A Free Man In Preston

Charlotte, Bill Surname's loyal PA, stands stock still in the doorway, her helpless face frozen with the anguish of horrors past and humiliations yet to come, like a beginner sado-masochist who's only gone and forgotten the safety word.

Summer’s here and the grass is high. So are the nettles and foxgloves and the oxeye daisies with their smiley upturned faces – the car park embankment is brim full of them, bending in the breeze as one, like a shoal of fish at a rave - and so too are the help desk staff who are off their faces on Red Bull and Youth, horny as hell, hyper with carnal urges, stupid with the breeding imperative, with love or its closest equivalent.

Preston skies are sullen and low, listless as goths, going nowhere, doing nothing.
The theme of this morning’s team meeting with Stella, my eighties style yuppie witch of a team leader, was of reaching for the stars, following your dreams, never taking no for an answer – “Tenacity, Tim! Tenacity!” - but by lunchtime she was slumped in her chair, maudlin, messy, furtively slipping a little something in her coffee to take the edge off. A half bottle every couple of days, not that I’m counting; brandy usually, sometimes vodka. She keeps one in her shoulder bag and an emergency bottle in her desk drawer, hidden beneath the paper cups and baby magazines. I wasn’t snooping. She asked me to look one time when she couldn’t find her phone. It turned out she was talking to me on it.

I go up to the roof for some air, to look for my mojo, to just get away from it for a bit.

“Ever killed a man, Tom?” asks Bill Surname, CEO.
“Not so far as I know.”
“Ever wanted to?” and before I can say “It’s Tim. It’s not important,” he has thrust his rifle into my hands and is going through the naming of the parts. Lee Enfield No. 1, Mark III, ten round magazine, bolt action, sliding ramp rear sights, fixed post front.
“See that Vauxhall? Racing green. See it, Tom? I’ll give you fifty quid if you can take out its headlights. A tenner for the windscreen.”
“Isn’t that Robertson’s car?”
“He’s on his final warning. Best salesman in the North West my arse. He’s inside the building so it’s quite safe. Now remember - safety catch, then gently squeeze the trigger. Don’t lunge at it. Gently does it, Tom.”
I look around the car park. There are several shot up company cars. Vehicular carnage everywhere.
“Wasn’t there an ambulance here earlier?” I ask.
“That was Jones and Jones. Shouldn’t have been at it during office hours. Entirely unforeseeable and I told Charlotte not to blame herself. Bloody good shot, Charlotte. Wish I’d known that years ago.”
“And they’re ok?”
“They’ll be tweezing glass out of their backsides from now until Easter.” He laughs. “Never did me any harm. Shouldn’t have bloody been there in core hours.”
I take aim, pull the trigger as carefully as I can, gently, gently and hit the car four down from Robertson’s. There’s a tinkle of windscreen, followed by the dull clang of personalised number plate on tarmac. Bill Surname is delighted, reaches down to where I’ve fallen over and hands me a twenty pound note.
“Did I hit it?” I yell, deafened.
“You tried!” he yells back. He takes the rifle, adjusts the sights and gives the doomed Vectra both barrels, so to speak.

“Hey Tabs, look at this one,” says Stella. “It’s got sports wheels, an iPod charger, 3G and GPS so you always know how far to the next changing station.”
“And twin G&T holders,” replies Tabs. “They’ve thought of everything.”
“G&T?”
“Duh? Gin and tonic?”
“Oh. Yeah. Right,” says Stella. “God, it’s amazing isn’t it, Tabs?”
“Sure is. Eight hundred quid of amazing.”
“No, I mean, you know – the ‘having a baby’ thing. I can’t believe it. I’m so happy.”
“Yeah,” Tabs sighs. “I know you are.”
Outside my window Rex the Security Guard is forking over a clump of ragwort. Geraldine, the Company X goat, nibbles contentedly on his gooseberries, which they say are almost ready now. Somewhere a radio crackles and Murray is worrying Centre Court. The clock tick tock ticks. A distant water cooler glugs.

“You’re going to be a great mum, you know?”
“Ha! I’ll get back to you on that.”
“No, but you are. Seriously you are.”
“Aww, thanks mate. We’ll see.”
“And what about Terry? Is he excited?”
“Yeah, course he is,” says Tabs. “He doesn’t show it here much, but at home, you know... Yeah, he’s been a complete star. He’s well excited.”
The going home bell rings and the building shakes with the low rumble of young executives pissing off.
“I’m completely made up for you Tabs, God’s honest truth, yeah? But I’m so frightened. I want to reach out and help her and I don’t know how.”
“Hey, baby girl. You’ve been a star too. Becky couldn’t wish for a better friend.”
“I feel useless, Tabs. She wanted it so badly. She was so happy.”
“It sucks, Stella. It totally sucks. But you’ll get through this. And when you’re both ready, well, you know, there’s nothing to stop you trying again. Me and Terry were starting to think it’d never happen and now look at us, shopping for buggies and painting the spare room. Look at me, Stella love, look at me. You’ll both get through this. You will. Listen to me. You will both get through this.”

We had a lovely, long Autumn, the yellows and oranges and reds magnificent, as if taken from a paint manufacturer's colour chart, and the leaves seemed to cling to their branches like they would never let go, but when Winter came it did so rudely and abruptly, like someone dropping a sack of logs on your foot and feeling no need to apologise or explain.
Only Rex the Security Guard was unsurprised to see snow in November. He'd smelled it in the air the week before, brought in the last of the spuds and the purple sprouting brocolli, oiled his tools and was sitting pretty on a fresh delivery of grit before anyone else had an inkling.

Charlotte, Bill Surname CEO's loyal PA, is back now from her extended sojourn in the Company X Decompression Home.
The trouble started when she was up some ladders draping England flags on the datacentre walls at the start of the World Cup and Neil, my former team leader, passed by rehearsing for his audition with the Company X Vuvuzela Orchestra.
The orchestra never really took off, which can't be said for poor Charlotte, who thought she was being visited upon by a swarm of angry bees and tried to make good her escape by jumping off the ladders and crashing into the rhodedendrons, only narrowly missing, unlike England.
Doc. Stethoscope, the Company X general practioner, ordered her to take two months off for her arms to reset and a further six years to settle down from her anxiety, which he said was lethally high, the kind of stress levels you only normally see in fighter pilots and public sector workers. Charlotte managed to negotiate that down to six months and the ripple of applause that went round the office on Monday when she screamed incoherently into the crackly bing bong public address system for the first time since June was truly heart warming.
We'd been scraping along on email without her.

Stella, my eighties style yuppie witch of a team leader, is having a bad build up to Christmas.
“Oh my God, Tabs. This job at Debenhams has got my friend Becky really broody,” she confided this afternoon over sort of lattes and cake type things from the wonky vending machine.
“It's only until Christmas, isn't it?” replied Tabs sympathetically.
“YES!” Stella snapped back. “WORKING AS AN ELF IN SANTA'S GROTTO IS USUALLY ONLY UP UNTIL FUCKING CHRISTMAS!”
“Right,” said Tabs. “Of course it is. Sorry, I wasn't really thinking.”
“She's surrounded by bloody kids every day and IT'S SET SOMETHING OFF. I don't know what to do, Tabs.”
The office fell silent, but for occasional slurping. The clock tick tock ticked. Terry and Mike were both out on jobs. Outside my window, Rex and Charlotte were setting up the Company X Christmas Crib in the carpark.

“Do you know what she said the other day, Tabs? She said if she'd known she was going to be out of work all this time she could have used it to have a baby.”
“I see. And she's never... You've never talked about...”
“She's never said anything about babies. Now it's babies all the time. Babies babies babies. She comes in late from the grotto every night after a hard day's elfing and all she wants to do is tell me about the babies they've had in that day.”
“But that's just work talk. She used to talk about, I don't know, savings accounts or whatever when she came in, didn't she? Now she talks about that day's kids. It doesn't mean...”
“It's killing me, Tabs. What if she decides... What if she doesn't want to be my, you know, friend any more? What if she wants to go off and have bloody babies and there's nothing I can do to stop her?”
Stella burst into tears, huge gulping sobs, and I could just see Tabs put a comforting arm around her and shushing her gently.
“There, there. Sshh Stella, it'll be alright. Sshh now, or you'll upset Tim.”
“What am I going to do if it's not alright, Tabs? WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?”

Mary and Joseph and a bunch of shepherds and kings and donkeys took their places in the manger, the happy couple stage left, the wise guys to the right, and there in the centre of all things, the object of their attention, the reason for their being there, the tiny Christ child lay, the little baby Jesus, sucking his thumb sagely, thinking his profound and Godly thoughts, backlit with a 100 watt bulb, covered in straw and saw dust and a crisp packet the wind had left.
Away in the distance, lines of cars shuffled slowly along the bypass like a holy procession.
Preston shimmered in a blessed neon glow, while high up in the dead black sky a single star, brighter than all the car headlights combined, brighter than all the dazzling lights of Tesco Express and Poundstretcher and Greggs and HMV and Wilkinsons and Debenhams, blazed it's brilliant, lonesome trajectory across the heavens at a million trillion miles per second, always going nowhere and always coming back.

Fans of the whole Idiot Johnson phenomenon (ie. me singing with a guitar or piano but never both at the same time) may be mildly interested to know that I have a gig coming up.
A gig!

It will be on Saturday October 16th at the Yorkshire House, Lancaster.
It's a cracking venue – previous superstars to have graced it's stage include Rachel Unthank And The Winterset and that bloke out of I Am Kloot – so you'll appreciate I'm quite excited by this.
Other acts on that evening will be Ottersgear, The Low Countries and someone I don't know called Sam who plays the banjo. The running order has yet to be confirmed. I expect I'll be playing for 30 minutes or so, maybe 32.
Admission price will be £3, I think, and the fun will probably start at 8.30-ish or thereabouts.

It'll be pay on the door and the place holds about 100 people. Whether that many show up is very doubtful but at the same time if you are thinking of coming along – and I'd genuinely love it if you would– you might want to bear that in mind.
If you're in the vicinity and can make it along, do come and say hello. Yorkshire House gigs are always good entertainment and I'll be glad of all the support you can muster. There's a car park just across the road too.


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A steady morning, not too much work and not too little. The minutes tick tock ticked away, quiet and contentedly as a timebomb.

Stella, my eighties style yuppie witch of a team leader, was in her office remodelling her eyebrows with the help of some app she's got on her iPhone, and Tabs was taking a break from carrying armfuls of photocopying up and down the corridor when we heard the bad tempered hobble of Creepy Keith from Accounts approaching.
"Watch out Tabs, here comes Casanova," said Stella. "He'll have your knickers off faster than you can say Marks and Sparks."
Keith grunted into the office.

"Hi Keith," said Stella. "Take a seat."
"Very funny. I've got your panini."
"How did you get on at the doctors?"
"She said if it hasn't come back out by Friday they'll have to operate."
"So if somebody rang you now, Keith," asked Tabs, nibbling thoughtfully at a sort of cake thing from the vending machine called Blueberry Supposedly, "would we actually hear it?"
"No," interupted Stella. "He put it on vibrate. That was the point."
"You can probably get an app for that," said Tabs.
"I told her to keep the change," said Keith, slamming the panini onto Stella's desk and hobbling out again in a painful direction.
"What's got into him?" wondered Tabs. Nobody felt the need or desire to answer.

The lady at the gate with the dreamy soft white baps has branched out into paninis.
Stella, who froths into a lather at the very idea of anything entrepreneurial, is wildly enthusiastic.
"That woman is doing more to advance the metropolitanisation of Preston than..." she said, wiping rocket and molten Garstang Blue from her chin, "...well, everyone else put together. Ouch, that's hot! She'll be selling cocktails next. It'll be just like Mad Men and I CANNOT WAIT."

Everybody here has gone panini crazy. It's the new sudoku, but delicious and tasty.
Everybody except Mike that is, who has taken to bringing in his own fishfinger sandwiches in an act of defiant contrariness.
"It's just a nose cut off spiteface thing," Stella tells him, but he mumbles and stares at his screen like he can't hear her, which in fairness he can't as he's always listening to happy hardcore at full volume on his headphones.

Later on, after the going home bell had rung and the carpark had all but drained empty, and she was waiting for her lift and me for my train, Stella said, "Actually Tim, I'll let you into a secret: my friend Becky makes the world's best fishfinger sandwiches. They're amazing."
"Oh," I said.
"Promise you won't tell Mike?" she asked.
"My lips are watertight."
She folded away her laptop and stared dreamily towards the datacentre where Rex the Security Guard was urinating on his hostas.
"No word of a lie, Tim," she sighed, "there's no better feeling in the world than when I've got my friend Becky's fingers slipping around inside me."
"Any luck with the jobhunting?" I asked, but when I looked up she was already halfway across the car park, skipping towards the gate where her good and true friend Becky was waiting in neutral to transport her away from all this.
I packed my banana back into it's special compartment and headed off for the station.
_______________________________________________

People who enjoyed this blogpost may also enjoy - ahem, pauses for breath - my CD, available now on iTunes and from Idiot Johnson Direct. Thank you.

It's finally here!
Only thirty odd years in the making but my first ever CD – or should I say “debut release?” - is finally up for sale. And I can honestly say I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out.

There were 500 of the blighters piled up in my Attic Studio Complex at one point. I've got it down to 471 now, following some purchases by friends and lovely people on Twitter. I've also given a few away as freebies.

I've always enjoyed the idea of music as a cottage industry and it's exciting to think I've now got one of my own. But it's also a bit troubling. At what point does “ridiculous and expensive vanity project” become a “bold putting-your-money-where-your-mouth-is statement of artistic intent”?
On the one hand I'm not too worried, because it sounds pretty much how I wanted it to and the feedback so far has been generally more than favourable.
But all the same... in the wee small hours, the sound of 471 unsold CDs taunting and whispering “You bloody fool! You should have kept hold of your money! Or spent it on cheese or something worthwhile” isn't something I'd wish on anyone.

Here's the embarrassing sales pitch bit: I need to shift 200 to break even. Then and only then might I allow myself to make another one, which I'd love to. I've some way to go. So in the spirit of artistic patronage, I'm not so much inviting you to purchase or download one of my CDs, but begging you. Even if you've no interest in music at all, it would be the compassionate thing to do. Please have mercy on me, for I am singer/songwriting buffoon who doesn't deserve your pity or money but is asking for it anyway, especially your money. Your soul will rest more easily tonight, etc.

There are five songs – Girl On A Train; She Is Gone; Oh Come On Beautiful; Happiness; and A Free Man In Preston (hmm, that name sounds familiar) - and they're available as downloads across all the “iTunes territories”.
As an aside, Stella, my eighties style yuppie witch of a team leader squeals with delight whenever I say “all the iTunes territories.” Just saying.
They cost 79p in the UK, 99 cents in the US, likewise in Canada, 99 cents in the Eurozone, $1.79 in New Zealand and so on.
Check your local iTunes store for further prices. You'll need to search for “Idiot Johnson”.
Here's what it looks like at the UK store.

Alternatively – and how exciting is this? - you can buy the physical CD for £4 plus postage and packing (rather attractively packaged in a jewel case with some nice photos taken by yours truly) and get a free download while you're waiting for it to be delivered, straight from Idiot Johnson Direct.
The additional benefits of taking the Idiot Johnson Direct route are
1) that you'll get a handwritten letter of pathetically grovelling gratitude from me personally, and I will be your bitch for all eternity
2) you'll be helping to reduce the mountain of CDs in my room
3) I get to keep more of the money myself, rather than Apple taking a generous slice of your cash. Which would be appreciated.
Click here to purchase a CD directly from me. Thank you.

As if your appetite couldn't be any more whetted, here are a couple of videos that the outrageously talented Lucy Pepper has made.
Sorry for the more than slightly spammy nature of this post, but I trust you'll understand that knees must, etc. Just think of 471 CDs whispering unkind remarks in my ear while I'm trying to sleep. Thank you in anticipation of your amazing generosity. And tell your friends. It means all the world to me, so cheers.

The Friday morning meeting – basically a post-mortem for that week’s dead Service Level Agreements – was drawing to a close and everybody’s mind was turning to the lady at the gate with the dreamy soft white baps whose Tandoori Parsnips have become quite the talking point recently, when Stella, my eighties style yuppie witch of a leader said, “So before we finish, Tim has got a very exciting announcement to make.”

“Have I?” I asked.
“Yes. Remember what you told me last night? About your thing?”
“Oh Jesus.”

Everybody stopped tidying their papers and stared at me. An entire career of trying to be invisible felled with one swift blow. Even Ivan the Terribly Thorough, who is normally in and out faster than you can say “Oh look, my bin’s been emptied,” stopped in his tracks and leaned inquisitively against the doorframe.

“Tim’s got a CD coming out and is going to be on Britain’s Got Talent,” Stella beamed. “Isn’t that brilliant?”
There was a minor commotion, a low level drawing of breath. Somebody rubbed their eyes like you would if you were in a cartoon and you’d just seen a pig in a bikini flying around handing out fifty pound notes.
“Tim is going to be the Preston Susan Boyle!” Stella babbled. “I can’t wait!”

“That’s only half right,” I said. “Yes, there’s going to be a CD. But I’m not going on the telly. It’s not really a Britain’s Got Talent kind of thing.”
“How do you know that?” said Stella. “You said you’ve never even watched it. Why do you always have to put yourself down?”
“I just don’t think, well…”
“You don’t think anybody’s going to actually like your CD,” said Mike.
“Exactly,” I said. “Thank you Mike. It’s going to be available on iTunes and Amazon and stuff, and I sort of think it’s fairly, you know, almost quite good, but I don’t think Simon Wots-his-name will come beating a path to my door.”
“Cowell,” said Tabs, her arms loaded with photocopying.
“There’s no need to be rude,” said Stella.

Later on, after the going home bell had rung and everyone had cleared off, Stella asked when this CD of mine was coming out.
“Not for a few weeks yet,” I said. “It’s at the manufacturers now. Then it needs distributing and all that stuff.”
“Sounds like you need a manager. My friend Becky could do it if she’s not found a new job by then.”
“No luck yet then?” I said.
“Not yet. She’ll be fine though. I know she will. People will always need bankers.”
“Good.”

Outside my window, Rex the Security Guard was putting his tomatoes away after having them out all day for hardening off. I made a mental note to do the same. Geraldine the Company X goat nibbled devotedly on his turn ups. A couple of help desk staff slinked sleepily out of the potting shed in a post-coital haze to make way for his grow bags. Away in the distance, the hopeful city of Preston shimmered in the Spring sunshine. All looked golden, all looked good.

“You will let me know when I can buy one of these CDs, won’t you Tim?” said Stella. “Because I know what you’re like. You’ll keep it to yourself and the moment will pass. I want to help you.”
“Thank you,” I said. “That’s very sweet. Letting you know when and how you can buy my CD is the least I can do for you after all this time,” but when I looked up she was already up and out of the building, halfway across the car park in fact, skipping joyfully like a child, to the gate where her good and true friend Becky was waiting with her engine running and her top off.

I put away my Hob Nobs and made my way to the station.

A White Christmas, then an even whiter January – the whole country become a skating rink, everybody waddling like penguins and realising “Oh, so that’s why they walk like that” – and now Valentine’s Day has been and gone and there’s still no sign of a let up. Daffodils? Not-bloody-likely-dils.

“Did you get a Valentine’s card from Advantage?” crows Stella, my eighties style yuppie witch of a team leader.
“Nope,” replies Creepy Keith from Accounts.
“Aww, that’s a shame, Keith. She stole your heart, then she stole your telly and most of your furniture.”
“She didn’t steal them. She asked if she could have them and I said yes.”
“Same difference.”
“Her need was greater than mine,” says Keith.
“There’s a lot you don’t understand about women’s needs, Keith.”

Outside my window, Rex the Security Guard is sawing fallen branches from the beech copse then wheel barrowing them to the wood shed. A cheeky little robin perches on his chainsaw. Geraldine the Company X goat gambols playfully behind him, her dainty footprints in the snow resembling one of those illustrations you’d use for learning to dance, the Tango or maybe the Cha-cha-cha, if you were a quadruped.

The crackly bing bong public address system fizzles and pops into life and all work stops while Charlotte, Bill Surname’s loyal PA, lectures us on the energy crisis, on the importance of closing windows, of opening doors only when strictly necessary. Persons wishing to exit the building should only do so in groups of three or more, likewise re-entry, and especially at the rear.
Poor Charlotte – it’s a difficult time for her, what with the never ending recession and the death of all hope, and now this: Bill Surname CEO, the only man she has ever loved - if only he knew it! – says he wants to see a 10% reduction in heating bills or she’ll be in hot water.
“It’s the lobster pot for you Charlotte, splish splosh,” and clinging to his every utterance as if they were lifebelts and her life was a frozen lake that she’d just fallen through, frantic, gasping for breath, she believes him, poor stick.

Later on, after the going home bell has rung and everybody else has scarpered, Stella asks if we ever did come to a decision over the central heating question.
Keith had said he has his central heating on all day, even when he’s out. He said it’s more efficient to maintain a constant temperature than repeat an intensive cycle of heating and cooling, heating and cooling.
Everyone disagreed. No, no, no, the heating goes off before bedtime and only comes on in the day at weekends. That’s bollocks, Keith.
Debate raged for, oh, a good twenty minutes, until Keith played the “That’s What Hitler Would Say” card, as he always does, bringing the discussion to an abrupt end.

“Wouldn’t it be weird though, Tim? If Keith was right about something?” asks Stella, as she puts away her laptop and gathers her stuff.
“About having your heating on all the time?” I reply. “I don’t know. It seems unlikely.”
“He’s talking rubbish. When I stay at my friend Becky’s we have it off all night, and we’re always toasty.”
As if on cue, Stella’s phone bleeps and she puts on her coat and scarf. “That’ll be her now.”
“Probability would say he can’t go on being wrong forever,” I suggest, but by now she’s outside, figure skating across the car park in the dusk, lighter than air, joyful as a child, to where her true and good friend Becky is waiting in the car, engine ticking over, idling.

There’s a new moon in the sky and it looks like a smile.

“Tabs darling?” asks Stella, my eighties style yuppie witch of a team leader.
“Yes, Stella babe?” replies Tabs.
“Can I ask you something, Tabs darling?”
“Course you can, Stella babe. What is it?”
“I was wondering… I’ve noticed, Tabs darling, that whenever you’re walking around the office, you’re always on your phone. Who are you talking to all that time, babe?”
“Oh. Well let’s see. Sometimes I’m on the phone to Terry, Stella babe. He’s my fiance and I love him loads mostly.”
“Aww, that’s nice. Did you hear that Terry?” Stella calls across the office. “She says she loves you loads mostly. What do you think of that?”
“Yeah. That’s great, that,” he mumbles without looking up from his electronics catalogue. It arrived fresh this morning, so it’s been micro-components all the way with Terry today.

“And who else do you speak to, Tabs darling?”
“Oh, you know. Sometimes my Mum. And my Dad as well. That sort of thing.”
“But you can’t be on the phone to them all the time, can you? Not all the time?”
“Well, Stella babe, it’s… It’s embarrassing. And a bit sad, actually. I don’t…” says Tabs.
“Tabs darling, what is it?”

They're both wearing elf costumes and Stella is platting Tabs’ hair. Bill Surname CEO has enlisted them for some Company X charity thing. Bill Surname himself is going to be Santa, after the fiasco last year with Neil, my former team leader. Stella examines her work, undoes it again, allows Tabs’ Rapunzelesque hair to tumble to her shoulders and down her back, then brushes once more. Girl smells and Christmas smells, hairspray and perfume, mulled wine and mince pies waft around the office. A heady concoction. All is quiet save for the hissing of hair straighteners.

“The truth, Stella babe, is most of the time I’m not talking to anyone. I’m just pretending. See, I said it was sad.”
“Oh baby, shush. No sad.” Stella begins platting again. “Not today. Not ever.” It looks like they're weaving a rope, as if they’re hatching an escape over the filing cabinets and out through the first floor window.
“I pretend so people think I can’t hear what they say about me,” Tabs says. “I hate it. I really hate it, Stella, you know? They think I’m on the phone and can’t hear them talking about my boobs.”
“Oh, Tabs darling,” Stella whispers. “Is that what this is about? Oh baby. You’ve got lovely tits. You have.”
“Do you really think so?” sniffs Tabs. “Not just saying that?”
“Honestly babe. Absolutely. If you weren’t with Motherboard Monthly over there, and you know, obviously, my friend Becky and everything, I’d totally be, like, yeah. When we were at high school I always hoped… Oh, I’m sorry. You’ve heard this all before. Sorry, babe, I'll stop.”
“That’s okay.”
“No, but I am sorry. I must really freak you out sometimes,” says Stella.
“Do I look freaked out?”
“No. No more than usual anyway. But honestly, Tabs darling, baby girl, don’t you ever let anybody get you down. Ever. Do you hear me? You’ve got beautiful tits.”
“Aww, thanks mate,” sniffs Tabs. Her voice breaks into a little laugh. “And so have you.”

An easy calm settles on the office. The clock ticks. A distant photocopier hums its lonesome song. Watercoolers glug while my colleague Terry tap tap taps at his keyboard, dreaming of Zigabits and graphics cards. The afternoon trickles along like leaky non-volatile RAM.

“Hey Tim,” Stella calls across the room, eventually breaking the tranquility. “Who’s got the nicest tits? Me or Tabs?”

I panic and reach for my headset, pretending not to have heard her, pretend to be on a conference call to Japan or somewhere, no, the States, it would still be morning in the States, knocking over my yoghurt in the process, rhubarb and ginger glooping into my lap in pornographic slow motion – this isn't just any rhubarb and ginger yoghurt, this is Marks and Spencer Rhubarb and Ginger Yoghurt, drizzled suggestively into the trousers of a half-witted systems administrator.

Outside my window the world is heavy with winter. I can see LEDs twinkling through the datacentre window and the reflection of Christmas tree lights down in reception.
Rex the Security Guard and Charlotte, Bill Surname's loyal PA, are putting the finishing touches to the Company X minibus, all done out like Santa's sleigh.
Poor Charlotte, it's been a difficult time for her, what with one disastrous bloody catastrophe after another, the bungling incompetence, the sheer blind panic of the year gone by, the night terrors, the sleeplessness, and now this: Bill Surname, the only man she has ever loved – if only he knew it! - says there must be laughter and joy in every children's ward and hospice tonight or she'll be for the fish tank, splish-splosh, and she's so utterly, completely drained, she doesn't know how she finds the strength to go on from one day to the next. She thinks that if she starts crying she might never stop.

The going home bell rings. I wipe down my crotch, switch off my PC and pop my head round the door to wish Santa's elves good luck.
Tabs is brushing Stella’s hair now. When they see me they stand to attention, sticking out their chests in a comical, exaggerated fashion, their four bosoms primed and pointed at me through their T-shirts like nuclear warheads. “Well, Tim?” they giggle. “Well?”
I reply that I’m very well thanks, just a little wistful occasionally with the inevitable this and that, but only now and then, nothing worth stressing over and nothing I haven’t come through before, better than it was, and I thank them for asking. I’m basically good, better than good in fact. Then I wish them luck, ask them to pass Santa my best regards and head out in the wrong direction to look for my train.

Oh the summertime is coming and the trees are sweetly blooming, and the wild mountain thyme grows around the blooming heather, and the blooming crackly bing bong public address system fizz pops into life, you hear Charlotte, Bill Surname CEO’s loyal PA, clearing her pipes, and we’re on the air in Three… Two… One... and you wake from your reveries, wipe the dribble from your chin – Will ye go, Lassie, go? - and we’re back.

The theme of this morning’s announcement is Family.
“Bill Surname has asked me to inform you that we are living in 2.0 times,” she reads. “Internet 2.0: it's here, right now, in Preston 2.0, 2009 2.0. The Information Age is pouring down in buckets and we must all huddle together beneath the Company X umbrella and try to make the best of it.”

While we listen, Stella, my eighties style yuppie witch of a team leader, humming contentedly, arranges pies on a gingham tablecloth spread over Mike’s desk, who is away this week for corrective treatment.

“Customer loyalty is vitally bloody important, Charlotte,” reads Charlotte. “And to this end we introduce the One Big Family Project. From today, customers must no longer be called customers, but will instead be called Family. Common employees and directors alike are to be considered Family. Rex the Security Guard, the lady at the gate with the dreamy soft white baps, the nameless gentleman who removes stains from the upholstery in our sales-team's cars: all One Big Family.”

“These pies are Apple,” whispers Stella. “I made them. Now my friend Becky made these ones, which are Blackberry. And these in the middle, we’re not sure what they are, Tim, so for now we’re calling them Nokia.”

“A steering committee is investigating the creation of a Company X Twitter account, which will be in place by Spring 2010,” Charlotte continues. “And a Company X blog could be implemented as soon as Christmas after next. So on behalf of myself, Bill Surname, and the board of directors, we urge you to embrace clients old and new into the Company X Family, share ideas and innovations, communicate freely, and engage regularly in every kind of intercourse. Podcasts may follow. Bing bong.”

Poor Charlotte – it's a difficult time for her, what with the complete annihilation of all that is decent and good in the world: moral collapse in the Houses of Parliament; Swine Flu destined to kill more or less everyone; the International Banking System revealed to be little other than a shabby, grasping band of toffs whose greed is exceeded only by their stupidity - “Mummy, Mummy! They won’t let me have my pension!” “Well you broke the bank, Freddie. What did you expect?” - and now this...

“Oh cruel irony, why do you torment me so?”
Bill Surname, the only man she has ever loved, if only he knew it, expects her to cultivate an atmosphere of mutually matey kinship among Company X stakeholders, “Or,” he says, “it’s the stock pot for you, Charlotte, Tiddly Pom.”
“Oh my handsome Bill Surname CEO, why were you and I never Family?” she cries in the pitiless night. “Why did we never wed?”

But what can poor Charlotte do?
She decides that if Family is the goal, then Baking is the road map. With the help of the Company X sisterhood (Stella and Tabs, take a bow), she knocks up a triumphant flashmob of pies, puddings and baked goods to accompany the launch of the One Big Family Project.

“What do you think, Tim?” asks Stella, later on, after the going home bell has rung and everybody has cleared off.
“Social media will never take off,” I say. “Blogging? What a load of garbage.”
“No, I mean the pies. I think this is one of mine. Rhubarb and apricot, possibly?”
“There’s too many pies and too many fingers in them,” I grumble. “Twitter, I ask you? Who cares?”
Stella sighs.
“My friend Becky says I can stick my finger in hers whenever I like.” A dreamy expression falls upon her as she proudly surveys the empty dishes around the office. “We were at it all night.”

Her phone bleeps and she gathers up her things.
“Seemed to go down very well, though,” I say.
“Tim, that’s what my friend Becky is all about,” and before I can say anything else, Stella, my eighties style yuppie witch of a team leader, is outside, skipping across the car park in the blazing afternoon heat, out towards the gate, where her good and true friend Becky is waiting with her engine running and her top off, soaking up the rays, the hopeful city of Preston shimmering behind them like a Hollywood backdrop in the golden Lancashire haze, dripping with sunshine, bursting with wholesome outdoorsy goodness, and we’ll all go together, to pick wild mountain thyme all around the blooming heather, will ye go, Lassie, go?

The tall, elegant spire of St. Walburge’s RC perches on the Preston skyline like an upturned drawing pin placed on a teacher’s chair.
It’s as if the whole town is in on the joke, cheekily waiting for God to blow grandly into the room, take his seat and receive an unpleasant surprise. We are a jovial people.
Road works spring up like molehills here, there and everywhere, choking the daily migration. Wherever you’re going, you’d be quicker walking and besides, it’s so beautiful out there – make the most of it because you know this can’t last forever.
The chewing gum aromas of sugar and diesel fumes fill the air, as girls parade up and down Fishergate in their summer skins and gangs of swarthy boys congregate on corners, showing their appreciation. Everything speaks of the fun fair.
Outside my window, closer still, cotton candy swatches of blossom, pink and white, cherry and apple, rim the car park. Rex the Security Guard plants sweet peas and nasturtiums by the data centre trellis, while Geraldine the Company X goat basks on the croquet lawn in the unexpected sunshine. Twenty degrees yesterday. Warmer still today, they’re saying.

Terry and Mike are scrutinising the Championship table.
“I’ll bet you a pound to a pinch of shit North End don’t make the play-offs,” says Terry.
Mike grunts.
“Every fucking season,” says Terry. “We get within a midge’s dick of promotion, then piss it away last minute.”
Mike stares at his monitor, cool as AC. “Best odds you’ll get anywhere,” he grumbles. He’s an expert at this. Eventually Terry wavers, peels a twenty pound note from his wallet and places his wager.
“You’re killing me, Mike,” he mutters as he walks back to his desk, resentful of his own weakness. “Fucking killing me.”

In her room, Stella, my eighties style yuppie witch of a team leader, is in a meeting with Creepy Keith from Accounts.
“So let me check I’ve understood this correctly,” she asks.
“Shoot,” he replies.
“A bouncer broke your arm?”
“Correctomondeo.”
“A bouncer at a Women Only disco?”
“That’s right,” Keith confirms. “I said, ‘Let me in Bitch, I’m a feminist.’ And that’s when she broke it.”
“And this was because you'd seen Advantage going in?” asks Stella. There's no hint of glee in her inflection, absolutely none. Oh alright, just a large one.
“I said ‘I’ve read more Virginia Woolf than you’ve had hotpot suppers. And I'm guessing you've had a few.’” He wheezes for a moment. “The pain was indescribable.”

I can hear Stella Facebooking away at her keyboard for a minute or so, and then she asks, “But I thought it was all back on between you and Advantage?”
“So did I. It was on again, then off again, then the last I knew we were on again,” he answers. “Went to IKEA on Friday, so we must have been.”
“Tea candles?”
“Clip frames. Anyway, she said she was out on Saturday with her friend Valerie, and I happened to see them, didn't I? So I wanted to talk to her.”
“Valerie, did you say? Chunky lass? Green hair? Walks with a limp?”
“You know her?” asks Keith.
“Valerie Average? Bloody hell, Keith! Everybody knows Big Value Valerie!” The Facebooking starts again in earnest. “My friend Becky will ROFL her arse off when she hears this! Advantage and Valerie Average! Classic!”

At lunchtime I forget that the lady at the gate with the dreamy soft white baps is on holiday, so I just carry on walking, down to the wildflower meadows which are drying out a little now, and along the Ribble for a while, avoiding the cow pats and the humping help desk operatives as best I can, then back through town, the sunshine warm on my face, past the business parks and shopping centres, the tyre exchanges and discount carpet warehouses, the heaving car parks and office blocks, the queues of traffic going nowhere, radios blasting, engines overheating, as if that was what I'd intended to do all along. I'm bloody starving when I get back so I have a Magnum instead.

I met Georgina a few weeks ago, the author of the wonderful Wondering Heights.
It’s part of my ongoing project to meet all bloggers. Now that everybody Twitters instead of blogging you might have thought this was an easy task, but I’m discovering that I’ve still some way to go before I can consign it to the Done basket.

I was in Swindon all week doing work stuff, so being in the London area we arranged to meet one evening in the foyer of Embankment Station and afterwards she took me to The Chortle Awards in the fancy pants West End.
Georgina is a producer off the telly, reading comedy scripts as a full time occupation, which, if not the best job in the world, is right up there with cheese, beer and chocolate tasting. The job seems to consist of going to lots of meetings and banging your head against walls.

The Chortle Awards celebrate up and coming stand-up comedians.
I was hoping for a late nomination in the “What The Hell Am I Doing Here?” category, but there’s always next time.
I’m not very clued up on comedy so had no idea who most people were – who is the Next Big Thing; who was the previous Next Big Thing; who will remain for their rest of their days hoping to be the Next Big Thing – but it was fascinating to be a fly on the wall. And while I’m not one for being starstruck – the opportunity rarely arises – I’ll admit I was mildly thrilled to be standing behind a bloody big sofa supporting the VIP comedy arses of Arthur Smith, Tony Hawks (no, not the skateboarder) and Nicholas Parsons, while Frank Skinner issued gongs a few feet away. Nicholas Parsons!!!
I will always remain super-grateful that I didn’t approach Nicholas Parsons and tell him, like, you know, I really love your work and have nothing to say that could possibly be of interest to you, avoiding repetition, hesitation or deviation. And I could have done, because he was as near to me as you are to your computer. Nicholas Parsons! It would have demeaned both of us.

It was lovely finally meeting Georgina who is really nice and very funny and well fit. She introduced me to her friends Charlotte Hudson and Leila Hacket, who write together as Two Left Hands.
“So what do you do?” asked Leila.
“Oh, nothing funny,” I replied. “I work in IT. In Preston.”
“Right. So how do you know Georgina?”
“We’re friends on the internet. This is the first time we’ve met.”
“Okay.”
“But it’s not a date or anything. It’s not like that,” I said, immediately regretting not saying I was from an escort agency, standing in at short notice for the guy she’d actually chosen.
Two raised left eyebrows. “So if it’s not a date… ?”
“Well, I don’t know if you already knew, but, erm, Georgina is a blogger.”
They didn’t.
“She’s really good. We’re both bloggers. That’s how we know each other.”
I’ve never found a way of telling someone that I blog without it sounding, well, foolish. It would have been easier if I’d lied and said we met on the Star Trek Fan Fiction forums, specialising in the Filth and Smut sub-genre.

Oddness continued when I recognised another blogger in the crowd from her flickr photos.
“Excuse me. I don’t want to weird you out but aren’t you the blogger known as Undivine Comedy?”
She was and we three bloggers had a nice little chat in the Nerd Corner. Again, it was lovely to meet her after reading her for years. I think I may have weirded her out a little bit actually, but she recovered quickly. You have to think on your feet in showbusiness.

I’m off to meet yet another blogger this evening. Yay.
She is top Preston author Jenn Ashworth whose novel A Kind Of Intimacy is shortlisted as one of Waterstones’ Twelve To Watch Out For This Year.

Jenn is hosting the inaugural Word Soup meeting, a big bash for Preston’s heaving writerly community. We’ve already met online of course, and she recently e-interviewed me on the Preston Writing Network blog. You can find that interview here.

You can also find me mooching about on Twitter, if that’s your bag.
It’s a nice little place where I post half-witticisms for my own amusement, which I later intend to work up into fully fledged near-humour for these here pages, once enough time has been allowed for readers to have forgotten them from the first time round.

http://twitter.com/idiotjohnson

Crocuses and snow drops, purple and cream and yellow, great hissing clouds of them, bubbling up to the surface like acne and Spring is in the air, announcing itself with a nip at your ankles and a poke in the ribs - you can taste it, you can smell it, you can practically scoop it up in your ungloved fingers and roll it around your coat pocket as you go about your business.
A brand new baby season seeping up through the perforated soil, like mist rising off the Ribble in the great morning rush, gasping for attention, snatching for breath, sleepless with undreamed dreams of warm skin and soft towels.

Dinner time at Company X and help desk operatives spill across the grounds like seed scattering from a paper cup, pillowy girls bursting out of their blouses and greedy boys, all mouths and hands, on every bench and in every bush in the hazel copse, bedazzled with urges and surges beyond imagining or control.
They do it on sycamore stumps, they do it on their hands and knees, they return to their workstations – 'Barry from Bolton Bathmats rang about a purchase order number; he said not to call back' – filthy as pig farmers, drenched in their fecund lustings. The entire third floor needs fumigating.

Stella, my eighties style yuppie witch of a team leader, spends the day punctuating our attempts at work with excerpts from some book – Crossing the Credit Crunch: Deception Got Us Into This Mess, Denial Will Get Us Out.
“The trouble with you, Tim,” she says, shaking it at me, “is you’re Trapped in a Negative Confidence Bag.”
“Mind if I open a window then?” I reply. “I can hardly breathe.”
“Seriously. If you can’t be part of the problem then you’re part of the solution,” she says, but she lost me at “Trapped.”
Later, outside the datacentre, I catch up with Rex the Security Guard. I think I’m suffering from pre-season potato anxiety.

My granddad on my mother’s side was a keen gardener and he loved to sing.
During the war he’d been in the Entertainments Corps, fighting Hitler at the Steinway Victory Vertical, and we were the best of pals, me and Pop. “Inseparable,” Mum says.
Many was the boozy afternoon we’d spend in the piano bar of the Crown and Cushion, but he died when I was three and I don’t remember a single thing about him. Not a dickie bird.
Now here I am in my middle years, fond of an audience and suddenly keen to raise my own beans, and the connection has only just struck me – Am I trying to impress the old boy? Carrying on a torch? – but this is no time for whiney psychobabble, it never is, because Rex is telling me “So long as chits are green and stubby, not thin and white, then tubers are fine, Tom. Plant any day now, shoots upward.” I thank him for the chit chat.

Tonight, at barbershop rehearsal in the tin rifle range, we sing,
“For all we know we may never meet again / Before you go make this moment sweet again,”
and the meaning seems plain: the boy can’t wait to get his rocks off but she’s not having it. Otherwise he wouldn’t keep going on.
“Love me tonight!” he implores with false urgency. “Tomorrow may never come for all we know!”
Good for her, I say, for not putting out. And him? It might improve his chances if he was less obvious.

Daffodils line the route home, waving and cheering as I pass regally by, botanic name Narcissus of course, named for the man who liked the look of himself so much he slipped and fell, drowning in his own reflection.
I wonder how my worms are getting on. They’re the new chickens, you know. You don’t want to feed them too much before they’ve had time to get friendly and multiply: vegetable peelings, coffee grounds, egg shells to balance the pH. They have five hearts each and are able to regulate their own population as necessary, according to the book they came with.

The 'Life After Bingo' gig at the Gregson was very enjoyable.
The evening kicked off with a couple of squares (rounds? frames?) of bingo, which was highly entertaining, and then names were pulled out of an envelope to determine the running order. I was drawn last, or 'top of the bill' as we say in the music industry.

First up was Jess Thomas, with her big voice and nice guitar technique. Really good.
Second was Jo Gillot with her tiny hands. Different guitar style – very fast and intricate, ditto her voice – and again, she was really good. And get this for an update from the future... she'll be interviewed and will play on Steve Lamcq's Radio Two programme in a couple of weeks. Excitement ahoy.
Third was a young lad called Kish, and – darn, wouldn't you know it? - he's a terrific guitar player too. He put on a wonderfully woozy, atmospheric set, although I hope he loses the John Martyn 'too drunk to care' vocal stylings sooner rather than later, and finds his own voice. But it was a great, solid performance. He's about fifteen or sixteen or something, the talented little freak.
And finally there was me, Idiot Johnson. Oh come on, it's show business - you've got to make a bit of an effort, no?

I played and sang a few bum notes, of course, but on the whole I was quite pleased with my little set.
I was especially relieved that a horrible cough (mine) called a truce for the thirty minutes I was on stage. It must have been the adrenaline taking effect, because it certainly wasn't the one-bottle-a-day-Buttercup-Original-Syrup habit I've recently acquired.
I sang some of my own stuff, and I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For on kalimba, and finished with a low key piano version of Born To Run, which raised a few eyebrows, hopefully in a good way.

I believe somebody recorded the whole shebang, although I've not heard it yet if they did.
Everyone tends to be hyper-critical on hearing themselves played back – or at least, it's to be hoped they are – so I'm ready to concede that I was actually shit. At the time, though, I was buzzing and happy.

Girlfriend's new yoga friend S came along to watch, never having heard me sing before, and she didn't fall off her chair in hysterics or anything. I call that encouraging.
And of course, all I want now is to do it again.