Jimmy Page’s Trousers

I’m not feeling well. I woke up yesterday, feeling as if someone had fitted a nice pastry crust to my eyelids and baked them at gas mark 5 for an hour. Had to scrape off a string of yellow gunk before I could see enough to notice that my eyes were all swollen and bloodshot. I looked like Marty Feldman, but a Marty Feldman that had been poked repeatedly in the eyes with a sharpened pokey-stick.

As usual, Mrs. Jimmy Page’s Trousers was full of sympathy, empathy and a general feeling of concern for her debilitated spouse. “They look fine to me - you’re overreacting” she retorted when I stated my wish to cry-off work and high me to the doctor’s. Not so easily disheartened, I went back to bed to rest my infirm eyes until the doctor’s surgery hours.

Half past nine. That’s when the doctor starts. I know from bitter experience however, that there is generally a steady influx of malingerers and fakers from about quarter past nine. I arrived, smugly, at ten past. “Take a seat, there are three people in front of you” said the receptionist. Damn these early rising invalids. I reasoned that three people couldn’t take too long though. How wrong I was.

Patient #1 was in and out. Efficiently sick - excellent. Patient #2 was a different matter however. He was a small man in a small suit with small feet, clad in small, neatly polished loafers. He was with his son (I gathered). He made and received several Important Business Calls while he waited. He was evidently some sort of widgetmonger and, from his loud phone voice, I assume that he was quite proud of the fact. After each call he would turn to his son and make some remark along the lines of “Mr. X didn’t get his widget, you can’t trust anyone to do anything”. His son gazed proudly at the year old National Geographic he was reading. They were called and they both went in. His son was out in a couple of minutes but the small man didn’t make his exit for another forty-five minutes. Jesus.

During this time, I was treated to Patient #10(ish), a very big and stocky bloke falling asleep, snoring loudly for a few minutes before waking with a start, looking embarrassed and then repeating the pattern.

Eventually, my turn came and the doctor told me that I was unlikely to expire due to my illness but that I did have a nasty case of bacterial conjunctivitis and had also managed to pick up a chest infection. Nice. Prescriptions all round.

Let’s see… Antibiotics, fine. Eye drops. Eeeuuuugh, but I suppose it’s necessary. Eye ointment. WHAT? Eye Ointment? Ointment for eyes. Oh sweet Jesus. I’ll freely admit that I’m a complete eye-wuss. Even the thought of the drops was making me cringe and I believe that anyone that uses contact lenses is a freak, but ointment. Eye ointment. Make sure you rub it in well, now. What the hell are you supposed to do with eye ointment?

I declined the ointment and will make do with the drops, although I’m unsure how useful they are when I cry like a baby after applying them.

Oh yeah, I’m working from home… Tra lah lah.
Definitely working though… Lah di di.
Absolutely not skiving… Doo doo doo.
No chance that I’ll log on and then go back to bed… Doo di doo.
I’m definitely not posting blogs instead of working… Fah lah lah.
And I certainly won’t be sneaking off early to go to town and get pissed… Doodle doodle di.
Scooby dooby doo… Too rah loo rah loo rah… etc.

Has anyone watched this? Not that many I’d wager. Apparently it only drew viewing figures of 1.8 million for Channel 4 when it was aired last year. Why? Because it was shite. Absolute shite. Despite this however, I now read that a second series has been commissioned by C4 and that NBC in the US has commissioned a pilot for the American audience.

What? It seems so unfair that its creator, Graham Linehan, gets to churn out another series of this bile and gets the chance to milk the cash-cow in the States (and have you seen the American Office? - they don’t seem to be fussy over there).

Now, I thought that Father Ted was pretty good and I’m a big fan of Black Books, both of which credited Graham Linehan as a writer. I believe that the big difference here however is that he was in fact ‘co-writing’ these shows. I’d imagine that co-writing with Graham consists of saying “sorry Graham, but that’s not funny” eight hundred times a day. If you look closely at these shows, you can actually see which jokes are Graham’s. They’re the ones with the enormous pink neon signs behind them reading ‘THIS IS A JOKE’ in flashing letters. He’s incapable of subtlety or of making a character that isn’t a stinking great cliché.

For stinking-great-cliché-proof, just watch an episode of The IT Crowd. The company boss, ‘Denholm’ is an especially abhorrent example. Take a look at the script for episode one, Yesterday’s Jam. Jesus wept.

On The IT Crowd’s page of the Channel 4 site, you can read an interview with Graham…

On working on Father Ted:
That was as good as it gets. Insane as it sounds, we would literally come to work and laugh for an entire day. Actually, that is a misuse of the word literally. We didn’t actually just come in and laugh. We would tell jokes to each other, rather than just sit there and laugh at nothing for an entire day. I love people who misuse literally. ‘My head literally fell off’. I tried to put a few of them into The IT Crowd. Jen, at one point, says ‘I’d literally rather sleep with a rat’.
Everyone loves a good ‘literal-misuse joke’. Side-splitting.

On The IT Crowd:
The old-fashioned nature of the show is important to Linehan. He cites a recent interview with one of the doyennes of comedy over the last 20 years. “Victoria Wood recently said that old-fashioned style sitcoms were dead because The Office was so good, you can’t go back to studio sitcoms. So I kind of hope that this is proof that that’s not true.”
I don’t believe they’re dead but this isn’t the crash-cart that will kick them back into life.

So what is his assessment of The IT Crowd’s prospects? “My instincts are that it’s pretty good. I don’t feel that sense of embarrassment that I usually feel…

Hmmmmm.

Boy racers. Boy fucking racers. What a fucking annoying, ignorant, stupid, sub-human bunch of cunts they are. Why are they so fucking stupid? I don’t get it.

They spunk fucking stupid amounts of money on tarting up their shitty little Micras or Starlets or whatever. I personally know some (oh the shame) that have spent enough money on big fuck-off spoilers, hood scoops, body kits, shiny wheels and exhausts that you can fit your head into, that they could have actually bought a ‘real’ car and not be fucking about in their tiny-engined hatchbacks. It doesn’t matter how fucking loud the exhaust sounds, it’s still a fucking one-litre Micra that takes a fortnight to get to 60 miles an hour. Tossers.

Luckily for them though, these cunts are generally only interested in driving around in a circle in car parks. What a fucking ambition. Gather together outside Tesco on a Saturday night and drive around in a circle. Oooooh. Next stop, Formula fucking 1. Better still, have a number of your chav mates drive around in a circle at the same time. Fucking amazing. Then drive off on a convoy and park somewhere in the main street of your one-horse, many-pimped-micra town with your chav friends and have your big-chested, homely chav girlfriends hang their norks out the window. You’re so fucking cool, you fucking cunts.

I hate boy racers.

I’ve just provided a reference for someone. I’ve provided loads of references in my time but halfway though this one, it hit me how pointless it is. As I duly answered questions like ‘How would you rate this person’s initiative?” and “Does he work well in a team?”, it struck me that this five minutes was completely wasted. The very fact that I am talking to the nice HR person reading a script at the other end, means that the jobseeker has been so sure that I would say nice things, they have given my name as a reference.

How often do HR people do reference checks with referees given by jobseekers that are negative? If I thought that somebody would scupper my chances of getting a new job, I wouldn’t be giving their phone number to HR.

It would save at least four and a half minutes of each of these calls if the HR person simply asked “are you going to say anything bad about this person?”. If I answer “no”, we can both get about our business, content in the increased efficiency of the process.

Why do some people seem to like wearing the shirt-tie combo? I’ve come from a job in a company where wearing a shirt and tie was required and I despised it.

To be fair, a few years back, some colleagues and I had a silent rebellion against our then-manager and stopped wearing ties. For the few times before this, whenever someone had forgotten a tie, our then-manager would provide them with one that he kept in his drawer for such eventualities (he really was that much of a tosser). When our silent rebellion (which hadn’t been planned or talked through - it just happened) occurred though, and we all gave up on the tie thing at roughly the same time, I believe our then-manager knew how incredibly pissed off we all were with him and he didn’t say anything. No more ties for the rest of my tenure. Great.

I digress though. Here in my new company, a shirt and tie isn’t required. I think. Anyway, most people tend to wear jeans and tee-shirts. There are some however, that buck this trend and still go with the shirt/tie/trousers/shoes thing. Why? Is it a complete lack of imagination on their part? Do they enjoy having a restrictive tie, the most pointless of all garments/accessories, knotted around their necks? Is it that they’re ‘dressing for the job they want’ and emulating their superiors (because manager=tie)?

Pointless. Fucking pointless.

Dull Bloke here likes to wear a shirt and tie and frequently wears a nice, blue, woolly jumper over it. Fucking surprise!

Irish directions contain no absolutes. They are generally vague, ambiguous and completely relative to the point of view of the person giving them. I suspect it’s a hangover from a time when we didn’t need to go more than a mile or two from our homes to conduct any business that we may have had.

These directions were provided by the owners of the house at which I recently stayed in Roscommon. They are from the nearest ‘big town’.

• You’ll come to a roundabout - take a left.
  Usefully failing to mention that since the directions were written, a new roundabout has been inserted, with a left turn that leads to Tesco.
• Past the hotel.
• Take left at second roundabout.
  Actually third now, but never mind.
• Over bridge - follow road
  Useful
• Take left
• Follow road for six or seven miles
  I’m not travelling by donkey. I have an odometer. Is it six or is it seven?
• Through Village.
  No name is provided for this village and, although it is capitalised on the directions, it’s not actually called ‘Village’
• House on right a mile or two out. You’ll see the Roscommon flag.
  Very useful unless the damn flag has wrapped itself around the pole so tight that it has been rendered invisible. Still, at least this was an attempt an a landmark of sorts.
  

Please let me have a town name, a road number or something. Anything to let me know I’m on the right path. No more ‘go right at the tree and it’s a good walk from there’.

Well, I’m back from a few days helping some friends record their new album. Excellent progress made - 10 songs tracked and a couple of jams recorded too. Drums, guitar and bass all recorded. Good work. Long days and very long nights. Pretty grueling sessions. Lots and lots of beer. Late nights, no lie-ons. Well, no lie-ons for me anyway - my damn body clock wakes me no later than ten and won’t generally let me get back to sleep (it used to be even earlier but I believe it’s had pity on me since I’ve become a father).

Ten o’clock, I hear you shout, surely that constitutes a lie-on? Not if you got to bed four hours earlier after consuming a pond’s worth of Stella. It’s a young man’s game, that. A game that’s fine if you’re able to lie in the bed until two in the afternoon without a problem (as were my colleagues). Not so fine if you’re up and about at ten however.

This pattern was repeated for the duration of our stay. I wiled away these solitary morning hours before my colleagues’ rising by feeling like I was wearing someone else’s head, drinking a small plantation’s worth of tea and reading. Got to finish my book (the excellent John Banville’s “Eclipse“) and start a new one (the so far excellent “Fugitive Pieces” by Anne Michaels). I’ll long remember those woolly-headed, hungover mornings, shivering in the chilly conservatory (as it was the only sitting spot that wasn’t covered in beer bottles and fag-ash).

As to the recording, any ‘engineering’ I had was a doddle. The boys know what they’re doing so once levels were set and the record button hit, I usually had very little to do until the track was finished. A bit of rewinding/overwriting here and there. A bit of tweaking for the odd clip. A little shouting of ‘break now’ over the talkback if they weren’t 100% on the song. The occasional kicking of the Mac as Pro Tools complained about holding off interrupts or some such. Other than that, all I needed to do was press the right buttons at the right time. Easy-peasy.

And, contrary to my previous boasts, the time there was groupie and limo-in-duckpond free. The only vices on offer were beer, a little pot, some serious shite-talk and many, many cheese toasties. I’m sure Keith Richards would approve. I hear he loves a nice toasty.

Well, for the next few days, I’m off down the country. My interesting life means that I’ll be helping some friends record an album. Rather than a proper Led Zeppelin style, tiny picturesque cottage in Snowdonia or huge, fuck-off, tumbledown mansion however, I’ll be heading to wonderful, sunny Roscommon and a crappy, rented holiday home in the arse-end of nowhere.

This type of operation was performed before by my talented friends for their first album (sounds damn good and was pretty well received). This time they’ve asked me to pop along with them to help them engineer the thing. This is an overly impressive way of saying that I’ll press buttons, twiddle knobs and poke microphones into places.

I expect that there may well be some drinking involved too. I reckon that we may partake of a sweet sherry or two after a hard day’s recording (rock and roll types, you know) and I look forward immensely to that.

Anyway, I’ll be lucky if they have carrier pigeons where I’m going, much less a high-speed, broadband connection with which to make blog updates so this will be a post-free zone until Saturday or Sunday. Given the pretty sporadic nature of my posting, I doubt anyone will notice. On my return I’ll, no doubt, regale you with tales of groupies, class-A drugs and limos in duck-ponds.

Rock and Roll (I’m making devil’s horn signs with my fingers as I type)

Always. New year and the determination of everybody else to better themselves in some way through the magic of new year’s resolutions just starts to wear me down and I end up being depressed with my lot.

In fairness though, it’s really just my current employment situation that’s depressing me (see previous posts). It’s got me going through one of those Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall periods where I want to jack in my job, sell my housing-estate house and head off to some sort of mud-hut in the country to grow my own vegetables and eat more offal.

It’s possible I’m turning into a cliché. Or having a (slightly) early mid-life crisis.