The function of disease in office politics

What I should be doing today*:

Working out who my party wall neighbours are, and writing them all letters

What I am actually doing today:

Staring vacantly at my screen, hands slumped uselessly over keyboard, with the gathering certainty that the aches I had attributed to sleeping in a strange bed** this weekend are in fact not unconnected with the incipient sore throat, headache and discomforting itch just behind that bit between my nose and my eyes.

Bugger.

So far in this job, I have taken one day off ill, and that was spent mainly asleep on my sofa, waking only to vomit; a fully-justified, couldn't-make-it-onto-the-tube-if-I-tried, cast-iron sickie.

The common cold, however, presents a more ambiguous challenge: how bad does a cold have to be before using it as your reason not to come into work crosses the line from "malingering" to "shielding all your colleagues from your debilitating germs"? Does the fact that my boss took a day off last week for that very reason - and quite possibly passed on her infection to me, in fact - set a precedent?

What if I were to awake tomorrow, feel even more rubbish than I normally do at 7.30am, decide to let discretion be the better part of valour, spend a restful day in front of the telly and then feel even worse the next day? How do you know when a cold has peaked? Should I just mainline some Berocca, be a woman and get on with it? Can I persuade Mr P to make me a vat of chicken soup? Do they even sell boiling fowl in Finchley Road Waitrose?

* apart from what my employers pay me to do, that is
** ...no, can't be bothered to come up with a gag

Things Sarah Beeney never tells you

I've had all sorts of good blogging intentions this week.

I was going to write about the malaise of middle-class boozing (summary conclusion: it's not just me who drinks too much, then).

I was going to write about the sparkly new John Lewis Food Hall* (summary conclusion: fancy Waitrose seduces middle classes with cheese room).

I was going to write nostalgically about the tragic news that the BBC is selling off Television Centre** (actually I may yet get around to that).

But in fact, in an audacious attempt to make this the most middle-class blog ever, I'm going to have a good old moan about People, And The Outrageous Fees They Charge.

When we embarked upon the incipient maelstrom of upheaval and spiralling expense that is our planned flat refurb (aka "gutting 1974 interior of Victorian building and starting again), we naively thought that the only real fees for which we were going to have to stump up would be those going to our architect.

Ha.

As we move into the phase of "oh my god, this is actually going to happen really quite soon", we face the prospect of: an asbestos survey (£580 + VAT); legal fees of about a grand (+ VAT); £300 (+ VAT) for some muppet just to draw up a "lease plan", whatever that is; and now a slew of party wall surveyors quoting anything from £105 per hour (+ VAT) to £800 (+ VAT) per neighbour to sort out our eponymous party wall issues.

Which doesn't sound so bad until you realise that potentially we have up to 10 (count 'em) lots of people who could be defined as neighbours (leaseholders, freeholders, tenants - we've got the lot). And before you ask, no, we don't live next door to a squat. Or indeed a houseful of room-sharing Antipodeans***.

I know everyone has to earn a living and all that, but bloody hell - £800 (+ VAT) for writing a letter?

And another thing: why in god's name do lawyers, surveyors, roofers, builders and pretty much anyone else remotely connected with the property or building trade insist on quoting their fees less VAT? Is it just to fool us, the clueless and gullible lay public, into thinking we're paying less than we actually are for the honour of their services? Is it in anticipation of our being able to claim the VAT back (my knowlege of UK tax law being limited to: it comes out of my salary every month, I don't even know if this is possible but it sounds vaguely familiar)? Seriously, anyone who can shed light on this seemingly pointless convention is more than welcome to do so.

And we haven't so much as lifted the carpet yet.



* actually I was going to do this one last week but kept getting side-tracked. By, y'know, work and stuff.
** by the way, how heartening to see Newsnight's own Paul Mason on the picket line there. Live Working or Die Fighting, indeed.
*** no stereotype left unturned here.

Gruesome Twosome

I've long had a soft spot for Paul McCartney. He's always been the least cool Beatle, everyone else hates him (I'm contrary like that), and not least because we share a birthday. This tendresse has weathered a lot of things - Pipes of Peace, his refusal to relinquish the hair dye at the age of 65, the mind-bogglingly ill-advised decision to marry Heather Mills - even his apparent tendency to take himself far too seriously has never really put me off.

Until now. The Observer's weekly marketing email (which I seem to receive to multiple email accounts despite unsubscribing myself more times than I can remember) trumpets that:

Beatles legend, Paul McCartney, chose Pete Doherty to interview him in a World Exclusive for Observer Music Monthly. Only trouble was we had to get Pete out of rehab first...

Is it true? Of everyone alive, of all available interviewers in any country on the planet, Paul McCartney chose that overrated, publicity-loving waster twat Doherty? And they got him out of rehab in order to do so? Bloody hell, Paul - I'd have had a chat with you for them and it wouldn't have been half so much trouble.

Either the Observer's publicity department has really excelled itself, or McCartney and I are officially OVER. Next birthday I shall be thinking only of Delia Smith and Alison Moyet instead.

Past caring

Logging onto my Hotmail account (the sensible one I give out to people who might raise an eyebrow or two at this "Pashmina" lark) this morning, my attention was caught by Microsoft's cheery, in-no-way-advertisement-led 30 Things To Do Before 30 list. Or more specifically by the news (to me at least) that thirty is in fact when the light dies.

Now I went to the Dylan Thomas Centre recently, and I'm really quite sure that Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night was written for his dying father, whose thirtieth birthday at the time was but a distant memory.

By now suitably offended that MSN thinks my best years are behind me, I turned to the list itself.

1) Go travelling
I get on the tube from Zone 2 into Zone 1 every weekday morning. This week alone I have been to Oxford, Bournemouth and (by the end of today) Cambridge. I have journeyed.

2) Get something published
Had a comic poem in my school magazine at the age of 11. Next!

3) Watch these films
A list composed by a 19-year-old boy with a DVD collection entirely composed of free giveaways from the Daily Mail. Not that there's not merit in some of them (Grosse Pointe Blank, for a start), but you'd have to pay me to see American Pie, let alone endure any more of Lord of the Rings than the 6 hours I've already had to sit through.

4) Live in London
Thanks, I already do. Possibly not the most practical suggestion for everyone, though. Like we need more 20somethings chasing the same starter flats and being ripped off by the buy-to-let market.

5) Learn a second language
Isn't that what school was for?

6) Run a Marathon
Yeah. Right.

7) Drive the Pacific Coast Highway
I've actually done this one. But I not until I was 31.

8) Have sex
Included, apparently, because a whopping 7% of 30-year-olds are virgins.

9) Go to a music festival
I got my GCSE results in a phonebox at one, thanks. Any way, is there anyone in the country who hasn't been to Glastonbury by now?

10) Try different foods
Bringing "inane" to a whole new level

11) Get on the propety ladder
Ha ha ha ha ha. See 4)

12) Test yourself
They think "Skydiving, abseiling, bungee jumping". I think spelling and times tables. Former OK, latter a bit ropey, but hey - that's what calculators are for.

13) Visit Paris
What's wrong with New York?

14) Blow £500 in one night
But not if you're at all interested in 11).

15) Get a savings account... and use it!
Ahhh... now I see how you're going to manage 14). Clever.

16) Do something for charity
Worthy, but you'd think they'd covered this back at 6).

17) Get yourself on telly
Please, no. Every teenager in the land must have been through the portals of a prime-time ITV reality show already. Back in my day it was kids' panel games on Children's BBC.

18) Eat at a Michelin-starred restaurant
That savings account really is taking a hammering.

19) Quit your job
Inimical to quite a lot of the above, I'd have thought...

20) Go to a live sporting event
Don't bother with Spurs, though. We're rubbish this season.

21) Have a weekend in New York.
Paris not good enough for you now?

22) Read these books
A number of places below movies, and rather a similar list as it happens. I remain unconvinced that The Beach is on a par with Great Expectations, however.

23) Own a convertible
Don't let Al Gore hear you say that.

24) Buy something really expensive
Anyone would think this whole exercise was just about persuading people to spend more money. Oh...

25) Buy wine worth more than £50
But preferably during that trip back at 13), where it'll cost you about a tenner

26) Sign up to Facebook
So that we can take over the WORLD

27) Record your family history
Original. Oh, wait -

28) Sing karaoke
Badly.

29) Have a complete health check
Because apparently "you don't have to be old to get a serious illness". Slowly losing the will to live may not count.

30) Climb a mountain
No, climb every mountain.

So, 29-year-olds, you've got a busy few months ahead before middle age claims you for its own.

That Facebook dilemma in full

These days it might be more popular than MySpace, but come with me, back in time, back to early July - a time when underworked columnists throughout the land were filling their daily word count quota by marvelling at the zeitgeist-defining qualities of social networking websites...

[screen goes all wobbly and hazy]

You still with me? Jolly good.

Reasons why I should join Facebook:
1) lots of people I know are on it;
2) it would be yet another thing over which to obsess;
3) Mr P is on it and my joining would really piss him off;
4) erm..

Reasons why I should not join Facebook:
1) lots of people I used to know are on it;
2) it would be yet another thing I wouldn't have time to do*;
3) I would become fixated with not having enough 'friends'***
4) I would have to be on the interwebnet under my real name

This last would be less important if I had a name like, for example, Jane Smith. Then I could be one of those people who have profiles on Facebook but no photo, and anyone idly looking me up would be left to muse to themselves "ooh I wonder if it's that Jane Smith, the dazzlingly intelligent and lambently beautiful one I used to go to school/university/Saturday morning drama club/the roller disco with?", and, crucially they would never know.

But with my name, all anyone who could remember how to spell it would have to do would be to type it in and - ta-dah! - there I'd be, complete with inevitably unflattering photo, risibly out-of-date "status" and dismal Scrabble score. A hollow simulacrum of my life, unfurled on a web page, for anyone I'm not brave enough to reject as a 'friend' to see.

Shudder.

And more to the point, even if I had persuaded myself that Facebook was the way forward, it's too late. Either you've been on Facebook for, like, at least three months, or it ain't never going to happen. Joining now would just be an admission that I'm one of life's sheep. It's a bit like the McEwan thing - everyone else has done it, so I must walk very quickly in the opposite direction with my fingers in my ears pretending I never wanted to do it in the first place.

Not that I've given it a second thought, you understand.


* see also: blogging**
** although I'm working on that one
*** as opposed to friends. i.e. people I actually know and actually like, and even meet up with occasionally

Nessun dorma

Mr P is away. Here. Where he has been on both You Tube and Radio 4 in just one day. I've not spotted him lurking in the background of a Paxman piece-to-camera on Newsnight yet though, so that's all right.

I mention this only because, whenever I am left entirely to my own devices for a period of 24 hours or more, I become incapable of going to bed before about 2.00am. When there are two of us here, I'm the one flapping about come 11.00pm saying things like "come on, it's really late, I have to get some sleep".

But now that I have the unfettered ability to go to bed at 9.00 if I so wish, and no-one else to blame for my persistent failure to do so, here I am blogging away past midnight, watching sub-standard telly, with the washing up and packing my bag for tomorrow's overnight trip to Counties South of London still to do.

Thank god my mum doesn't read this.

Schmatonement

Thanks no doubt to Keira Knightley (or possibly to James McAvoy, depending on personal preference), last week nigh on 60,000 people bought a copy of Ian McEwan's Atonement. This indication that there's a good chance a proportion of his congregants are either part-way through or yet to start the book (sharp-eyed observers of the right hand side of this page may already have noted that I might just possibly be one of them) was apparently lost on my rabbi, a man clearly far too busy at this time of year to peruse the back pages of the Sunday Times, who structured his sermon yesterday morning* around the plot of the book.

And not just the bare bones, either; the kind of thing of which anyone who's read a review of the film, for example, might already be aware. Oh no. A detailed synopsis, including a liberal sprinkling of crucial character names, revealing facts entirely unknown even to someone - say - well over a third of the way through the book, reverberated around the hall. He has a very sonorous voice, this rabbi, normally an attribute to be welcomed in clergy of whatever denomination; the kind of voice it's pretty difficult to block out.

Slumped down in my seat, fingers pressed tightly against ears as unostentatiously as possible, stopping only just short of singing 'la la la la' out loud, I fixed him with my sternest glare, and considered adding "for the sin we have committed by ruining the plot of the country's best-selling novel and most-watched film of the week for approximately five hundred people" to the list for which we were collectively seeking forgiveness, pardon and - obviously - atonement.

I'm still reading it, but frankly the shine's come off the whole thing. This, it occurred to me whilst I continued to glower at my oblivious rabbi as morning wore on into what would have been lunchtime, had lunch been an option, is what comes of reading the same thing as everyone else, at the same time as everyone else. I have always eschewed big-sellers, almost entirely for reasons of literary snobbery. Just one of the many reasons, in fact, why I never got past book 2 of Harry Potter.

In McEwan's case it's a kind of inverted snobbery; everyone else thinks he's marvellous so I bloody well don't. I read the Cement Garden in the mid-90s, didn't think much of it, and left McEwan there. Atonement, an "unwanted gift"**, has languished on my bookshelf for years. It was only my aversion to seeing film adaptations without having read the source text (an aversion that does not extend to JRR Tolkein or Robert Ludlum novels, admittedly) that led me to pick it up. And now I can't help but feel I might as well not bother. Yes, yes - prose stylings, acute observation of the writer's impulse - blah, blah. I know what happens now. What's the point?



* Yom Kippur, aka the Day of --- need I go on?
** as they say on Amazon Marketplace

I nearly fought the law

Really good excuses for being late to your grandfather's 91st birthday party, being held 100 miles away from where you live, No.1:
"A police van has just reversed into my car"

This is especially handy when it has occurred approximately two miles into your journey and you were running about 20 minutes late anyway, and you have the large rent in your front bumper to prove it.

It's actually quite fun to be able to shout at a policeman, justifiably and without fear of being arrested for cheeking an officer of the law, or whatever they do to you these days. Though to be fair, my initial howls of "what the bloody hell did you do that for?" were mollified somewhat when the two who stepped out of the van turned out to be a) all apologetic, b) rather sweet and c) in possession of an Inspector (when he eventually turned up) who was a ringer for Damian Lewis*.

Actually they amassed at quite a spectacular rate - at one point I think there were half a dozen men in uniform milling about my clapped-out old Renault and pretending to Know About Cars. One of them informed me, straight-faced, that it would have all been a bit different if I had driven into them and not the other way around.

The van driver and I crouched down to inspect the damage on my car. "Have you been driving on a motorway recently?" he asked. I don't know, does a 750-mile dash from the south of France count? Squinting at the thick layer of French insect life splayed across the front of my car, we decided that no significant damage had been done, not that this meant there didn't have to be a full report.

"Why don't you pop the bonnet?" asked Inspector Damian. I panicked slightly, trying to remember how to do that, and hoped that once I sat down in the driver's seat I'd remember. Thankfully the geniuses at Renault had seen fit to idiot-proof the lever with a little picture of a car with an open bonnet, which meant all was fine until I couldn't work out why I was unable to actually open the bonnet itself. The Inspector had to point out that it lifted up from the top not the bottom (as had been portrayed on the lever, oh perfidious Renault designers!).

We both peered into the recesses of my car engine. "Looks OK to me" said my new favourite policeman doubtfully. "Yes, it looks all right to me too" I agreed, wondering which of us was less qualified to comment and deciding that it probably was still me.

I turned my attention to making a big effort to be seen to be laughing and joking with the various policemen who were still around, in a vain attempt to make myself look less like some kind of minor felon in the eyes of all the people staring at me from the adjacent traffic jam. "You realise", said the Inspector, "they all think you're some kind of master criminal?" I giggled coquettishly and said that had just occurred to me, yes. "I'd better be off" he continued, "before they start writing letters about seeing six police officers and one lone woman"

[pause for inappropriate thought]

It all went a bit downhill from there on. Anyway, a mere 45 minutes post-impact, I was on my way again, without so much as my name being recorded for police files.

Really good excuses for being late to your grandfather's 91st birthday party... No.2:
"I'm stuck in a 2-hour traffic jam on the M3"

Not one of my finest weekends.



* I don't normally do ginger, but having sleb spotted him recently he was more auburn in real life. Or so I'm telling myself anyway.

Ups and Downs

So the good news: Camden Council have given us permisson to spend lots and lots and LOTS of money moving some walls and sticking some extra windows into our house. So they are definitely, whatever the Mysterious Concrete Scribe of Kentish Town says, not




Now the bad news: the treacherous, double-crossing, lilly-livered, yellow-bellied, mealy-mouthed, short-sighted IDIOTS who live in the two flats underneath mine have decided that oh, actually, they don't want to buy the freehold of our house after all. Leaving us entirely at the mercy of our unscrupulous, money-grabbing, incompetent, shifty landlord who has us over a barrel as apparently we can't so much as re-hang a door withouth his permisson*. Oh and who wants a squillion pounds from us to renew our (really quite short) lease.

Bastards.

Sorry for the shouty post. Can't guarantee I'll be in any better mood after the forthcoming, family-heavy weekend.

Holiday was lovely though.





* OK so this is an exaggeration. But only a little one.

Hiatus

I realise blogging has been a little... erm... patchy since the big "comeback", however I've got a really good excuse this time.

Off to France for a couple of weeks. The blog will fire up again on my return.