Day 260: I Am Injured

Regular readers will be aware that I am, for the time being, living in Amsterdam and working in a job. Because I do not want to look like a tourist, I own a second-hand bike that carries me about the place, as that is what you do when you live in Amsterdam and want to blend in. (You also wear clogs all day and carry bunches of tulips. This is the absolute truth.)

But I am not Dutch! I was not born in one of the carts that Dutch children are bicycled around in; I was not brought up on the back of a tricycle; I never amused myself by balancing on friends' handlebars and I cannot ride my bicycle with one hand whilst juggling, weaving in and out of bollards and adjusting my headphones, as the Dutch can. (The last time I rode a bicycle properly was 1987, when the fastest route to school involved cycling round Hammersmith Broadway. "Did you cycle round Hammersmith Broadway today?", Monkeymother would ask, shining a pocket torch in my eyes. "No!", I would yelp. "You are lying!", she would then shriek, before beating me to a pulp with a rolled up copy of The Independent.)

I am therefore cautious on my bicycle. I indicate with my arms to show the other bicyclists where I am going; cars frighten me, despite the fact that I KNOW that they are more scared of people on bicycles than we are of them. (It is something to do with the law here: even if a bicyclist rides into your parked car whilst looking you in the eye and and pointing at the bonnet they have directed their front wheel at, you will be blamed and subsequently executed.)

But not cautious enough, it appears. For on Tuesday evening I was bicycling home and a car growled behind me. I swerved and fell; had you seen the incident from a long away, you might have mistaken me for an elephant tumbling off a unicycle. Two kind men appeared through a window. "Are you OK? We will pick up the bike for you and brush it down! Nothing is broken, yes? Please twist about your ankle this way and that for us to make sure." And then they sent me home. "Have a nice evening!", they said, as the nice Dutch people do sometimes.

It isn't broken, but the usual things apply.

Bad things about spraining your ankle:

1. Immobile. Unable to walk, cycle or move much
2. Hot swelling, strange scab; looseness that implies something fleshy has snapped
3. Bed sores
4. Concern that will not be able to visit pathologist in case leg explodes in the air
5. Cry with vile self-pity when nice lady gives me hug**

Good things about spraining your ankle:

1. Immobile. Unable to walk, cycle or move very much.
2. Hot swelling, strange scab
3. Looked after like stupid dog by nice people in office
4. Driven to and from work by a tiny Dutchman called Ralph
5. Drugs
6. Bruise that makes people scream like girls, even if they see it in a photograph:



Please note: this is the censored version. The full show includes a hole the size of a 50p piece - and many more besides!












Anyway, if that's made you feel sick, here's a picture of the work dog sitting on my work computer on my work desk:



















And if that hasn't helped, maybe you could put your mind to the following conundrum: at what point did The Quality Hotel in Altrincham (not 'quality', by any means; "Any chance of a double bed?" "No.") think that this looked like a good deal?






















* Visitors to Amsterdam: GET OUT OF THE FUCKING WAY OF BIKES, you CRETINS.

** A very bad word. Like 'cuddle', it gives a pleasant thing thing a very, very bad name.

Day 258: I Am Offered Another Fifteen Minutes

I am no stranger to fame! Incidences include:

1. Television film for Channel Four in 1983, in which I wear a school uniform and pretend to be a twelve year old Mason, accompanied by my oldest friend as Main Lead;

2. Frightful lunchtime fashion programme hosted by Paula Hamilton, in which I wear trousers, c. 1994;

3. Something ghastly to do with the Clothes Show, c. 1992;

4. Her Ladyship in The Dresser, 1989;

5. Model"* in 'charity fashion show' at Loughborough University, at which I find a Post-It note stuck to the wall with the words "Non-workingmonkey. Bad hair", c. 1993

6. Prostitute in red velvet riding habit in weird Czech play directed by halfwit, 1989;

7. Rolf Harris impersonator, After Magritte, 1990;

8. Spied on by bloodsucking Guardian journalist, c. 1995.

It therefore came as no surprise to find an electronic mail earlier today from a man asking me to be in a television programme. (Well, a live stream on ITV.com, to be more accurate.) I have no doubt that many others have been sent the same email, and I am sure that they will agree that it was very nice, and that they too were informed that the "project is long form, and aims to show (over the course of a few months) exactly how a blogger’s day-to-day life informs their blog and vice versa."

I imagine the author is bespectacled, in his mid-twenties and occasionally sent out to buy coffee for everyone. (Either that, or he is a BAFTA-award winning documentary maker whose work I have missed because I have been watching endless episodes of Arrested Development and cracking pistachio nuts in my teeth). But he is obviously not an idiot: "I’m not sure if you actually genuinely ARE unemployed", and I like the sound of him very much. (I did not like the sound of Knobby The Knob from London Lite. Some of you Will Know To Whom I Refer.)

I don't think** I'm going to do it, mind you. I'm not that interesting, I talk too fast and I dislike the thought of myself full screen at a three-quarters angle squeaking "Well, nothing much happens, really", whilst scratching my elbow and chewing on a small clay pipe. But my real reluctance comes from something altogether more simple: I'm vain and I'm a snob, and I don't want to be thought of as the sort of person who wants to be on television.


* I use the term loosely.

** In my country, we call this "keeping our options open". I might do it if people who aren't knobs do it. For e.g, if it is me, someone who writes about their therapy, someone who writes about their children a lot, someone who describes their every act of self-love (with pics), someone under the age of eighteen!!! who loves smileys!! :-) and her friends!!!!, and someone whose every word is clenched full with a cascade of burnished confused metaphor (like a butterfly emerging hummingbird-like from the rotting corpse of a bison), and compressedly over-wrought language in which the dripping pearls of pain creep down the dessicated pages of their self-realisation, I'm DEFINITELY in.

Day 256: I Do Not Like The Beatle

I am in the middle of an aggressive and tiresome fight with a pathologist that involves trying to identify The Most Embarrassing Song In The World. We have been at it for weeks and will continue for months, but in the meantime I have made two discoveries:

1. Lionel Richie likes to act at the beginning of his videos;
2. Paul McCartney is embarrassing.

I am already looking forward to many comments about the White Album and Sgt Pepper. I am almost certain that they will include words and expressions like "seminal", "Cilla Black", "Liverpool", "changed the face of music" , "his children had a normal upbringing" and "no-one deserves Heather Mills". I do not necessarily disagree, but the fact remains that McCartney is a bit of a knob. He's not a bad person, I don't think, but he does embarrassing things like set up schools for the performing arts (in and of themselves embarrassing), do "V for victory" signs, write songs about frogs and do duets with Michael Jackson. And he, like Richie, likes to act in the beginning of his videos.

It only remains for me to suggest that you watch these videos. I then guarantee that you will be unable to look me in the eyes with your eyes and tell me that I am wrong. (Even if you do as we do and listen to the songs without watching the videos, you will be on the floor sobbing before the hour is out. It's the lyrics, you see.)

A gentle start, involving amusing facial hair:



I particularly enjoyed Paul and Linda's acting in this. Please look out for Jackson's line "I'll try one!".



I hate this song more than almost anything else in the world, apart from "The Story of the Blues" by The Mighty Wah. But hey - there's good and bad in everyone, kids!



In this ever changing world in which we live in, the characterful bouncy keyboard bit will be making me retch for the rest of eternity.



Regular readers may also be interested to know that the photograph of McCartney used above is from a site that calls on people to "boycott Canada". I am not sure how one boycotts Canada (refuse to listen to Joni Mitchell? Never watch The man with two brains again? Stop making jokes about beavers?), but I for one will not be boycotting Canada. If I did, I would have no-one to watch Lionel Richie videos for.

Day 255: I Go To A Two Year Old's Birthday Party

I have just looked at this photograph, taken earlier today, and noticed something strange. Can you see it too? Something that shouldn't be on a table with sugar- and potato-based traditional birthday party comestibles?

As ever, no prizes, but I will tell you if you guess correctly. And no, it's not the cow.

Day 252: I Receive A Mysterious Note

I like being non-working. I don't mean literally not employed, or drawing on the dole with a crayon, or sponging off kind benefactors; non-working (as regular readers will be aware) is a state of mind; a state of mind in which one is constantly aware that everything else is more important than what happens in the office.

In fact, it is often more than OK (and usually necessary) to go to work to earn money, or to keep your mind lively, or (in the very best of circumstances) to do something you enjoy with people you enjoy working with. But work is fraught with danger, and in the choppy seas of happy working relationships lurk the sharp fins of psychotic cunt-dom, ready to slice off the limbs of decency and disable the flippers of reason.

I have worked with people who have shades of cunt about them; a tint, perhaps, about the sideburns. I have met those who leave a waft of cockmonkey behind when they leave the room. I have seen people behave like cunts whilst knowing that really, they are not cunts at all. I have seen people get away with being cunts because they are very good at what they do, or spectacularly bright, or extremely funny (and sometimes, all three at once). But to come across someone who is a cunt for the sake of it is like finding a Dodo in your dry cleaning.

The story isn't interesting, so I won't tell it*. I had to go for a walk. I whistled a bit (for, as everyone knows, it is impossible to cry if you are whistling), remembered that I was "a freelancer", looked at the canal for a bit and wondered if my new suitcase would fit in the overhead locker.

And then I went back to my desk and I found a mysterious yellow Post-It note written in an unfamiliar hand. And the Post-It note said this:

THIS IS SPORT
NOT WORK

REMEMBER.

UR A NON WORKING
MONKEY.

X.

A rare combination of amusing, kind and heartening! It is difficult to find this combination in the life, let alone in the workplace, left anonymously and with no signature. I do not think it was the cleaner (who wipes our desks with an oily rag and refuses to load the dishwasher); it would not have been the 25-year-old French Nick Drake lover; it was not, I know, the Roman with the broken printer, for his hand loops and swirls in a rococo style and the anonymous writing was more straightforward.

Perhaps the leaver of the note will make themselves known; perhaps they will not. In the meantime, I will keep the Mysterious Note about my person at all times, and refer to it when I forget to be essentially non-working in my heart.



* "Why start now?", I hear you squeak.