with your life. There are quite disappointing experiences where you might tell a friend or two, or mention it to other people if it naturally comes up in conversation. And then there are the disappointments so colossal that they convert the person who suffers them into an evangelist, keen to tell the world. You want to stop passing strangers in the street and tell them all about your shoddy experience, keen to deter others from an equally underwhelming fate.

The fish in the canteen on Friday fell squarely into that latter category.

I neared the front of the queue and looked down at it, wan and unappealing on the stainless steel serving plate. But the quality of the batter was the least of the problems here. It was meant to be cod. Cod is a magnificent beast of the ocean. Cod fillets are lovely, huge, fleshy things. And I know it’s endangered but I thought the solution was sustainable sensible fishing rather than dishing up miniscule helpings to homicidal office workers. I did my second double take when I clocked the price - to cap it all, it was £2.85! For £2.85 I could have got a piece of haddock roughly eight times the size at my local chippy. And that was before you’d paid for chips. It was mind boggling.

The person in front of me, improbably, asked for the fish and chips. Maybe they’ll give him two pieces, maybe that’s how it works, I thought. But of course it wasn’t. So I had the vegetarian fajita – which was an education in itself because I’d never associated broccoli with Mexican food (and now I know why).

“Looks lovely doesn’t it?” said the nice lady at the counter as I handed over my cash.

”Yes, it does.” I said. Then I paused. I couldn’t help myself, because it was that kind of disappointment. “Not like that cod, what’s all that about? That’s the smallest cod I have ever seen in my life. It’s like a slightly butch whitebait.”

She grimaced at me, sending me scuttling to my seat. Throughout the whole meal I found myself banging on about the fish to Iain. It was such a crap portion I was spent my lunch break complaining to someone who didn’t care about the size of something I hadn’t even bought. Because it was that kind of disappointment.

For Christ’s sake, it was smaller than my Blackberry. The fact people have designed a device that can make calls and send and receive emails which is smaller than a piece of cod is an inspiring triumph of human ingenuity and endeavour. But the fact that the devious penny pinching sods at our staff restaurant are dishing out portions of cod smaller than a Blackberry is a depressing indictment of catering standards in darkest Bracknell.

You’ll notice I haven’t done a “microchip” pun. Because I’m better than that.

On the way out I stopped by the suggestion whiteboard, hilariously entitled the “blogboard”. You’re righter than you know, I thought to myself as I wrote three little words on there with a stark black marker pen:

Smallest. Fish. EVER.

It’s like Gandhi said, non violent protest is the only thing that ever really changes the word. And I know he was a bit of a thin chap but even he would have turned his nose up at that mangy scrap of battered mediocrity. I mean, really. Come back pangasius, all is forgiven.

"The Richter Scale of cleavage"

My colleague Phil is entirely responsible for my brief, abortive and not remotely successful career as a knockerologist.

It all began a couple of Fridays ago. It was a slow afternoon at the end of a slow week and the couple of remaining hours of work were just a frustrating barrier that stood between me and that first sparkling pint of cider at the Oakford Social Club. Gemma was at my desk and we were trying desperately to turn a spreadsheet drier than a nun’s gusset into a spreadsheet no less boring but marginally more correct. We had just got to an especially difficult bit when Phil’s lugubrious tones rolled out from the other side of our bank of desks.

“Gemma, he told me that he likes to ogle your chest when you’re not looking.” he said.

Lies, all lies.

“Is this true? Do you look at my chest?” asked Gemma.

“No I don’t.” I said. Then I realised I wasn’t directing my vehement denial at Gemma’s face. I adjusted my gaze upwards. “Well, all right, I was just then. But Phil made me do it. You know, through the power of suggestion.”

“That’s okay then.” said Gemma. “I have been worried lately that my outfits are showing off too much cleavage. What do you think?”

Unsurprisingly, Phil and I both said that we really couldn’t see any problem, and that was the end of that. But the subject played on my mind over the weekend, because it’s a thorny issue. It’s okay if you’re a man, because you have so few decisions to make about dressing for work. Tie or tie-less, brown shoes or black shoes, suit or Superman costume, that’s really all there is to it. But for women it’s a positive minefield. I used to envy them the fact that they seem to be able to turn up to work in pretty much whatever they like but I now realise what a horrible burden that much choice must be.

If you need any further illustration of my point (and let’s pretend you do, because I’m going to illustrate it anyway) two women in my office who do reasonably similar jobs dress totally differently. One of them turns up in what looks like jogger bottoms, has been known to wear a Reading FC polyester football shirt on relaxed dress day and has a baseball cap permanently glued to her head with lank tresses trickling out from underneath. The other wears what can only be described as astonishingly inappropriate floaty cocktail dresses – an effect which is ruined by the fact that she has a nose that would put Karl Malden’s to shame. Best of all, both these women look considerably less feminine than our resident office transvestite.

Yes, the more I thought about it, the more I could see the problem Gemma was grappling with. And at least she was giving it some thought. I used to work with someone who turned up to work on Friday wearing a t-shirt which had the words “Weapons of Mass Distraction” plastered right across her bangers. She then complained that people kept looking at her chest, rather disingenuously I thought. And when I suggested “Weapons of Masturbation” would have been a more appropriate slogan she really wasn’t too happy. Double standards eh? Like I said - minefield.

There was nothing for it. I had to help Gemma with this sartorial dilemma. Partly as a friend, and partly for science. But mainly, of course, as a friend.

On Monday I explained to Gemma that – purely in the interests of our friendship (oh, and for science. Did I mention science?) - I was prepared to look at and assess her chest every day. I would do that for her, I said, because I cared deeply about how she was judged in the workplace.

I have to say her initial reaction was skeptical.

She thought this was just a feeble excuse for me to carry out random acts of lechery. Honestly! As you can imagine, I was a little offended by that.

“No, really, it’s all going to be scientific. I’ve even defined a scale for it. Sort of like the Richter Scale of cleavage. For instance, today you’d get a 6.1.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Well, I’m glad you asked me that Gemma. It’s a sliding scale. 1-5 is basically saying ‘move along, nothing to see here’. From 5-7 the cleavage is increasingly apparent but appropriate and decorous. 7-9 means the outfit is getting much more revealing and risqué.”

“And above 9?”

“Above 9 means you’re Jodie Marsh at a film premiere.”

I’m sorry to report that she didn’t seem convinced. Even the prospect of me sending her a weekly Powerpoint slide with a little graph on it wasn’t enough to make her realise the responsibility she had – if not to me, if not to herself, then at least to science. It was all extremely disappointing.

Later that afternoon Gemma sent me a picture of Jodie Marsh at a film premiere.

“What would this get on your scale?”

“Oh, that’s a 9.2.”

“Holy shit, what do you have to do to get a 10?”

To be honest I hadn’t envisaged my scientific study going in that direction, but I could see it had potential. Especially if we could rope in some of the other women in the office. But it was clear that Gemma wasn’t budging.

So it never happened. No new branch of science, no opportunities to present at conferences in Geneva and San Francisco. I could have been the 21st century’s answer to Kinsey but it was not to be. I was just going to have to stick to polishing turdy spreadsheets and reading emails that looked like they’d been knocked up by a million chimps in a room with a million typewriters in a matter of nanoseconds. Well, unless the blog takes off anyway.

I’d just like to point out to my critics that they’re the ones trying to put the “vag” in “cleavage”. And I think we all know it doesn’t belong there. My only regret is that I didn’t have a last ditch attempt to persuade Gemma by bringing in my rubberised breast callipers. That would have proved beyond all doubt that I am not creepy.

Waving goodbye to the greasy pole

It will no doubt amaze you to hear that I’ve never progressed very far at work. In fact I’ve done roughly the same job for the last six years and by and large that suits me fine. At least, it will do until that first novel hits the shelves or my famous Mr London Street logo adorns the cover of a spiffing paperback and I am acclaimed throughout the land as an English Augusten Burroughs (only not gay. Or an alcoholic).

It’s not that people think I’m rubbish at my job, mind you. I’ve been offered promotion a few times but I’ve turned it down for a couple of good reasons.

First of all, people management is a long old way from my idea of fun. I once had to manage somebody and the experience didn’t agree with me. I don’t mind having to explain something once, not even twice. But having to explain how to do something every day, to somebody who has to do that thing every day? It’s not for me. Nor is having to show vague interest in somebody’s personal life when they spend most of their weekends in garden centres (I can only assume she was drawn to vegetation because she recognized some kindred spirits).

Most frustrating of all might have been the totally unwelcome running commentary on Every Single Aspect Of Everything:

MR LONDON STREET: I want you to review this spreadsheet and check whether people are following the process. Once you’ve looked at the data send me an email summing up what you think.
MLS' IRRITATING MINION: Well, they definitely aren’t on this second one I’m looking at.
MR LONDON STREET: That’s nice, but wait till you’ve read all of them and give me your findings as a whole.
MLS' IRRITATING MINION: Or on Line 9 of the spreadsheet.
MR LONDON STREET: I really don’t need you to tell me as you go along.
MLS' IRRITATING MINION: Oh, okay. (pause) Line 15 is especially interesting.

Doing her appraisals was especially difficult. There was a section on the performance review form saying “opportunities for development” and I longed to type No fortysomething woman can carry off that shade of brown. It's as if you dipped your hair in creosote. And while we're at it get some conditioner. It looks like kindling. But fortunately I resisted the urge.

The day she announced that she was emigrating to New Zealand I took the news with a stony face and congratulated her on making such a life changing decision. I accepted her letter of notice. Then I went to the bathroom, entered a cubicle, locked the door behind me and did a victory dance of pure joyous celebration.

Then there are the other burdens of command. Staying late. Fretting. Having to look unbelievably busy at all times. Being hauled into senior meetings with no notice to take a kicking for something you can’t help and don’t care about. And all that bluffing you have to do. Saying things like “let’s crystallise some high level concepts” with not a shred, not even the merest hint of irony. No, I reckon you can keep it, and that’s all there is to say.

Well, almost all there is to say.

The final nails were driven into the coffin housing what was left of my ambition during an incident which took place last summer.

I was invited to join a senior meeting between someone very high up in my company and a supplier of ours. But not just any meeting, this wasn’t an awful grilling session in a dingy meeting room with no natural light (all our policies on getting answers out of suppliers seem to have been written by Donald Rumsfeld). This was to be a civilised meeting over lunch. And not a crappy trip to the staff canteen either, my company had booked a proper restaurant. With napkins and everything.

This must be how the other half live, I thought, as I sat in the back of the executive company car listening to them both chatter away about their holiday homes in France. Even when we got to our table and perused the menu they seemed in no danger of actually talking about work, or anything that needed to be done. Maybe this was how business was done in the upper echelons of the wankosphere? Who cares, the important thing is that I was coping magnificently. I nodded sagely at the right points and pensively sipped my diet Coke. I hadn’t even taken my A4 pad out of my manbag, that’s how well I had judged the mood around the table. No dorky note taking for me.

My lunch order - chicken caesar salad, since you asked - was well chosen. Naughty yet nice, and more crucially just the right hint of sensible with company money. Of course if I'd known how it would turn out I'd have had the fillet steak but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Eventually, as I crunched on my penultimate crouton they got round to discussing the matter at hand. If you listened hard you could almost hear the sound of high level concepts beginning to crystallise. I can do this, I thought, I’m a grown up.

Then the wasp landed on my hand.

I swatted it away nonchalantly. The two men at my table barely noticed. But then it returned, and this time my attempts to move it off were less successful. It sounded pissed off and, as I approximated a rather frenzied Hitler salute trying to shake it off, it stung the shit out of my hand and clung on for dear life. The next few minutes were like something out of a silent movie. My companions, oblivious to my suffering, were discussing the implications of offshoring in the modern marketplace. By contrast, I looked as if I was frantically throwing shapes to some thumping happy hardcore. The wasp wasn’t budging and I had no choice but to take drastic action. Unfortunately, that was the precise moment that the two of them decided to stop talking to each other and look over at me.

Just in time, as fortune would have it, to look on in disbelief as I repeatedly twatted the little bastard against the leg of the table like a man possessed.

“I’m terribly sorry,” I said, wiping the dead creature off with my napkin “I appear to have been stung by a wasp.”

Let’s draw a veil over the rest. Let’s not mention the sympathetic looks the other diners gave - not to me but to my companions. I don’t want to talk about the way my finger swelled up to the size of a small watermelon and started to throb in a positively pornographic manner. I’d sooner not think about how I suddenly felt dizzy and a bit odd and had to drink glass after glass of water.

And the less said the better about the considerably less comfortable (some might even say stilted) conversation on the way back to the office in the executive company car. I can understand. It’s very hard to talk about your holiday homes in France when you both just want to turn to one another and say Who in God’s name invited him? I had failed the test. There would be no subsequent invitations.

Mark

I thought of you. I always do these days when I go to Gatwick.

You would pick me up from the train station there in that abominable navy Vauxhall you were so proud of and over the years, in that tired and clichéd way, you became less of a colleague and more of a friend.

You used to tell me about your disastrous holidays. One time you had to spring your wife from a hospital in Italy to catch the plane home. She had slipped in the apartment and cracked her head. Another time you went to Kefalonia, which I am pretty sure is what prompted their first earthquake in decades. You lit candles and took refuge on the beach.

I wouldn’t have wanted to share a holiday destination with you. Your blue Vauxhall was eventful enough.

Since it no longer picks me up, I thread my way through the jubilant holidaymakers to catch the free bus to your old office. I remember, after your promotion, how the new work clothes screamed “midlife crisis”. But it was impossible to hold it against you. I remember the way you always said “I’ll be completely honest with you” - even though you were genetically incapable of being anything else. And I remember the “love” and “hate” tattoos on your knuckles. I can only guess how much you regretted those.

You made such awful tea. I never told you that.

I was always late home from Gatwick because you always offered to drive me back to the train station. We would walk to the car park and chat about nothing much while you smoked one of those tiny cigars that did for you in the end.

I sat, soaked and monochrome, in a pew at your funeral. Everyone who spoke said how nice you were. It made me angry because I knew there was so much more to you than that, but it wasn’t the place to say. Besides, they all knew that too and it didn’t stop them all being right. You were younger than my dad.

In the office a couple of weeks ago I found some emails from you that I never deleted. It’s the first time I have ever read emails from a ghost and it startled me. Your voice jumped off the page, complete with spelling mistakes. You said you couldn’t wait to be in a meeting room with me again. It’s not, I have to tell you, a commonly declared ambition. You are positive you are going to beat this thing, you said. It’s only a matter of time.

I wish you had been right.

At the end of my meetings my train pulls out of the station, full of deflated tourists not quite ready to return to their lives. I’m not sure I am either. I am suddenly caught shivering in a shaft of sunlight, a boy in a man’s suit, at once impossibly young and incredibly old.

[This piece was published in The Pygmy Giant.]

Jumping the gun

My centenary is just around the corner.

I thought long and hard about what to do to mark this occasion. Initially I decided not to do anything special, partly because I can’t think of anything in particular to do, partly because I didn’t get any (usable) suggestions from anyone else and of course mainly because my friend still hasn’t given me permission to release the legendary “Vaseline story”. Believe me, this disappoints me a lot more than it possibly could you but on the plus side I haven’t seen her much so if we fall out of touch I’ll be posting it quicker than you can say “holy mackerel, what are you doing with that Vaseline?”. Watch this space.

Then I started thinking it would be a good time to take stock. After all, being on the verge of my hundredth post makes me a bit nostalgic. But I think we all know that will hardly make for a fascinating read. Moreover, what about the burden of feeling like I have to write something suitably substantial? Good grief, is this how the Poet Laureate will feel about penning a few lines to commemorate Princess Eugenie’s first backstreet abortion? The pressure!

So I’ve made a momentous decision: rather than pollute my hundredth post with a turgid stream of navel gazing nonsense… I’m going to get it all out of the way in this one! Then we can just all get on with business and nothing gets ruined. Brilliant, no?

In my first post I remember writing that I really wasn’t sure what kind of blog this would turn out to be. I said it might be about photos, books, music or just random stories about my day and it seems to have turned out, for better or worse, to be mainly the latter. So in no particular order over the last four months I’ve managed to cover smut, dating disasters, the repeated inadvertent giving of offence, racism (both casual and committed), a wide range of perversions, horrible food, accidental nudism and, of course, the wonder of clunge. There have even been a couple of serious posts - you know, just to keep everyone on their toes. What’s your favourite been so far?

I’ve enjoyed doing this so much that I’m afraid there are also some people I’d like to thank. I’m not sure whether you will skim this bit (or, let’s be honest, the entire post) because it’s really not interesting, or whether you’ll have a sneaky peek to see if your name is in there. And of course, the act of doing this guarantees I’ll offend some people who are left out and really shouldn’t be. But never mind - I’m not going to let that stop me.

So specifically I’d like to thank the heroes of my blog who always give me so much to write about – my lunch buddies Iain and Gemma, my funbus compadres Mikey and Cornish Rob, the wonderful Donald Pleasence and last but not least the superb David who has promised me another guest post soon. Then there are the bloggers. I don’t think I realised when I started this how much of the best bits would come from reading other people’s stuff rather than writing my own. There are far too many of you to thank so I’ll confine myself to thanking two – Katrocket and tennyson ee hemingway. They both followed me back in the day when almost nobody else did.

Think I’m finished? Not quite. I have the best commenters in blogland too. Again, too many of you to thank but I did want to single out my marvellous friends Natalie and Rebecca - however awful my post is they always find something to say about it (usually funnier than the post itself) and if either of them ever gets round to starting a blog of their own I think I might be screwed.

I also want to thank all the people who read my blog and enjoy it but never comment or sign up to follow it. Weirdly, I keep finding out there are loads of you that do this. I don’t know why – maybe you’re trying to stop me getting a big head or something. If so, I feel I should warn you that the damage is already done in that respect, so feel free to knock yourselves out. Maybe at some point over the next hundred (err, ninety-nine) posts I will instal sitemeter so I actually know who is reading this. Or maybe I prefer living in a fantasy world where I think there are hundreds of you hanging on my every paragraph.

Except maybe the paragraphs in this post. I might let you all off being enthralled by this one, under the circumstances.

Finally, I want to thank two other people. One is the fantastic Sarah – a friend who writes a blog and was the first person who got me thinking that there was no reason why I couldn’t too. And last of all, the saintly Kelly who has put up with me doing this with remarkably few complaints. And she has ample cause to complain because after I post something she has to endure me constantly asking Is it okay? Is it any good? Did you like it? Honestly? What’s your favourite bit?

Because I am, as I think I must have said many times before, really quite the loser.

So if you do have any requests for my 100th post pop them in the comments, otherwise we’ll behave like it – and this – never happened. Onwards and upwards and all that. Now, where are my party streamers?

The cool kids

Circumstances conspired this week to teach me a valuable lesson about what it means to fit in.

It all came about because work this week has been eerily quiet. Iain has been on holiday sunning himself in Greece (well, I say sunning but he’s strawberry blonde so he probably goes from nought to lobster in about 15 seconds) and for the last couple of days the rest of my team has also been absent. Some of them are swanning round the country having meetings in glamorous places like Manchester and the remainder have been on leave, soaking up the uncharacteristic heat that whacks you like a mallet the moment you leave the safety of an air conditioned office or funbus.

So I am all alone. Around me are nothing but empty desks – no chatter, no backchat, no macho posturing from my manager and nobody sounding far more important than anyone could possibly be on a conference call. To the untrained observer walking by it would look like I have cleared my little pod with a particularly pestilent parp. It’s been lovely.

There was only one fly in the ointment and that’s when Gemma told me on Monday that she wouldn’t be in for lunch the next day. Because while a working day without colleagues sounds almost as entertaining as a back to back Jeremy Kyle marathon and all the Green and Blacks ice cream a person can comfortably consume, a working day without lunch is too horrendous to even contemplate. Extreme measures were called for.

In the bay next to mine is the Other Team. Most of the people in it are random telecoms guys I barely know who reek of electricity pylons and fibre optic cable but it also houses Mandy (famous for coveting other people’s food in the fridge) and Abi (mainly famous for occasionally – and unjustifiably I might add – being mistaken for a transsexual). They always lunch with their buddies within view of the table where Iain, Gemma and I discuss smut and the major events of the day. And they always seem to have equal and opposite fun to us – I assume they don’t have to rely on knob gags and filth but have sensible, cultured conversations. Time to find out, I thought. So I sent Mandy an IM saying what a tragedy it was that I was all my ownsome on Tuesday. Within minutes the reply pinged back saying “why not come to lunch with us?”

I had arrived. I was lunching with the cool kids.

I was beside myself with excitement that night planning for the big event. I made a mental note not to say anything too inappropriate or mention clunge (not after the near disaster of the work barbecue last week). My packed lunch presented a particular set of challenges. My friend Natalie told me that Ben 10 lunchboxes were all the rage, but I didn’t even know what one of those was. I had no chance. I didn’t even have a lunchbox they could gawp at because I take my sarnies to work in a clear plastic ziplock bag. And to make matters worse, all I had in the house was a packet of heavily seeded rolls. What would the cool kids think if I turned up with my transparent sandwich bodybag, got my baps out and spilled my seed all over the table?

I’d look like a flashing, masturbating serial killer. There was nothing for it, I’d have to buy something in the canteen.

The day dawned bright and sunny. I hopped through town with a spring in my step and bounded onto the funbus with a mocha in my hand and a smile on my face. Maybe it was hot as balls, maybe I would be on my own in the office all day, maybe I’ll never break the hundred follower barrier or have that threesome but who gives a fuck? I was lunching with the cool kids and that’s what counts.

I passed Mandy in the corridor at about half ten. “All right there lunch buddy?” she said. It was all I could do not to try and high five her.

High fiving is not cool. Deep down, I know that.

At about twelve o’clock one of my suppliers swung by my desk. He asked if I was heading down for lunch and I took great pride in telling him I had already arranged to go with someone else. Someone cool, I wanted to tell him. But I didn’t, because that too is not cool. So off he went. I watched him wander away from my solitary desk thinking So long Nigel, I’m just too cool for lunch with you.

I first started to wonder whether something was up at about ten past one. After all, surely lunching that late isn’t cool? No doubt Mandy and her chums were stuck on a call or something. Ten minutes later I sent her an IM and the response came back. They were too busy, too cool for lunch. I’m not sure she would even have remembered to tell me if I hadn’t been so gauche that I asked.

I’d been fucking stood up.

I trudged downstairs, picked up a stodgy sandwich and took it to my desk, where I ate it on my own, a picture of lonely desperation. One of the PAs wandered past and asked if I had BO. Yet again, coolness had escaped me and it was like being at school all over again. When I was at school I remember being in the chess club. I even won a chess tournament. Nobody told me back then that being a winner was the most surefire way there was to become a massive loser.

Then I got to the sixth form, where I and my friends realised just how tribal the common room can be. One corner had the swotty popular attractive types that everyone liked and wanted to go out with. They tended to breed among themselves. Then there was the corner with the sporty clean limbed types who went to all the parties (I never went to the parties. I wasn’t cool enough).

Then there was the corner I was in. The heavy metal corner, covered in posters torn out of Kerrang! magazine and full of the long haired and leather jacketed. I was so desperate to fit in somewhere that I and my Dungeons and Dragons playing friends sat there even though I’d sooner have gargled my own diarrhoea than listen to a Slayer album from beginning to end.

It was that or sit in the remedial corner with the kids who did a one year course after GCSEs because they were too thick to join the army. They were given the job of filling up the vending machine because it gave them something to do. One day I went up to buy a packet of Hula Hoops only to find that they’d accidentally set the price as 0p rather than 20p. I bought three and told my friends. Within 15 minutes we’d emptied the machine of Hula Hoops. Within an hour the remedial kids had filled it up again. This went on for a week before they realised their mistake.

I arrived home devastated and logged on to trumpet my misfortune to the world. And – god bless her - Natalie came to my rescue.

“You’re uber cool – that’s way better than plain old cool.” she said, “This is coming from someone who played Connect 4 tournaments at school, so I really know my stuff. I’d have invited you to join in our Connect 4 tournament. Well, I would have if I’d been brave enough.”

And then something magical happened. My friends started coming out of the woodwork. One was on the chess team and captain of the nature quiz team (whatever that was). Another owned up to being a member of the school wind band and hand washing prefect. Yet another insisted that Dungeons & Dragons is rock and roll, whatever anyone says. And one of my friends today said to me “don’t even ask me about Weather Club” (don’t worry, I won’t).

And then I realised. I’m surrounded by amazing people who, like me, have walked in the valley of the shadow of geek and have come out the other side. We don’t need the trendies with their asymmetric haircuts and skinny jeans and achingly hip record collections and perfect house parties. Fuck the lot of them. We can have our board games and old t-shirts and obscure records and endearing obsessions and bad puns and silly jokes. Why am I bothering to try and fit in with the “cool kids”? I already do.

So all that remains for me to tell you is this: Connect 4 tournament, in the library after school. Are you with me?