Dickens

No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to find a way of asking for Thursday and Friday off. Either it comes out as though I am instructing my boss to give me time off, or it ends up sounding like "please sir, can I have some more holidays". It's only about three sentences, and yet I've been drafting it and re-drafting it all afternoon. Eventually, I opted for a variant of "please sir" etc., - probably the best way to get what I want.

I witnessed another Dickensian moment a few weeks ago, when Gambo went up to the boss to ask if he could leave work early on Christmas day, so that he could go home and see his little girls (we work with a lot of international companies, so the office is always open, and Gambo is employed to work on weekends and bank holidays). "I'll think about it," says the boss.

And there you are - work conditions might have improved vastly, but our attitudes to work are rooted firmly in the industrial revolution.

All a bit po-faced and humourless, I know, but I think it needed to be said.

Looking alike

Gambo, Oscar and Eva are looking at a celebrity lookalike hire website when I get back from lunch.

"Do you think there are celebrity websites where they offer 'other services'?", asks Gambo as I come through the door.
"What - like 'David Beckham, International Footballer and Children's Birthdays'?" I ask.
All three of them look at me, confused.
"Not real celebrities," says Gambo after a few seconds have elapsed. He motions towards the computer screen where a guy who looks nothing like Bono, wearing orange sunglasses, is advertised as a Bono lookalike.
"Oh, I see," although I still don't really follow. "What kind of 'other services'."
"You know," says Gambo.
"They do," enjoins Eva earnestly. "You can hire people who look like celebrities to do anything, if you pay enough money for it."
"You're talking about hiring celebrity lookalikes to perform sexual favours?" I venture.
"Just as a fantasy," Gambo offers by way of reassurance.
"Like in LA confidential?" I suggest.
"Never seen it," says Gambo.
"Oh, I won't spoil it then." I sit back down at my desk.

I wonder if my thought processes are as alien to Gambo as his are to me, and am reminded of Ogden Nash's poem, The Hippopotamus:

Behold the hippopotamus!
We laugh at how he looks to us,
And yet in moments dank and grim,
I wonder how we look to him.

Peace, peace, thou hippopotamus!
We really look all right to us,
As you no doubt delight the eye
Of other hippopotami.

******************

And if mine and Gambo's bemusment is, indeed, mutual, and Ogden is right, could I be the hippo? And does it matter if I am? Fortunately, five o'clock is already here, so even if I had answers to these questions, I couldn't share them now.

Irresolute

This morning, I emailed a client, informing him that "questions will be published in the aforementioned manner forthwith", and was rather pleased with the turn of phrase. However, I soon became worried that there could be a comma before the "forthwith" or even that the words would have looked nicer in a different order. After a few intense minutes of ruminating over "forthwith published", I was forced to ask myself whether being quaint was worth this much trouble - could that one happy moment after I clicked on "send" ever justify the perplexity, disappointment and self-questioning which ensued? At least it provided an apt, albeit convoluted, metaphor for my recent attempts at romantic liaisons, and the thought of this lightened my mood again.

Which brings me back to resolutions, only one of which has so far been carried out.

Still, there are worse things than not having sex, not getting enough sleep and having as one's sole consolation a drawer full of clean socks: not everyone has as a consolation a drawer full of clean socks.

Resolve

At the desk behind me, Laurel and Hyde, as we shall call them, delve into the immortal question of who was the greater Joker (Nicholson or Ledger) for the nth time; my mind drifts and (I fear) unravels. The eleven o'clock banana is already a memory and I must wait another 45 minutes for my next moment of respite - lunch. Even by credit crunch standards, business is pretty slow, and yet, here I am, glued to a screen, a perpetual slave to the Goddess Wage. "Can there be misery... loftier than mine? No doubt. Formerly. But now?"

1) I resolve that in 2009 I will have clean socks. This shouldn't be a problem as I put a delayed wash on this morning, timed to finish when I get in this evening. As long as I remember to hang them up when I get in, they will be clean and ready to wear by 2009. On two occasions in 2008, clean socks could not be found in the morning, resulting in a recyling of a pair from the previous day - this may not be repeated in 2009.

2) Have sex: not that I haven't had sex before. In fact, in the first two quarters of 2008, sex was up 250% on 2007, in terms of the number of people I was doing it with, and, by all accounts (or at least by my account), it was pretty enjoyable too. Then, in August, sex dried up (figuratively speaking). I cannot help but wonder whether the large and still unopened box of condoms, aquired after my last conquest, jinxed me; it was a somewhat hubristic purchase, I suppose, albeit it one motivated in part by the cost-effectiveness of buying in bulk. Or maybe it's just that I slept around for a couple of months after my long-term girlfriend broke up with me and since then haven't had the heart to pursue any women. Yes, it's probably that.

3) Get more sleep: in 2008, I estimate that I got 2463 hours and 45 minutes of sleep, or 6 hours and 45 minutes per night, on average. By getting just 3.7% more sleep (ie. raising the average number of sleeping hours to 7), I estimate that I can increase my productivity by 60% throughout the day (based on my experience of days when I've had more sleep). Thus, the waking 91 hours and 15 minutes lost to sleep throughout the year transforms into the equivalent of 1825 hours of being productive, based on the assumption that I am productive for an average of 5 hours every day. In other words those extra 15 minutes are exactly 20 times more valuable for me asleep than they are awake.

Lunchtime already (how time flies when one is busy resloving). Be back soon.

Post-postprandial tangerine post

That is to say, an entry that I am writing after the tangerine I had after my lunch.

A little while ago, the guy at the workstation to my left, whom we shall refer to as Gambo (the guy, not the workstation), turns to me completely out of the blue and says "I should work in air traffic control". Pause. I wait for a punchline. None is forthcoming. I try to do interested / inquisitive / tell me more by raising my eyebrows, although I expect it comes across as "WTF?". "'Cos, you know," he continues, "we have to focus hard not to make mistakes and in air traffic control you have to, well, focus hard not to... You know..."

Gambo is the inventor of three-dimensional noughts and crosses, "biro slalom", and hospital slides (these will one day save lives by enabling doctors to move around hospitals quicker than they could ever hope to by such traditional means as lifts or stairs). God keep him from ever working in air traffic control.

Routine

There has to be a routine. It's the only way to make it through.

Back when I smoked, about three months ago, days were structured around cigarettes and reading the Guardian online. A cig before work, mid-morning, lunchtime, mid-afternoon and after work. The carrot, in this case, is the cancer stick - the lighter at the end of the tunnel. Those five cigarettes divided the day up into manageable little chunks, they provided realistic targets to aim for when the thought of long stretch from 13.30 to 17.00 made me feel sick to the very pit of my stomach.

Now all I have to look forwards to is the 11 o'clock banana (which, incidentally, I have just finished) and the postprandial tangerine. Small comforts.

Even if I save the Culture section of the Guardian Online till after lunch, it will only keep me occupied for three quarters of an hour at most.

Enough to make one take up smoking again, almost, but I'm scared of the slow painful death and the fact that a couple of flights of steps now makes me wheeze. I'm only 23.

More nuggets of joy to follow this pm.