A Free Man In Preston

Born on a Wednesday in a month of afternoons, at the end of a summer that was over too soon.
Oh these are the facts – fold them away, keep them safe in your pocket.
Here is a map - should you lose your way it will guide you home.

Slept with girls! Slept with a boy (twice)! Fell in love.
Made a home out of pure white light.
And there was music everywhere, laughter hanging in the air.
Made some good friends. Never attempted a beard.

You are here, you are here. Stay close to the ones you hold most dear.

I’ve still got marks on my neck from carrying Leanne on my shoulders while she sang 99 Red Balloons. They’re my battle scars and I’ll be sentimental about them if I want to be.

Our housewarming bash went well, I think.
Friends from various incarnations of our lives and four corners of the north traversed psychological and administrative borders in order to drink on our sofa and drop crumbs. Many hadn’t previously met, some we’d not seen for, like, yonks. There seemed to be a pretty decent mingle rate.
Looby and top dadblogger Crinklybee represented the internetosphere with aplomb, working their magik and bringing joy to all, and were last seen stumbling into the darkness at 2.00am with cans of John Smiths in their pockets to see them right for the long walk home.

Girlfriend’s playlist, seven hours of handcrafted perfection, went round more than once, possibly even twice. At some point in the evening most people either danced or enjoyed themselves - we’ll know for certain when the Customer Satisfaction questionnaires start to come back - and it was observed that Charlie is very funny.

Nothing got broken, nobody cried, all the beer got drunk. But on the plus side, we’ve got much more vodka than we started off with, so a Vodka Night surely beckons.
The biggest hit of the evening though, the brightest stars by some margin, were my Chocolate Coated Strawberries. If you want people to think you’re a culinary genius, this is how you do it:

A Free Man In Preston’s Chocolate Coated Strawberries
(Preparation time: all day)

1. Melt lots of plain chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water or beer.
2. Dip loads of strawberries into the chocolate, then place on grease proof paper for the chocolate to harden again.
3. If you can be bothered and there’s enough space, place in fridge for a while.
4. Go and have a bath to wash off excess chocolate. You look ridiculous.
5. Serve. Feel terrifically clever as your guests ignore all the other food and go straight for the chocolate strawberries, making “Oooh!” noises, and “These are lovely. How did you make them? Gosh, aren’t you clever / incredibly attractive / can I sit on your shoulders for a while / etc.”

This and that, miscellaneous.

1. A May wedding. We processioned round a lake and into the woods, then gathered in a clearing by a well. It was a traditional neo-pagan handfasting job, with a neo-pagan priest and everything, a real proper wedding. The sun shone and there were children dressed as faeries and it was very jolly.
I wish I'd been Official Photographer because they didn't have one and it was a missed opportunity. We also thought the ceremony itself could have been improved by being more, well, scary. Yeah yeah, it was a lovely wedding and all that, but as a piece of theatre it could have been so much more. A pagan ceremony in the woods with candles and a circle of salt and not one child traumatised? I think someone needs to try a bit harder.
Instead, everyone had a good time and it was a very happy day. The bride and groom wore green curtain fabric.

2. A picnic by the beach after work. There's a nice spot a few miles up the road where Girlfriend used to go for family days out when she was a kid and I like listening to her talking about all that stuff.
Here's a picture of a simple man enjoying the simple pleasures of being a bit rubbish at rock balancing.

3. Quite a bit of singing: barbershop and I've also found a good open mic night to inflict my unique talents upon. Research has shown that every third person in Lancaster carries a musical instrument about their person. It's not so bad provided we don't all play at the same time. And the other two in three don't try to read you their poetry.

4. Kate and Rich Manchizzle's baby viewing open day. A very enjoyable afternoon and young Molly is quite a honey despite considerable incontinence issues. K&R were in fine spirits and spent the whole time with daft grins on their faces. Babies are the new telly if all that mindless gawping is anything to go by. Kate's frittata was memorable too.

5. Lots of gigs: Eels, Twilight Sad, Elbow, Jens Lekman, Wildbirds and Peacedrums (beat-tastic), Iron and Wine, Fleet Foxes (they're hairy, they harmonise, they're fantastic), Richard Herring, Goldfrapp (looks like someone forgot their trousers again). All excellent and we're barely a quarter of the way through the year.

6. We're having a little housewarming thingy. On Sunday it was so wild and windy we drove back to the beach (see 2) and brainstormed playlists. Girlfriend has got it down to about seven hours worth now. We've decided that we're not allowed to veto each other's choices, but James Taylor? Supertramp? For a party?

“Diversification is essential for survival in today’s rapidly changing marketplace,” Stella, my eighties style yuppie witch of a team leader, told me this morning, apropos of nothing in particular. I’d only gone in for a hole punch.
“Too right,” I agreed. “Just look at the lady at the gate with the dreamy soft white baps.”
“Oh absolutely,” she sighed. “Just look at her.”
“No, I mean look at the way she’s expanded her product range,” I said. “She saw a gap and now she has us all eating out of her hand.”
“Oh, eating out of her hand...”

The lady who sells sandwiches and cakes outside the entrance has added Soups of the World to her portfolio and it’s been an instant hit. So much so that long queues form instantly upon her arrival and she’s usually sold out and cleared off again by midday.
“You’ve to be in there like a shot to have any chance with her Perugian minestrone,” said Stella.
“It’s a rum do,” I said, “when it’s eleven o’clock in the morning and your Moroccan carrot’s been and gone and all you’ve left to look forward to is home time.”

“Kapusniak,” said Ivan the Terribly Thorough, who was running a feather duster along Stella’s slats at the time. Sometimes he just seems to spring up from out of nowhere.
“Bless you,” I said, and offered him one of my antihistamines. “I always keep a few handy in my briefcase, because, well, you never know do you?”

Touch wood, I’ve not needed any so far this year. I hate queueing for anything.

A soft breeze brushes through the rhubarb groves.

Now is the evening of the day and heady perfumes waft prettily in the falling sky, primrose, clematis, chlamydia, while shadows stretch like sleeping dogs across the croquet lawn.
Rex the security guard oils his clippers as Geraldine the Company X goat nibbles daintily at his turn ups.

A perfect evening in early summer.
Away in the distance, Preston hums with the bustle of traffic and trains and drum and bass, but here by the Sunken Heart Rose Gardens all is serenity.
A flickering glow spills beneath the doors of the rifle range, and if you’d just shut the fuck up for a minute you’d hear Bill Surname CEO’s retired army chums and myself rehearsing our competition piece.

“Old St. Louis, you and I, sitting on the levee watching time roll by.
Mammy sings to baby a soft sweet lullaby.”

Soon it will be the Barbershop Off, an annual singing event between a handful of local companies. Last time round we were under-rehearsed and over-stressed, and with hindsight it’s little wonder that Mellor Mops wiped the floor with us.
This year rehearsals have been a lot more relaxed and, hey, we’re sounding pretty tight. The basses strong and forward, leads nimble and well supported, the tenors light as a bird and the baritones almost in tune. Good unit sound.

“Steamboats with cotton and sugar cane, banjos strumming away,” we sing, vaguely gay hand movements kept to a minimum. “Gaslights winking down a sleepy lane will show you a glimpse of yesterday.”

Before the break Sergeant Bispham reads the notices, mostly updates on who is having what operation this week.
“Lance Corporal Samlesbury has been in touch. Doctor says he’s permanently lost all hearing in one ear.”
“Put ‘im in baritones,” comes the reply. “’E’ll be ‘rate.”
“And the young couple who watched us last week – they want to book us for their wedding. December 2009.”
Raucous laughter among the ranks. “Did they not take a look at us? We’ll half of us be dead by then!”

Then it’s back to those lovely, lovely harmonies –
“St. Louis woman, you know I’ll be true. No shiny new city’s gonna take me from you”
- and the western skies drain to inky blue black while joggers stop in their tracks to stare through our window, and I’m so proud to be a part of this, so glad that I stuck it out, as the music floats on the breeze through the rhubarb groves by the Sunken Heart Rose Gardens on this sweet, perfect evening in the summertime in Preston, Lancashire, England, and I’m glad that I did, I’m glad that I did.

When Death enters a room most people at the very least sit up and take notice - “Uh oh, who's he come for this time?” - but we are Systems Administrators and we don't take no shit from no one.
We've got his browser history on tape and keep copies of his more, let's say, scurrilous emails for a rainy day, which is everyday, just in case. It's a perk of the job.

He's been giving her a load of grief lately – something and nothing over a lost bid in the life assurance sector - but Stella, my eighties style yuppie witch of a team leader, brushes him off with a nonchalant “I know who you drink with, and I know what you say about them behind their backs, so don't push me” shrug and he's on his sorry way.
“Pay no mind. He's just jealous,” she told me this morning, which is every morning. “I'm like one of Creepy Keith's flapjacks. You can't keep me down.”

She's been buzzing all day, high on her first appearance in Ignore, the Company X magazine. She's featured in an article about the Oddshore Resourcing webinar she was recently involved with.
Oddshoring is where a company outsources business processes to inappropriate and unsympathetic third parties. Next time you speak to a customer care representative and you're left with the distinct impression that they don't actually care at all – and why should they? You share no common purpose with this person, apart from not wanting to be stuck on the phone with them - then that's oddshoring.

“Look at this, Tim,” she beamed. In a sidebar below her picture was Stella's message to the business community:

FY2008 has been a fantastic year for tactical initiatives and Company X has made unprecedented strides in the field of key strategic unresponsiveness, benefiting stakeholders locally and globally alike looking forward.
Oddshoring is integral to this process and we will aggressively momentumise into FY2009 and beyond looking forward.
Company X is rigorously realigning the way we do business in existing verticals and future horizontals, transforming transformation by bringing real cost savings to customers, increasing satisfaction and upmarginalising all across the industry.
We are young and accelerating and passionate about help desks and will not be hindered in our ambitious growth objectives looking forward and beyond in FY2009.

“Wow,” I said. “That's really something.”
“I'm tickled pink, Tim. I'm finally making some headway. For myself and for this team. I'm doing this for all of us.”
In Stella's book, good PR is the highest state of grace and nothing beats column inches. Recognition of her indubitable talents within the company has been a long time coming.
“So what do you think? Am I on my way or what?” but before I could answer she was on the phone to her friend Becky to pass on the good news - all “OMG!” this and “Crazy bitch!” that – so I headed back to my desk to contemplate Death and modest victories with a small piece of fruit.

Outside my window a hard rain was falling.
Rain and cherry blossom and the greening fields. Rain and Rex the Security Guard, welly deep in cowshit, rounding up the Gloucestershires for milking.

Rain and beside the sopping datacentre a sea of daffodils bobbing like a thousand happy suns, and beyond that, spray on the bypass, the lorries and cars with their vapour trail tails, then further still, beyond the power pylons and car showrooms, the spire of St. Walburga's shrouded in rain, the hopeful of Preston enclouded, this city of workers, the busy bees and the drowsy bees, the boozy bees and cheesy beers and the messy beards and dozy birds, the big mouthed reps and dreaming consultants, the newspaper sellers and kitchen roof playwrights, the know it alls and done it alls, the mid-morning drinkers and occasional thinkers, the queen bees and could have beens.

Rain and the merciless help desk girls with their tight skirts and skimpy blouses.
Rain and those poor helpless help desk boys with their spinning heads and bewildersome desires -
“I've done some shagging in that car park,” says a veteran of the scene.
“Have you? Who? How?”
“Wife weren't pleased when she found out.”
“Wasn't she? Where? When?”
“Ex-wife, I should say.”
- all of nature bursting and budding, jumping like springy lambs, gagging for a warm new world of sunshine.

“Pay no mind to Death. This is a new dawn, Tim,” said Stella when she finally came off the phone, which was today, Wednesday again, and I probably said something like yes, and that I was pleased for her, genuinely, looking forward.

Handbags in the car park this morning as an ejaculate of salesmen argued the toss over the last remaining space.
My money was on a skinny guy with white hair sculpted into a jaunty quiff.
“He looks like Tintin,” said Neil.
“Tintin is ginger, isn't he?” replied Stella, my eighties style yuppie witch of a team leader.
“No,” said Neil. “He's Belgian.”

We were gathered together in Stella's office on the solemn occasion of my annual appraisal, she in the role of appraiser and Neil – who I'm convinced is a befuddled tourist from a distant planet, lost as a suitcase at Terminal 5 – in the guise of impartial referee.
“It's such a cliché to say all managers are incompetent buffoons,” I said. “Present company excepted of course. But it's so true.”

Neil was spraying his head with some kind of dark icky substance.
“There!” he said when he'd finished, paraphrasing from the blurb on the canister. “Now nobody need ever know that I've gone bald!”

I pitched a few examples to back up my argument, instances where I'd fulfilled my duties with typical quiet determination, blah blah, only to see someone else receive all the plaudits.
“Managers are always taken in by heroic gestures,” I said. “This is because they're constantly looking out for eye-catching stories to put in their monthly reports. To them, somebody driving all night to deliver a solution to a customer just ahead of a deadline will always make better copy than the guy who diligently grafted for weeks to produce that solution.”

Stella typed something into her Blackberry then popped it into her bag.
“You'd imagine bosses got where they are because of their ability to make good decisions,” I continued. “But that's not the case, is it? They don't listen and I don't believe they'd be capable of understanding even if they did.”
“Tim, I'm going to stop you there,” said Stella sternly. Her eye contact was unflinching. “Now answer me this.”
“Go on.”
“Does my hair look better up or down?” She gathered it up in one hand, revealing an unusual tattoo on the nape of her neck - “Up?” - then let it fall around her shoulders - “Or down?”

I ummed to fill the silence for a while, then said “I can't believe I never knew Company X has it's own train station. Did you know that?”

A hundred yards beyond the clearing in the beech copse where Bill Surname's retired army chums make base camp, the platform is densely covered in seventeen varieties of Deadly Bramble – and sure, you have to change at Preston, then Southport, then Preston again, so it's hardly on the mainline or anything – but still, a proper station with a ticket office and broken phone boxes and a booth selling coffee and matches.

“Down,” I said, so she tied up her hair with a scrunchy and excused herself before heading off to Mr. Overdone's – house motto: “You'll never know you had it in you” - to meet her friend Becky for lunch.
“Not you,” I said to Neil, my former team leader, who clambered back to his feet, straightened his cravat, then wandered off to stores to try and buy a map of Earth.

7:59 On Time
I double check the contents of my briefcase. Apple. Banana. Little orangey thing. I want to look the part so consider buying The Times en route to the station but there's no time. I put on my bowler hat and lock the front door behind us.
Goodness knows I've had ample opportunity to learn about railway etiquette but nothing really prepares you for your first commute. It's a crisp, cold morning and I'm glad I brought my gloves.
Girlfriend leads the way to the ticket office and stands close by in case I embarrass myself. Her expression says “I'll show you what to do this once, and then you're on your own Mister.”
She has lent me her timetable. I grip it tightly in my hand like it was a winning lottery ticket. This is her thing and it feels like I'm infringing on it.

On the platform a young man is reading a bible. He doesn't look crazy, but then they're the ones you have to watch out for in between looking out for those who actually do look crazy.
The atmosphere is civilised and calm, but when the train arrives I'm separated from Girlfriend in the rush. I suspect she may be glad of this. She was very quick off her marks now I think of it.
I find a seat next to a girl who spends the journey applying and re-applying her makeup. Overcoming the urge to explain how this is a little landmark for me, or tell her that she looked fine the first time round, I earphone up and hug my briefcase close to my chest.

The countryside is a whizzy blur: motorway and hills to the left of us, snow on some of the tops; canal and cows to the right. We're there in next to no time.

Seventh Tree - Goldfrapp

I got a bit carried away with my tidying spree and what wasn't thrown out ended up in boxes in the back of a van, and now we live in Lancaster.

We've moved into a lovely old stone house, bright and solid and satisfyingly sturdy looking, just as well since it faces into the prevalent wind.

The road is narrow and I imagine in years gone by there may have been washing lines draped between houses and their opposite numbers, rag and bone men, grubby urchins kicking cabbages and spreading diphtheria, bunting on special occasions, street parties for the coronation, that sort of thing. I'm looking forward to swatting up on local history.

The garden is pretty much a blank canvas so in due course I'll be setting about it with a rusty spade and some compost, but in the meantime I'm waiting in for the flat pack man to deliver us into book shelves and wardrobes.

I'm still getting used to where everything lives: it's taking a little time to bed down kitchen cupboard-wise, so for example the breakfast cereal may not necessarily be where it was yesterday and discovering where potatoes live is a job in itself. Everything is taking a while to find its own level, jostling for position like it at the start of a Grand Prix. Even the fridge announces its pleasure.

Downstairs there's a wood burning stove which makes a boy feel manly to the power of ten, and upstairs I have a lovely new Attic Studio Complex to fantasise about being creative in.
There are whole new vistas to feast my eyes upon. To my right I see rooftops and chimney pots and trees and tidy streets and houses on hills, behind me is a huge derelict looking warehouse and beyond that the river and – most excitingly of all – I have only the sketchiest idea of where I am.
I know that if I'm quiet at any moment I may hear a train go by, and on match days I can hear football fans singing. If I'm feeling daring I might leave the house without a map. To a twerp like myself it's all wonderfully romantic and I'm hoping it stays that way.

Today is Girl On A Train's first day on her new route to work, which I'm hoping to read about when she gets in. I've already got the tea ready, albeit without all the required ingredients on account of not being able to find them, and I'm more or less on top of things, which is such a nice feeling.
Right now I'm off to audit pants and socks, reorganise my trousers and count my blessings, assuming I can discover which box they're in.

My Mum is a compulsive hoarder.

If she has a new carpet, or fridge, or any other household item you could care to mention, the old one always ends up in the attic. Her house is top heavy with packaging from kettles ancient and modern, long forgotten sofas, broken radio cassette players she hopes might one day resurrect themselves and spring back into active service.
She thinks she's being wise - “I've thrown away so many things only to regret it later” – but all I see is slavery.
She's allowed herself to become not the owner of all this stuff, but owned by it.

There are one or two gems amid the junk though.
My favourite is a box of Christmas tree lights that my Dad would patiently nurse back to life every December. I can see him now – tumbler of Glenfiddich in one hand, voltmeter in the other – chuckling as he read the instruction he'd written years before inside the lid. It's a time capsule to himself.

USE 40WATT/250V MAINS BULB IN LAMP HOLDER TO MAKE TOTAL VOLTS MATCH UP! DON'T ARGUE! JUST DO IT! (IT WORKS!!)
OTHERWISE LITTLE BULBS BLOW!

He would have been one hundred this year.

I'm worried that I've inherited the hoarding gene.
I spent the weekend attempting to practise what I preach, clearing out cupboards of objects I no longer have a use for.
Every now and then Girlfriend would poke her head round the door and tell me how brave I was, what good progress I was making, but the truth is that I was operating at a snail's pace.

Among the things I threw out: an almost full box of Ilford black and white photographic paper, 10 x 8, 100 sheets; ditto Kodak colour paper; a load of perfectly good darkroom equipment – enlarger, safelight, thermometer, measuring jug, tongues and so on; wedding album accessories from a previous career that never took off.
They'd sat ignored in cupboards for several light years and the digital toys that usurped them are a million times better, but it still felt shocking to chuck it all away.
Even worse, what are you supposed to do with old pre-digital cameras? Surely they're not destined for the bin bag too?

What next? Two hundredweight of Q magazines. Unread in years and less lovable than I remembered. I've decided to mark them, then leave them lying around in train station waiting rooms, just to see if any fly back home again. It's not like there's a global shortage of reading matter.

Speaking of which, how about my wince inducingly bad teenage diaries? Excruciating to glance through now, I can't believe the passing of time will do them any favours. And yet, and yet...
Could I bin them? Should I? Does their continued existence add to the sum of human happiness? They don't add to mine. Would I miss them? Nope.

It's madness to allow yourself to be governed by the tyranny of stuff, so it's a no brainer, but on the other hand I don't want to be rash.
Surely teenage diaries - no matter how irritating - are more than just stuff, in the same way that my Dad's Christmas lights memo is more than just stuff. It's just a scrap of cardboard but it's more precious than gold.

I already know where this is going. I'll take my Mum's lead. Stick the bloody diaries in a box in an attic and one day it can be someone else's business. Job done.
The curse of the hoarding gene will outlive the lot of us.

Stella, my eighties style yuppie witch of a team leader, told us to fold our index and middle fingers toward the palms of our left hands.
“Then place your right thumb under your left nostril to block it up,” she said.
“Do we fucking have to?” asked Mike. “I've got stuff to be getting on with.”
“Inhale with your right nostril and count to four,” she said. “Then gently pinch your right nostril with your left index finger and count to sixteen.”
“Bollocks.”

We think Mike has given up wanking for lent. He's been skipping his usual 10:30 and 3:30 rest breaks for a month now and the tension is getting to all of us.
If it's true, I suggest everybody carries an umbrella on Easter Sunday - when it blows, that thing's going to go off big style. In the meantime his belligerence-o-meter is ratcheting unprecedented highs, so Stella is trying to keep us calm with desk yoga.
“Release your thumb and exhale through your left nostril. Gently does it, guys.”

Mike spent “all fucking weekend” on server moves for Fat Bastards' Pizza Shack, who are moving to new offices in Bamber Bridge. The work consisted of piling loads of IT equipment into a van, tying it down to stop it rolling about, dropping it off at the new place, returning to the old premises, then repeating over and over. Load it up, tie it down, drive, bring it off again, and so on, and so on, “ad fucking nauseum.”
Today he just wanted to chill but Stella made him do yoga instead.

“Now inhale through your left and count to ten,” said Stella. “Hold it, then breathe out through your right.”
“Sorry please,” asked Ivan the Terribly Thorough. “Again. Where should I be breathing?”
Ivan often sits in during our team meetings. This morning, I'd asked if he'd mind leaving his bucket of bleach outside the office as it was making me sneeze. He obviously didn't hear me because the bucket stayed put by the door until Creepy Keith from Accounts charged into the room and knocked it flying.

“I've had the worst weekend in the history of weekends,” Keith complained. Mike looked like he could swing for him.
“BFH,” said Stella. Everybody sneezed.
“Shut the fuck up, Keith," said Mike. "We're trying to do yoga here.” I handed out kitchen towels.
Stella, determined to see her lesson through to the end, gritted her teeth to centre herself, then explained how this exercise balances the brain’s serotonin, the chemical that regulates happiness.
Keith grumbled that he'd been on a disastrous date on Saturday and hadn't experienced happiness in donkey's years.
“I bet it wasn't much fun for the donkey either,” said Ivan. “I'm with Stella on this. Boo fucking hoo.”

At this point Keith pushed Ivan, who landed in Mike's lap, sending toast in many directions at once.
“Air is pushed to the bottom of the lungs,” shouted Stella, “releasing harmful toxins when you breathe out.”
Mike caught Keith with a left hook, splitting his bottom lip.
Keith yelped as blood spurted down his shirt, and was about to strike back when he slipped in the pool of bleach and hit the ground with a heavy thud. He sat there for a few moments, incandescent with rage while everybody either smirked or sneezed or both, before storming out of the room, hollering about his delicate skin and expensive suit, and how somebody was going to pay for this.
“Man up, why don't you?” Ivan called after him, and Stella said, “You will feel relaxed after this exercise, particularly in the shoulder area.”
All over the floor soggy pieces of bleached toast lay scattered, some splattered with blood. Mugs lay resting where they had fallen.
“You may even experience a heightened feeling of perception,” said Stella who, perceiving there to be no further business, called the meeting to a close.

This evening, after the going home bell had rung and everyone had scarpered, I discussed recent events with Stella while she prepared her next session.
“Mike got all that kit to Fat Bastards' new gaff then,” I said.
“If you feel people’s negativity clinging to you, simply wipe it away,” she replied.
“Seems odd to think about him actually doing some work for a change.”
“Use energetic sweeping motions with your hands as if dusting yourself down.”
She swung her arms in wide, wild circles.
“As you wipe, tell yourself: ‘I am removing all traces of...'” and her arms sped up, as if she was a helicopter about to take off.

This went on for two or three minutes. It was like she'd fallen into some eighties style yuppie witch doctor trance.
Oh crap, what if she's having a seizure?
I was about to call for help when she eventually slumped into her chair and was suddenly super calm, beatific.

“He made a bloody big fuss about it though, didn't he?” I said. “I mean, it was only a few trips in a van.”
“Too right, Tim,” she agreed, her voice softened now, completely relaxed. “My friend Becky is always asking me to tie her up and bring her off ,” she sighed, “and you never hear me complaining.”
“Didn't Ivan do a great job tidying up in here?” I said. “Just smell it! Mmm, now that's alpine fresh.”

Outside my window the car park was almost empty.
Rex the Security Guard was on his rounds, tending to some storm battered daffodils. Geraldine the Company X goat followed close behind, chewing on his extension lead.
I checked that Stella was going to be okay – Blackberry? Check. Bottle of Evian? Check – then made my excuses and headed for home.

I've been blogslapped by diminutive wannabe French chick Petite Anglaise.
I've always considered the solipsistic business of memes and blahblahs to reek of bullying - “You will join in the fun, motherfucker” - and now I'm experiencing it at first hand.
She's since written to apologise and say I don't have to if I don't want to. Yeah right, I know a threat when I see one. Reading between the lines, the message is loud and clear: until I get this post out of the way, I am her bitch.

So, with cheerful voice - I've been tasked with finding the nearest book and typing out sentences six, seven and eight from page 123.

This is what we have been reduced to. Hugh blows the yucca pollen off his blackened shrimp while I push back the sleeves of my borrowed sport coat and search the meat tower for my promised potatoes.
“There they are, right there.”

It's from Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, which I like a lot. It's one of those books where someone always mentions in the reviews “I laughed so much they made me get off the bus,” or something. I recommend it highly.

Now the bit where I attempt blogslapping three others:
Philosophical brainbox Geoff at 40three.
Wildean wit and occasional grump of this parish, Backroads
New favourite blogger, lovely Georgina at Wondering Heights.

Ip, dip, you're it. But obviously, you don't have to if you don't want to.

Charlotte, Bill Surname CEO's loyal PA, scoots round the building in the throes of a mid-week crisis.
“Oh my goodness, oh my kittens and bedsocks! Wednesday already and what have I done with my life?”
She buzzes like a dying wasp on your windowsill, frantic, desperate. You don't know whether to ignore her or do the decent thing, so you go fetch yourself a coffee style drink and sort of cake thing, hoping she'll have fizzled out by the time you get back.

Poor Charlotte - it's a difficult time for her, what with the FTSE dropping out of the sky and runs on the banks, panic on the streets of Carlisle, Dublin, Dundee, Humberside, the air thick with the possibility of negative equity and now this: this royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, this biscuit nation awash with ruffians, immigrants and ne'er do wells. Fear stalks the land and we're sinking into the marshes.

In the day she flaps like a parrot on whizz, a squawking blur of stress in a pashmina shawl, clicking manically at a stopwatch, customers fleeing as if from an exploding volcano. She beats them back into the building with her clipboard, the consequences of doing nothing too drastic to contemplate.
Sea levels rising, icecaps melting, to procrastinate is to die.
The woman is a picture of abandonment anxiety, and she's out of control.

At night she self-medicates with Brasso, polishing Bill Surname's money long into the wee small hours.
A labour of love, a life measured out in farthings and guineas, the pounds, shillings and pence of unrequited longing.
Charlotte, we do whatever we must to keep ourselves sane but those sacks of coins sound like prisoners' chains. You've turned into a living ghost.

It wasn't always so.
Once she was wild and carefree and love flowed freely and the living was good, or maybe that was just something on the telly she fell asleep in front of.
She gets so confused these days. I was beautiful and I had choices. A woman with a good figure and a winning smile will always have options.
I'll wash the dishes tomorrow sometime; I'll just finish off this wine. Her eyes roll back into her head and she's gone again.
The dead light of the TV screen scatters like crumbs across her living room carpet.

The lights are all out at Valium Heights. Only the dying embers of the fire keep darkness at bay.
Crumpled Telegraph at his feet, glass of port by his side, Bill Surname's leather armchair squeaks and farts as he dozes restlessly in the library.
“Should have sold in 2000. Bloody fool.”
He dreams of sausages and secret passages behind oak panelled walls, of hidden treasure and missing homework and caned backsides.
“Won't get another offer like that now. Greedy bugger.”

Once there was a girl. What was her name? Christine? Collette? A womanly woman, would have moved Heaven and Earth for you, Old Boy. But you turned her down. Thought you could take your pick.

Rain lashes at the window and something spooks the horses. Away in her enclosure, Geraldine the Company X goat bleats cheerlessly.
“You'll be working 'til you drop, Billy Boy. You've been a bloody fool all your life.”

Beyond that, the datacentre: tape silos clunk and whirl, robots spring to life, backups run, contracts are fulfilled, money is made. Somebody somewhere in the world is waking up, logging on, running a report. A little less memory for the rest of us.

Bill Surname mumbles darkly, shifts in his chair. The last of the ashes burns out.
“Didn't know whether to ignore her or do the decent thing,” he murmurs. “Silly sod. Won't get another offer like that now.”

The postman delivers my Penguin!!!

Last year I signed a contract with quite famous book publisher Penguin. The arrangement was that in return for letting them use one of my witty comments in one of their books, I would receive a free copy.
The book is Petite Anglaise (Hard Cover) by one Catherine Sanderson.
I'm up to chapter three already and haven't spotted any spelling mistakes yet, which I think is excellent, especially for a first edition. I always knew the girl could write.
Unfortunately the book has a daft girly jacket, which will make it difficult for me to read during my lunch hour without arousing suspicion among colleagues that I read girl's books.
If only they'd consulted me this embarrassing oversight could have been avoided. I'm going to swap it for a book jacket with a picture of a car being blown up, or maybe of a man checking his levels in a manly fashion, perhaps while smoking a pipe.
Despite this obvious flaw I hope it sells truckloads and wish her nothing but well in her exciting new career, etc.

On Sunday me and Girlfriend walked up a hill.
Parlick is good for those out of practice, because of the favourable effort to reward ratio: it's steep but you're at the top in less than half an hour, and the views are something else. It's fell walking for the impatient. On a clear day you can see where you've come from.
On the way up we were overtaken by a chap with a large pack on his back. I chatted to him briefly about thermals but could tell I was holding him back. Here he is flying back down again.
It was so beautiful and peaceful up there; I'd almost forgotten what it's like.

Driving home from work last night the sunset over Granny's Bay was possibly the most spectacular I've ever seen.
Of course I didn't have a camera with me.
It inspired me to return there tonight and I spent a good while trying to capture the car lights swooshing round the corner, the point where the little bay suddenly opens up and reveals itself to you. This is my favourite spot around here and I'm quite pleased with this snap.