Thursday 23 July 2009

Dream: I am at a Los Angeles Galaxy game. They are playing against an English team, which by rights for me should be Millwall but it isn’t. To some degree I suspect it is Manchester City who we are supporting and as the LA Galaxy fans get on David Beckham’s back we use this as an opportunity to get into an anti American tirade as we begin singing songs for Beckham against the American fans even though they feel flat, laboured and uninspired. Then he scores and perversely we (the opposition fans) cheer him and the stupid Americans boo their own player. Americans are thick and just do not get it sometimes. Shortly after going a goal behind our English team then latches onto a rubbish back pass and the striker gets pulled down meaning we get a penalty. Suddenly it is time to stick it to the Americans.

With this the buzzer of my alarm clock painfully rings and into another grey day I fall.

This morning I finally find my long lost belt to put on my Gap trousers and it is terrifying to note that it barely fits me. I guess I did have it bought for me when I was a teenager. Excuses excuses.

Today feels musty and I’m not really up for it. The forecast didn’t say rain but the skies definitely suggest/threaten it.

As I arrive at the station this morning I am dragging my heels and the train is already sat in the platform. I have to rush slightly to catch/board it and definitely I fail to get a decent seat/spot.

When the train arrives at Chelmsford Mr Boring Couple sits next to me seemingly incapable of sitting in a seat properly. I take this as a personal dig/knock as to how much room I take on the seat. I feel so much like ramming/nudging my elbow into his spine, to the point I cripple him into a wheelchair. Its what he deserves. The guy looks like a jowled and deformed Paul Giamatti lookalike. He is probably younger than me but his hair is already receding in ways that mine is not and never will. This is probably because he is a cunt.

As we near London I look around and catch glimpse of a man in a black shirt seemingly looking to rock the ginger Billy Connelly look. This man is a freak, I bet he’s not even Scottish (as he apparently so wishes to exhibit).

I return to the latest Collings And Herrin podcast at which point I spookily see a Stuart Maconie lookalike who for a moment I think is the real person.

When the train begins grinding upon passing through Bethnal Green this triggers the train to beach three times before pulling into Liverpool Street. The hold up is painful and when I emerge from/off the train at 8.06 the delay has felt three times as long as that.

Returning to Liverpool Street today is the Chinese OCD Man who appears to once more be spending his time straightening the racks of The Metro free newspaper. So fucking futile.

I find myself feeling paranoid on the tube this morning of an Asian man sat opposite me that keeps looking/glancing at my iPhone. Weary I stare at his reflection in the window of the carriage keeping tabs on him and clenching my iPhone that little bit harder than usual. Does he realise how much attention I am giving him? He gets off at Euston Square muddling with his own inferior phone.

Eventually as I go up the St Johns Wood escalator over the course of the ride I see three rubbish comedy look-alikes including a sharp Jimmy Carr clone. The others I forget, perhaps they weren’t so great after all.

I arrive at work to an email from the consultant telling me he will be in at 11AM. Suddenly this adds a new sense of urgency to my work.

While in our temporary room today the operations manager makes comment about moving offices while his is being decorated referring to his stuff as “my shit.” At this point I mention that this was/is the name of my band and hilarity amongst the office ensues.

I had forgotten that the outsource guy was coming in today and predictably/invariably he gets in the way.

When I head downstairs onto the restaurant floor I get a hug from one of the waitresses and I have to admit that it is very nice and amazingly well timed. One of the Albanian waiters then points out that both our Facebook statuses have both recently changed to single and he suggests that we should go out. She reacts to this by reaching for my fella but at this time it is putty so quickly I have to flinch in an effort to save blushes and tears.

The consultant trots in around midday and almost immediately begins barking requests and demands. Hello to you too.

For lunch I have chicken burger when The Girl decides to change my order from soup. This is what I imagine it is like to be married.

Over lunch I rib the females for wearing more makeup to work than usual and I suggest that it is due to the builders being around. In reaction they protest too much.

The adjustments on the accounts go long into the afternoon and with the consultant’s poodling it begins to become evident that it is going to be tight getting away at 5.30PM to meet up with Angela in Holland Park at 6.15PM.

The problem remains as ever that we are rushing things. If things were just allowed to take a natural course they would have been done by now but with the pressure on and too early deadlines being attached invariably corners get cut and mistakes are made and now we are spending just as much time, if not more, putting things right.

Coming with this now is my being dragged into work tomorrow on my day off in order to move offices when there has been NO sign of the carpet fitter today. This is not the sign of things running smoothly.

As we hit 5PM I am still putting through my final adjustments. Just at this point the consultant wants updated P&Ls that reflect the updated head office costs and non-fudged figures. This really is not the time of day to be beginning such things.

I tear through it though as the usual option/route to do the accounts fast rather than right or correct is taken. I endeavour to strike a happy medium but then on top of this the consultant comes storming in asking me the whereabouts of a figure I have never even known about. I just shrug. Putting my work aside I find it in the outsource guy’s opening balances. It is a figure that had been posted to a suspense account (or “suspence” account as the consultant likes to put it).

Eventually I wind practically begging to be allowed out of work on time because I have arrangements this evening. I feel so fucked about and angry about this, why is everything always so last minute, so fudged and rushed. It makes me look bad when really so much of this problem lies in the decisions made above. Left alone and given enough time I would be able to produce accounts that are fine but when the powers that be begin to flap all falls down and more mistakes are made that in the long run take longer to fix than if we had just given the figures enough breathing space in the first place. These people should listen to me sometimes.

I leave the restaurant seething. At Baker Street I see an Asian version of the Baker Street Midget and then I see THE Baker Street Midget himself, tonight wearing AC Milan shirt looking like a proper little hooligan. See, aggro! How does that work? Does AC Milan do midget sizes of their shirts? All in all seeing these two only bodes for bad luck this evening.

Obviously I arrive at Holland Park delayed. Fortunately she doesn’t notice when we meet up. I arrive grumpy and never really recover. Conversation and action flows in stunted manner as the events of the afternoon just play on my mind and serve to ruin our evening.

In the end we basically throw the towel in on proceedings. My time and money gets wasted just because the consultant bowled in so unfocused and unorganised, upsetting the roost in the process.

Eventually I get set free and with it my friend expresses concern and tells me to “take care of yourself.” The trudge by tube across London on the Central Line is a very sober one, bleak and morose.

On the train home I feel beat and shattered, veering on sleep in the process. Once home I return to find that Half Nelson is on TV tonight, a harsh reminder of Zoe as it was the movie we were supposed to watch the second time I fell into bed with her. That single one night was perhaps the point in which I blew my best chance of happiness, one of the moments I really need to man the fuck up and I just fell short. In the end I don’t get very far into the movie, why do I need to watch a depressing life on screen when I have one right in my face?