Feindishly Addictive Little Sweets

We have a new bag of sweeties in the office, a bag which I reckon won't be there by the end of the week. I am working my way through them at quite a rate between changing toner and putting disc after disc of software onto a laptop for a science teacher. Sugar Land Soft Fruits, they're called. I have no idea where they're from but the bag is enormous, more of a sack, really, and the cherry ones are especially toothsome. I bet I would make a very pleasant snog at the moment, as I have eaten about ten of them today, and that's just cherry ones.

That aside, it's business as usual at work. School is back in and with it comes all the work I had spent the last two weeks forgetting about. Students missing passwords, weird problems that for some reason can't be solved by me but easily by Andy by doing exactly the same things and a printer that I had to totally take apart in order to remove a paper jam. It's all quite fun. Played some bad bass last night, though. Less fun.

In fact, I feel a bit, I dunno, grouchy. The cut in pay is beginning to show a little, and I am wondering about the wisdom of my new car at quite this period in my financial history, but what's done is done. It's very comfy and I like being able to park without knackering myself. Still can't park anywhere, though. I live on one side of a square arrangement of streets, and my corner is literally lousy with cars, all the time. Other side of the square of streets is more often than not empty. Explain that.

Anyway. Bad bass was probably what put me in a poor state of mind, and being in a room whilst the other five members of my bad went on and on and on and on about the bloody football didn't help. Text messages were arriving at a rate of one a minute bearing scores and opinions from other people who were wasting their few precious years on this Earth watching 22 hired hands in matching shirts kick a ball up and down for 90 minutes. I really can't explain what it is I find so annoying about it, apart from the fact that when it is almost everyone I know that goes on about it, the overall effect is a little alienating. I say a little. I mean very, very, very alienating.

Because it means I can't join in. Football and cars are the subjects men bond over, and although I was quite the petrolhead in my youth, I now have no interest in cars beyond their ability to get me from point A to point B, possibly stopping at C on the way for a cup of tea and to stretch the legs. And football has never interested me, never. It never will, either. I didn't grow up with it, and the ephemera (shouting mostly, but also the deployment of half the county's police for every home game, which I have to pay for despite having never been, not going this time and having no intention to ever go in the future) hack me off, too. I can think of little I care less about. Maybe gardening. Perhaps I am jealous of how enthusiastic people can be over something like that, where I have no such object for my enthusiasms. Perhaps, but my friends and I used to talk about music, films, general rubbish. It was nice. Now they talk about football whilst I read a book, chew my fingernails and leave.

Not liking football makes me a social leper. It's the first question almost all men (except me) ask of all other men (except me) - 'What's your team?' Say 'ain't got one', and the look at you like you have admitted to being Martin Bormann, or not using toilets on principle. I dread it. This is why I mostly prefer to talk to women, I think. They have their own social canards, canards far more cannardy than football ever can hope to be, but I am exempt from them to begin with. Unlike this new orthodoxy.

Imagine a world where the biggest leisure pursuit was embroidery. People would embroider at home, buy the latest needles and threads and talk with their colleagues and peers about it. Professional embroiderers would compete for speed and neatness as millions watch and many more pass expert judgement on the needlework and style. It would be the prime catalyst of human interaction, talked about in pubs and houses across the land. Whole channels are dedicated to the latest embroidery news, and commercials are themed to catch the interest and buying ambitions of those embroidery fans. Of course, there would be a dark side, and embroidery clubs would foster great rivalries spanning hundreds of years which could so readily spill over into animosity, unkind works and even violence based solely on a person's preference of embroiderers. Despite the tragedies and the loss, no-one would ultimately question the wisdom of embroidery being a channel for society's innate violence; after all, so many people love embroidery that if a politician is to be taken seriousl as a real person (and that's terribly important these days) they have to express a dedication to their local embroidery team. Embroidery, Britain's national pastime.

Sounds stupid, right? Gah! Gah! Well, I am just grouchy. Besides, I have a dental appointment to attend, and I just know I'm gonna be drilled. Again.

Gah!

Again.

Good Night, and Good Luck
Doug