Strange career advice

Not sure who left the comment on my last post (anyone?) but I am perplexed as to how they think appearing in a porn mag perused by the boss could possibly be fast-track to career advancement...?

Admittedly, if they wanted to sack you for a sideline in boob-flashing it would be tricky.

"It has come to my attention..."

You mean you were flicking through a porn mag, boss? How interesting.

Chunky ankle horror

All this running around at weekends is giving me messy legs (bramble scratches, scuffs and bruises). Drat. I also have creeping paranoia that I'm developing thick ankles from the rough terrain. Hitherto, these had been my pride and joy, inherited from my dear twig-like mother (in the genetic rather than "last will & testament" sense, you understand).

Saints preserve us. I'm in danger of breaching one of the two crucial body-image rules, being:

The shapeliness of your leg is dictated by whether you have decent ankles. Fat knees? Who cares! As long as your ankles are slender, it doesn't matter if your thighs chafe.

Of course, the other rule is still my favourite:

You're not really fat all the time your boobs stick out further than your belly.

Observe this and marvel at my wisdom.

Haircut

Spooky. All the partners at work seem to have had haircuts this week. Is there some follicular conspiracy afoot, or is it just a special offer at the local barber?

Apparently the gentlemen of the office have two barbers to choose from on Farringdon Street: the one where you get a soft-core porn mag, and the other one where you get a slightly harder-core porn mag.

Do boys really get off on looking at tits while someone cuts their hair? How odd.

City shorts - the debate rages

I have been contemplating the City Shorts phenomenon for some time, when by coincidence Rach commented on the whole affair. Seems that they are still something of an oddity in Edinburgh, although they're spreading like a tweedy rash down here in the smoke.

A quick straw poll of the office (Julia, who sits opposite me) determined that the critical aspects are:

1. Cuff width: wide'n'baggy or tight'n'skinny?
2. Boot heel height (boots are essential, to avoid looking like Dick Whittington): too high and it looks nasty, too low and you look like you're in plus-fours
3. Knees: should they be exposed? If so, should they be flesh, patterned, or opaque?

And if any of these critical aspects are wrong, the whole look crashes into FASHION DISASTER. On the whole, it seems to be a quagmire to be avoided. But given my love of boots (and - oh my! - did we see the spats and gaiters in the paper this morning???) I yearn to be able to carry off a boots look that doesn't resemble the worst excesses of Staines High Street on a Saturday night.

Whining and dining

Saw an odd man on Doncaster station yesterday evening. He was dressed in identikit businessman fashion (pinstripe suit, leather briefcase, waterproof jacket), but kept walking past other people on the platform and peering at them very closely.

And then I got on the train and had a half bottle of wine with dinner to dispell this unnerving experience.

Am deeply troubled about the proposal to ban alcohol on trains. Perhaps they could ban certain traveller/alcohol combinations:

• hooded top/diamond white
• school uniform/vodka straight from the bottle
• football shirt/anything at all

and allow the nice girl in suit/bottle of wine combo to go unmolested...?

Quandry

One of the partners at work came in wearing the most beautiful suit yesterday. The jacket neckline was cut in that elegant wide way that I have been seeking for ages, that I know works on me.

"I like that suit" I said, in a not-at-all-sychophantic kind of way.
"Thank you," she said, "I got it in Hobbs the other day"

Dilemma: Do I...?
A: BUY THE SUIT - (it would really suit me!) - and
(i) Not worry about it - she'll not even notice
(ii) Pretend someone bought it for me as a surprise gift - what a coincidence! Goodness me!
(iii) Hide under the table every time she approaches

B: NOT BUY THE SUIT - she's bound to notice, and think I'm some creepy mini-me - and continue to sport inferior suitage.

Teeter teeter...

So, fresh from my doughnut dinner (it's late, I'm hungry, I already finished my wasabi peas), I poke through the cash position of poor little Pepper Ltd.

Have to say: it's looking precarious. My plans for doing something unrelated to work this weekend (for once) may all come crashing down around me, as the company's plans for staying solvent come crashing down around it.

What's the betting? Anyone want odds on survival past the end of this week?

What's the point? And other questions...

You know those kind of "Notes and Queries" questions about life, the universe and everything?

Well, unlike the usual discussion sites (which merely serve for smartarses to show off and weirdos to spout forth on subjects they know nothing about) this site has a panel of philosophers from universities on both sides of the Atlantic to answer such questions as:

"Loyalty. Is it unethical to move loyalty to another sports team just because the current team you're rooting for isn't doing well?"

And the answer is...
... you didn't actually think it would be that easy, did you?

Duncan's Doughnuts

Symptomatic of how desperate things have become in the office (far too many people working into the early hours) was the ludicrous excitement prompted by the news that Duncan had gone for doughnuts.

It spread like the latest gossip scandal across the open-plan desks: Duncan's gone for doughnuts! Duncan's gone for doughnuts! (Doubly exciting was the realisation that this event coincided, quite by chance, with Amit fetching the coffees in)

And then he returned. The reception of the England cricket team on their Ashes tourbus was frankly a muted and downbeat affair compared to the sea of waving, pleading humanity that greeted the Krispy Kreme-laden hero.

And now I sit here: powder on my keyboard, jam on my chin, caffeine and sugar pumping through my veins. It ought to be illegal.

Nobby rocks the boat

So Nobby's sweating and table-jabbing has got the company's management all worked up and wobbly. They think they need to appoint receivers.

At about 11pm last night it was looking like the directors would hit the button this afternoon. But now a twist: the head of corporate lending in one of the two banks involved says he'll lose his job if this company goes down. So he wants it to limp on a bit further.

This is a good thing - tanking the company today would lose the opportunity of potentially selling bits of it (not to mention seriously damaging my weekend plans).

So we struggle on.

Hell must be something like this

Have just spent two hours in a meeting with one of the most grating personalities I have ever encountered. He (let's call him "Nobby") is a professional Northerner (although I was officially meeting him in his capacity as a business advisor), with a great line in Northern endearments. He scattered these about in a manner he obviously considered charmingly down-to-earth, but which came across as condescending.

Call me humourless, but referring to the female partner as "chuck" and the female director as "petal" seemed a tad belittling to me.

And (see Rach's comments on asymmetrical sweating) when he sat back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head (a frequent manoeuvre, given the "Great Man" image he was striving to project), "Nobby" revealed a single sweat patch under his right armpit only. Probably a result of all that dismissive gesturing.

His way of speaking manages to make him sound like a badly exaggerated character role in a crummy detective drama. He also does a good line in banging the table with each syllable. For example:

"These numbers only came to light once the big man from [Northern Town] showed up."
[lean back in chair, hands behind head, sweat patch a-go-go - prepare for coup de grace:] "They've been RUNNING [drub-drub] RINGS [bang] A-[prod]-ROUND [crash] YOU[plonk]!"

See? He even talks about himself in the third person.
Get back on that bloody M1.

[And no, before you ask, they had NOT been running rings around us. More of his poxy propaganda.]

Seethe seethe

Cheesily the Best

Looky here, good people, at The Cheese Society's website.

Can you conceive of anything better than having cheese delivered to your house? Like a kind of Rotten Milkman. Now all I need is The Cracker Society and The Pickle Society to get their act together...