Cocktails and Records

Everything is annoying me at the moment.

I’ve tried to keep it to myself, but what is a blog for if not to rant and vent?

1. Why does David Cameron think that it is ‘a good thing’ to show that he can pull an all-nighter? So he’s been up for 24 hours campaigning, pressing the flesh and inflicting himself on innocent people. I’m not impressed. I would prefer my probable prime minister to realise that work is more productive after a good night’s sleep.
2. What’s the appeal of the new John Lewis ad? They’ve reportedly spent £6 million on a load of schmaltz and a dodgy cover of the lamest Billy Joel song ever, ‘She’s Always a Woman’, to remind us that all a girl needs in life to be happy is marriage, some lovely children and a nice aspirational lifestyle bought from a department store. And over 600,000 mugs seem to have watched the ad of their own free will on youtube. What is with these people? It’s an ad!
3. One of our suppliers at work thinks that the way to get on my good side is not to complete the work to deadline, but to send me through pictures of the new addition to his family, a puppy, with every email. How can I tell him that I don’t care quite as much about his precious pet as he does (even if it is very cute)?
4. My already mixed feelings about Doctor Who have become even more mixed. I’ve long thought that the show is completely and utterly unrealistic. I mean, if you could go anywhere in the space time continuum why you would choose to hang around the UK in the late 20th/early 21st century all the time is beyond me. But who exactly is the target audience for this show? It’s surely not a family show now – the 7 year old me would have had a minor nervous breakdown watching the recent angels episode. What would I have done? Hidden behind the sofa in fear or stuck my fingers down my throat with all the yucky snogging? Many children must be facing this same dilemma and I feel for them.

OK, enough now. I’ll be back later when I have something civil to say.

As much as I don’t delight in work, sometimes the office is a welcome refuge from the outside world, or at least the outside world of the pavements surrounding it.

I have worked in some of the busiest parts of central London and Glasgow over the past decade and have become used to the constant flow of heavy traffic, madcap cyclists, dawdling pedestrians shouting into mobile phones, noise pollution from lousy buskers and the inevitable lost tourists. This doesn’t bother me (much). What has been grinding me down over the years though is the ongoing assault on my ability to walk unharassed down the street.

I know that ‘the street’ is public space, but over the past few weeks for example, I have been interrupted by:

1. gung-ho types trying to sign me up for a chain of gyms I particularly dislike
2. even more gung-ho types trying to get me to play Paintball
3. street teams pushing free samples of vile Orangina in a manner that wouldn’t shame Mrs Doyle from Father Ted
4. a miserable lone student on a bike trying to promote a Farmer’s Market
5. noisy and whistling Climate Camp protesters
6. TV crews filming the Climate Camp protesters
7. desperately enthusiastic chuggers trying to sign me up to Oxfam, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Red Cross, Barnados and the NSPCC
8. sulky teenagers collecting for a local project for young people
9. bored sods aggressively thrusting copies of London Lite, The London Paper, City AM, Epoch Times, Sport magazine and the Hotcourses newspaper at me
10. enthusiastic sods handing out leaflets for dating agencies
11. shiny young men flogging miracle hair products
12. the usual assortment of panhandlers and Big Issue sellers

All this within the five minutes it takes to walk between the station platform and my office. Sometimes, particularly around the station, it’s like that scene in Repulsion where all the hands are coming out of the walls grabbing at Catherine Deneuve as she collapses down the corridor – only on this occasion its worse because they’re also waving copies of London Lite and photocopied flyers for the local pawnbrokers.

Usually I just smile, say a polite but firm ‘no thanks’ and scurry onwards with my head down, but I fear that overload is killing my politeness. I have been feeling increasingly tetchy about this constant assault on my privacy over the past year and in last month I’ve snapped – I’ve already had two arguments with chuggers and yesterday I gave the paintballing man what must have been a much darker look than intended, as he looked instantly guilty and backed away apologising. And today I’m fantasising about getting a t-shirt printed up saying  ’Don’t waste your time’ that I can just scowlingly point at when people approach.

What’s happening to me? London is turning me into the kind of person I hate.