Other People.

The problem with the bulk of them is that, sooner or later, you discover they are quite mad.

My sister is in my kitchen. Also in my kitchen is a metal cylindrical thing with holes in the side in which I keep utensils too big to fit in the cutlery drawer. Wooden spoons. Potato masher. Screwdrivers. Stuff like that.

Sister: Do you know there's a teaspoon in here? Should I put it in the drawer?

Me: No. Leave it. I like to know where it is.

Sis: What?

Me: It's my Boiled Egg Spoon.

Sis: What?

Me: I eat my boiled eggs with that one.

Sis: Why don't you just use one of the other ones?

Me: They're not quite the right shape.

She looks at me as if I have lost my marbles. She was on the verge of moving it to the General Teaspoon Population for fuck's sake.

Like I say. Mentals, the lot of them.


On a completely unrelated note, I have ditched Internet Explorer in favour of Firefox 15 years after the rest of the world has done so and am delighted to notice that it has put my Favourites in alphabetical order - something IE has long refused to do.

As such I rediscover a number of blogs and sites I have forgotten about as they've not been in the right part of the alphabet and frankly life is too short to faff about.

I am even more delighted to discover NOT A SINGLE ONE EXISTS ANYMORE! Probably purely because I have ignored them for some time and the administrators have just given up! This is quite brilliant as, at a rough estimate, I ignore 99.9999999999999% of the internet! Therefore, it is surely a matter of time before I dominate the web and am given a prize of some sort!

Wonderful.

Doppelganger.

It’s the only way to explain it.

Lunchtime today; I am in the chemist purchasing some sort of treatment for Blonde Colleague’s ‘water problems’ as she doesn’t like to answer the searching questions regarding her ‘lady-plumbing’ whenever she has to buy it. I am not fond of strangers thinking that it is I who have a urinary-tract infection, but this seems to be a moot point.

Cashier: So how are you anyway?

Me: Mmm? Oh. Erm. Fine. Aaah. Yourself?

Cashier: Ohhh. You know meee….

I don’t.

Me: Right.

Cashier: I just get on with it don’t I?

Perhaps she does. I really don’t know.

Me: Ok.

Cashier: Anyway. What are you like? Have you lost your Boots card again?

Me: It wasn’t mine and-

Cashier: Here you go. [Does some weird thing with a pretend loyalty card and laser scanner then hands it to me] All set now. You know I take care of you. See you later yeah?

I leave the chemist feeling slightly befuddled and raise my eyebrows at a Random Woman who smiles at me like she knows me. I proceed to the newsagent for my cigarettes.

Newsagent: Thought you’d quit HAHAHAHA!

Me: Ehm. No.



I've never laid eyes on him.

Newsagent: You must need these with your ‘not stressful’ job HAHAHAHAHA!

He has appalling halitosis and I wish he were not laughing so hard. In my face.

Newsagent: ‘Spose you’re just glad to HAVE a job the way things are going at your place HAHAHAHA!

How does he know where I work and what I do for a living? I pay for my cigarettes and leave my new best friend the Newsagent. Upon arriving at the door of my building I hold the door open for another Random Woman.

“Thanks Tired.” She says. How does she know my name?

I walk down a long corridor grinding my teeth. Yet another Random Woman is heading toward me.

Random Woman: [As if she’s known me for years] What’s the weather like out there?

Me: [Feeling sure she could have utilized a little-known device called ‘a window’] Oh. Erm. Not raining. Not cold.

RW: Brilliant! HAHAHAHAHA!

Me: Ok.

I get back to my office with some relief. Everyone here has known me for years – there will be few pleasantries. Thank God.

I think for a bit. I’m a rational man, but it can only be. There is some sort of ‘anti-me’ out there, being all ‘friendly’ and ‘gregarious’ all over the place and making strangers think they can talk to me as if they know me.

This will not do. And I have absolutely no idea how to fix this. I can’t be stuck in some sort of hell-hole of casual cheerfulness with people I don’t care about. That would be awful. What if everyone starts thinking I’m ‘approachable’? Christ.

I sit at my desk.

Blonde Colleague: Did you get…… you know.

Me: There you go.

BC: Did you get my deodorant too?

Me: *SIGH* Yeah. Here.

BC: What the fuck is this?

Me: [Squinting at the can] ‘Cotton Flower’.

BC: Cotton fucking Flower? I’m a ‘Sensual Blossom’ girl!

Me: They didn’t have any.

BC: Did you ask?

Why do women always say that?

Me: No I didn’t ask. Do you know why? Because it’s not important to me. I’d have got some ‘Unbearable Hermaphrodite Who Keeps Forgetting To Take Her Mood Stabilisers’ but they were all out of that as well. Should I have asked if they had also stockpiled that in a secret location purely to annoy you?

BC: What?

This could go either way. We both start cackling at each other. It’s fine.

I instantly feel better and stop worrying about the doppelganger. No matter how hard he tries to fool people into thinking that I’m an acceptable person, die-hard bastards like this will never have the wool pulled over their eyes.

Everday Idiocy.

An astonishing thing about living (mostly) alone is that you slowly begin to realize just how phenomenally stupid you actually are. You know. What with there not being anyone else around to blame and that.

Today.

It is three o’clock in the afternoon, the sky is blue and the sun is shining. For the first time in five months after the coldest, bitterest, most unforgiving dark winter ever in the world I am sitting outside, looking at greenery whilst the sun shines on my face and warms my bones whilst I sip a pleasant drink.

I feel relaxed for the first time in forever. The beer garden – a fifteen minute walk away from my house (long enough to qualify as ‘a walk’, not too long to be ‘a chore’) contains a couple of young girls (three, maybe four) who make a big thing of smiling at me and then being ‘shy’ whenever I glance at them which amuses their respective mothers no end and who then smile at me benignly.

I finish my drink and return home to the dinner I had left on a low heat in the oven. The house is spotless after my ‘it’s spring!’ efforts and smells mildly and not unpleasantly of Zorflora and home-cooking. I turn the oven off. My washing and ironing is done and I have attended to my ‘personal grooming’. I feel o.k.

One hour previously.

This is shit, I think to myself. I’ve done all my fucking chores, figured-out how to copy rental dvds from the garage, the place is spotless and I just want to get out in the fucking sun ‘cos I feel like Johnny Cash in Folsom Prison. I just want to feel the sun on my face and I’m tied to this fucking cooker.

I glare with resentment at my captor. The casserole will take at least another hour. Blonde Colleague better fucking appreciate it for her lunch tomorrow after all the fuss she made last time she tasted it.

An hour. Christ. It’s not worth chancing it with a gas cooker though. There could be a supply surge, the gas could blow out and if the central heating kicks in or I unwittingly flick a light switch or light a cigarette when I get back in I'm done for.

Outside birds are singing, for what seems like the first time since last year. I can hear children playing in the distance. I want to go out.

I check the progress of my dinner, and am greeted by the reassuring hum of the fan when I open the door of the oven. All is well.

They’re brilliant, fan ovens, I think to myself. Even temperature, so much quicker.

I think a bit more.

A fan oven? Which wouldn’t work too well with a gas flame. An oven that, thinking about it, I’ve never had to light.

The hob is gas. The oven has ALWAYS been electric.

I start pulling my coat on. At this point, I would round on someone – anyone- and say-

“Why didn’t you tell me it was an electric oven? We could have gone out AN HOUR AGO! It’s perfectly safe! IDIOT!”

But there’s only me.

Brainstorm.

Client: We need a new slogan for our advertisement. The old one's a bit .... erm. I'm not very good with words... erm...

Me: 'Old'?

Client: Exactly. See what you can come up with.

Me: What?

Client: See you tomorrow.

Me: [Into a now silent phone] For fuck's sake.

This is terrible. The client in question believes me to be a 'creative'. I am not. I have people who can be creative on my behalf but they can't 'magic things up' in one day flat - they need to go shopping for moccasins for at least a week to enliven the imagination before they come up with anything. I'm going to have to do this myself. And, if anything, I'm a 'destructive'.

I canvass the opinion of my colleagues.

The client has the largest taxi firm in the sprawling city that I have a peculiar love/hate relationship with. They're not, but let's just say they're called 'City Cabs'. And I want to keep on the right side of him for two reasons:

1) I pay next to fuck all for taxis these days.

and

2) Like any cash business of that size, it's fucking rife with organized crime.

Thug Colleague: 'Pulled a munter? Be a punter of City Cabs'?

Me: Thanks for your help. No. Really.

Lovely But Stupid: [Back from maternity leave] What about safety? You've read about these pretend mini-cab drivers who assualt drunk girls who think that they're getting into real taxis?

Me: [Quite surprised. This is sounding sensible. Maybe motherhood has sharpened her wits] Ok. All the drivers are CRB checked [amazingly] as it happens.

LBS: [Not joking] Well there you go. How about - 'City Cabs - We Won't Rape You'?

Unless anyone comes up with anything better before 10.00am tomorrow morning that's what I'm walking in there with.