It took me nearly three hours to get into work today. This was not all the fault of public transport. Quite a lot of it was the fault of my really poor sense of direction. It all went fairly swimmingly: walked to Islington (through my favouritely road-named bit of London. I think I might have some clerical obsession. What I really like is how whoever townplanned that bit of Islington got onto a real roll -- Prebend Street, St Paul Street, Canon Street, Rector Street -- and then someone else must have taken over, because just down the road there's Noel Road (where Joe Orton lived), Vincent Terrace, Graham Street, Gerard Road, Duncan Terrace, which is applying the same sort of dogged-themed approach but with an entirely different outcome. What is puzzling, however, is all the bits in between: Arlington Street, Packington Street -- where can those names have come from and what do they mean?), then hopped on a bus all the way to Hyde Park Corner, and then -- trusty A-Z in hand, I thought I'd traverse the backstreets of Chelsea to get to work, thinking it must be quicker than walking down Brompton Road. What I didn't take into account is that I'm completely stupid. I spent nearly half an hour walking around the same three roads (at point managing to navigate myself to a crossroads at which 3 of the roads where all called Chesham Place. How can that be?)but finally I am here and, heavens, was it worth the three hour journey? My heavens, no. But never mind.

Comptroller

Just going back to that NAO document for a moment, I notice that it's written by someone called a Comptroller. Looking Comptroller up in the Dictionary (of course, what else do I do all day) I see that its definition is actually Controller. Which means that this particular Civil Servant has just employed the fancy schmancy trick of adding letters to his job title to make him look more important. I like this. Although it does make the whole "verger"/clercial garb thing seem quite tame. Who would bother with the red and crimson garb of bishopric when you can just add a silent "m" and a silent "p" to your name (because yes, the first pronunciation of Comptroller is indeed "controller", although I can't do the phonetic alphabet here, so you just have to trust me).

Actually, who am I kidding. I really want a gold pointy hat. Being a Project Mampager would be no consolation for that.

Why oh why...

...do I ever get in to work early? I got here at 8am today, and it's just a license to do some More Mucking About because I'm totally lacking in the sense of urgency required for me to actually do some work.

I'm listening to the Candi Staton Fame recordings, which you can listen to a miniscule bit of here. Now there's a lady who kicks ass.

At the moment I'm having a bit of a Looking Like A Student Crisis. Yesterday I wore an old purple cardigan that I've not worn for ages, and I thought -- when I put it on -- "isn't it odd that the sleeves on this are quite long, when most of my cardigans and jumpers these days have three-quarter length sleeves". And within the hour I found that the sleeves were being pulled effortlessly over my hands, just like it was 1987 again, and I was walking around making little purple-wool fists and swinging my arms like an Indie Kid. Having failed to learn from this, today I'm wearing a fairly unattractive orange top with an ink stain that looks as if it's homemade but is actually from Spitalfields. This combined with general student demeanour (was actually carrying a Sainsburys carrier this morning as well, filled with shoes to take for reheeling (I know, I know, it's an obsession) and the general screwed-up nature of said bag didn't really help with the Cut-Throat Professional Look) meant that the Aged City Type sitting next to me seemed quite surprised to see me reading this, which is an oddly fascinating document if you're, erm, interested in the government's approach to risk management (and let's face it kids, it's a laugh a minute). Anyway, he'd have had more of a shock if I'd been reading the novel that I'm currently killing myself with. It is not, frankly, a barrel of monkeys. But if you've not read A Rebours then you really should, because that is great. However, it may all just be a matter of the torture of reading a badly translated novel ... or perhaps it's because I'm not that interested in devil worshipping and child mutilation. Funny that.

Eating Oranges At My Desk

Listening to Round the Horne while eating my tuna sandwich and contemplating an orange. I find RTH to be fascinating -- mainly just because it's so rude. And because it has those extraordinary songs in it. Oh I wish I'd been alive in the 60s.

Now everyone with a desk-based job and a long walk to the nearest sink will probably share my trepidation regarding Eating Oranges At Your Desk. It's really not an enterprise to be entered into lightly, because the resulting stickiness can be quite hampering and unpleasant, particularly if -- for instance -- your telephone rings mid-peel, and you're then caught in a stickyfingered situation that may require, for instance, using a pen or your computer keyboard, and which then obviously results in stickiness transference. Today I've had the foresight to equip myself with two napkins (one to rest orange on, one to wipe hands with) so I'm hoping the episode will pass without too much incident. But we shall have to see. I will of course be posting an update in case there are orange-related developments.

I was just about to say that not much has happened today, but I realise this is completely wrong. I've had the indignity of leaving a really long and complex message (with my phone number) on the wrong person's mobile phone -- which might not sound as exciting as last week's Crush Stalking (and that would be because it's not) but it is somehow notable. I do worry about my mental capacity/general competency. It's very odd -- I seem to be almost incapable of entering into normal transactions without leaving with my person somehow bruised or having broken something/left some very evident trace of incompetence. What's going to happen when I'm 70? I feel like I have such significant early-onset mental detioration that I just can't bear to imagine what I might be like in 40 years. Perhaps I'll have late-onset alertness and acuity -- that would be novel.

so that's what a verger is

clearly i've now become obsessed with this, but anyway, something just came flashing into my head and i thought i'd make a note of it here, before i forgot.

obviously, then, a verger in a church (like that man from Dad's Army) is the man who looks after the verge. now it all becomes clear. however, it's not very clear from the unnested Concise Oxford, because verger appears about four words away from verge(2) and so you have to be quite mental/have real tenacity to be spending so much time reading the dictionary as to notice that. or, if you're me, just have it come into your head, as if a bolt of lightning, while sorting out your paper recycling. because that's the sort of fascinating person I am folks. (if my work crush, who i was stalking today, was reading this, then this would clearly be a "Hi Girls" moment, revealing as it does my natural dullness. although i suppose the bit about going and staring at him today, just for kicks, would be more embarrassing. however, fairly safe to say that if he doesn't know i'm alive, he won't be reading my blog...

...i hope.)

little celebratory post

because I've just got a big bit of work out of the way, so am pausing for five mins before tidying my little OO and actually moving on and doing something a bit more interesting. however, i am afflicted somewhat by belly ache today, which is making me feel a little bit glum. not really sure what i think might be wrong with me, but feel like something is. harumph. really, to save myself endlessly discussing my downwardly spiralling moods on here, I should have some sort of graph, showing ups and downs. i wonder how you put pictures on here? probably need all sorts of mucking about with the template. oddly, i might be quite cheerful all of the time except for when i'm posting here. i wonder if there's a correlation between misery and blogging. i imagine there probably is, because the "how many people sitting on their own, typing into a web log form, are a little bit sad and unhappy" sum is not very hard to solve (even for maths dumbos like me); similarly the "how many people who are gallivanting through long ears of corn with their friends and several small but pleasant looking animals are very cheerful and having a good time" sum is also quite easy, especially when expressed in percentages.

The rainy grey sky is making me feel very sad (compounding belly ache misery). When the weather is nice, there's a general chatter in the V&A garden, which serves to remind me that I am really alive, and not just in some god awful state of suspended animation. But with the wind and rain, it becomes particularly imposing and miserymaking ... to which end, actually, it reminds me of college. And Cambridge on a grey&rainy day is just about the most miserable thing in the world (perhaps even more miserable than the V&A on a rainy day ... or, if you're me actually, Any Day). However, work misery should be over soon, in that I've got some things to do that I'm allegedly interested in and quite good at, so if I make a bit of an effort to improve my space here then perhaps it won't be so bad. However, something that really isn't helping is that I'm listening to bloody Late Junction which is (rather predictably) serving to piss me off even more. Oh, there's some dirgy acoustic singer-songer Live In The Studio singing all about how he promises something. Stop promising and go and write some proper songs, you miserable man ...

Just irritatingly lost an hour's work because my position of excessive reclining caused me to turn the mains off with my foot. The resulting misery and post-lunch malaise (what a heady cocktail) are making it somewhat difficult to concentrate ...

Anyway, there has been exciting activity today. Namely, some completely ineffectual stalking, which was meant to make the recipient aware of how extremely cool and fanciable I am, but in fact resulted in me hiding my face with my poncho for a bit and then looking in the opposite direction. Oh, and doing some giggling, like a 12 year old. I was pleased to notice that he totally ignored me; either this means he has failed to notice I'm alive (obviously extremely unlikely, given aforesaid cool fanciableness) OR it means that he is so smitten by love that he was unable to look at me, for fear of revealing a torrent of emotion from behind the library desk.

I wonder how much lame intrigue I can spin out of this. Hopefully a lot.

The wee smell in the corridor is fading but has been supplemented by the smell of wet old ladies, many of whom have been traversing the OO corridor this morning, doubtless all thinking as they walk past my office that Tony Manos has had a wee in the corridor. Unfortunately, wet old lady smell is quite like the smell of wee, so this isn't really a step in the right direction. Oh well.

Feeling oddly bouyant today and have just been excellently kick ass. There's a strange inverse correlation between how stupid and unconvincing my outfit is and how confident I am. Today, for instance, the considerable disadvantage of wearing matching/non-matching red spotty skirt and green spotty ribbon allowed me to lean back in my chair like a total twat and say "Well, I think you should see from January's documentation that it works like this", all smug and David Brent-like, whereas this time last week, when I was full of integrity and wearing my glasses, I left a very similar meeting and went and stood, almost literally, on the verge of tears (and I think that the verge of tears is one that looks over a motorway, rather than, for instance, a small grassy knoll that overlooks an ambling stream or a donkey sanctuary. Interestingly (sort of, if you like dictionaries as much as I do) I see that "verge" crops up as three different nouns in the dictionary, each with a different etymology and everything, rather than just being meaning variants. One of them is, brilliantly, "a wand or rod carried before a bishop or a dean as an emblem of office", which must be some kind of Catholic shenanigan employed with the soul aim of making important priests look brilliant (although perhaps deans aren't catholic? I can't remember. Seems suddenly urgently important that I found out however. My friend has a teddy bear called Dean, and it would be oddly fantastic if "dean" in this context didn't mean "the head of a chapter of a cathedral or collegiate church" and was in fact to do with her teddy bear carrying things to make himself look more important. Which is all getting a bit into the realm of Teddy Edward (and obviously not this one, although he is actually an Edwards ... which is weird enough as it means there's a real man called Edward Edwards. A bit like Alexander Alexander who went to my school.) Anyway, I'm all lost about where I am with my brackets now. Here's another for luck.)

Anyway, not much has happened, besides that. So I'm only partly sticking to my resolution, but at least I've written something. The corridor, of course, still smells of wee, but it seems definitely to be a fading type of smell, rather than an ever increasing one. About which I'm of course very happy. Now I just look like someone who weed in the corridor yesterday. Or perhaps, more accurately, smell like someone who weed themselves yesterday. But only when I'm standing in the corridor, because I don't actually smell of wee.

Developments

Although I realise it's entirely fickle not to post for several months and to then, berserkedly, post twice in one day, that is what I'm doing. This perhaps attests to my unsuitability for relationships (although I don't think I've ever been in a relationship where I've not spoken to the person for over two months. That would be quite odd. Unless it was one of those relationships you didn't know you were in. Like, for instance, one in which you were being stalked. And I am of course using the term "relationship" in its best Cosmopolitan magazine meaning of the world, because obviously relationships are many and varied and not just of the love/mild fancying kind, and in which case it would be perfectly legitimate to not speak to people for a period of up to, say, a year and still consider yourself to have a relationship with them. Or ... well, actually, I'm going to stop this micro-pedantry now, but I could go a long way with this, if I didn't actually have a job that I was supposed to be doing now, because there is also the area of "bad relationships" that could be covered at some length and, erm, anyway ...)

So yes, the reason for aforesaid berserk activity is that I've got a new link friend. As only about two people in the world currently link to me, this is a development indeed. What is most developmental about it, is that my linkee has a sort of proper blog, not just a nutty/self-referring one like mine. Which is somehow a bit frightening. I mean, the reason I'm writing this is ... well, I don't actually know, but the idea of people reading it makes me feel quite unwell. So perhaps I should stop writing it then. Given recent rate of productivity, stopping would clearly not be a chore at all. But perhaps I might stop my Blog Refusing for a bit then and become a Blog Embracer. If I tried really hard to have one interesting thing to contribute every day, then perhaps OO life would be better. Although the life/worth living equation does spring to mind somewhat if I'm in a position of actively trying to find just the one interesting thing every day. Anyway, let's not make rash promises, let's just see...

Wee Smells in the Corridor

The problem with having to give each entry a title is that I tend to write the title first, which then reveals everything I'm then going to write about. Were I doing this for work, I'd write the title last, and spend a little while thinking about it. I'd also probably make some effort to make it interesting. I think the fact that neither is the case should give me some pause. However, I suppose if I were doing this for work I'd be presuming that someone else was going to read it, whereas the whole point and problem of this OOJ malarkey is that not only do I not have anyone to talk to, here in my little den of project-plan misery, but I don't have anyone to read my web log either -- so it's just a self-perpetuating circle of dullness.

(I've actually had a bit of a revelation as to why this is the worst job in the world for me to do. As an, ahem, "extrovert" I get my energy from my environment, rather than within myself. [This is obviously supposing that the Myers-Briggs Personality Type malarkey is entirely true and not just something invented by people who want to make lots of money from dispensing training and development in the work place.] Despite this being a rather unflatteringly shallow assessment, it is, unfortunately, completely accurate. My complex inner life is neither so complex or inner. By the way, I do rather like the description here of "acting before thinking". I believe a less damning expression may be "spontaneous". Were my person-to-person interaction ratio higher, perhaps my web log would also be more interesting. Although, actually, there is much more I could say, but I am too much of a coward to do so.)

But to digress, as may be apparent, the corridor outside my office smells of wee today. This is particularly unfortunate, not because I can smell the wee, but because as the only person who sits in this corridor it may arise that people who walk through think that I've weed in the corridor. As very few people walk through, and those who do think that my name is Tony Manos, I suppose I shouldn't really waste time worrying about this. At worst, some people might be thinking that Tony Manos smells of wee (and he doesn't. Or at least, he didn't when he had this office, that I know for sure). And anyway, everyone would know that if you were going to choose a corridor to wee in, there would be no way you'd choose the one directly outside your own office.