One Lucky Bastard. It is as I finally attempt to dust the
cyber-cobwebs of my literary aspirations that I contemplate how frequently the title
of this absurdly self-promotional electronic diatribe is actually used to
describe me (the adjective, dear Reader, the adjective). Its most common usage invariably
refers to the very obvious benefits of the profession that keeps me in bread
and water and is generally used by friends, foes and passing acquaintances following
one of my gratuitously exhibitionistic social media posts vaunting a
particularly succulent sliver of Serrano ham on a Spanish plaza in between business
meetings.
But as so many other superficial exhortations of the general
populace’s near perfect state of being proclaimed on Facebook, the message
delivered conveys only part of the reality. Yes, there are the many luxury
lounge champagne interludes, the outstanding culinary experiences and the
megatrillions of air miles, loyalty points and hotel vouchers garnered. It’s
not easy being me. But at the end of each and every single one, there is the
return. The bitter return. The return to headquarters. The return to the – voluntary shiver – office.
And this is where the luck of my job runs out. For all the
visual wonder and palate-tantalising fare enjoyed on these jet-set jaunts, there
is always an unshakeable sense of futility that defines the temporary escapism
I am fortunate to experience. For the world to turn on its axis, equilibrium
must be restored: where there is good, there must be evil; where there is
light, there must be dark; and where there are the azure waters of coastal
Sicily, pastel hues of Vienna’s Hapsburg palaces or granite pink townhouses of
Toulouse, there must be the rusting corrugated iron of Goodwins Cash &
Carry, sunken ashen skyline of Sunbury Cross roundabout and endless
retina-scratching grey concrete of the Dolphin Industrial Estate on Windmill
Road West.
To unsuspecting visitors new to our business address, any romantic
thoughts of the animal kingdom’s most sentient marine mammal frolicking gaily
near a rocky seashore lined with slow-turning windmills are quickly banished as
the bridge of despair is crossed and the global epicentre of monochromatic
misery first comes into sight. Without warning, a dazzling array of soul-numbing
greys hits every sense so simultaneously as to cause the brain to contract to a
tiny amorphous blob of grey matter not worthy of the everyday life challenges
of the Palaeolithic age. If ugliness is sin, then we are in hell. Or Las Vegas.
There is no escape as multiple infinite rainbows of grey
pantone drabness vie for the right to bludgeon my brain’s unexpectedly
vulnerable receptors of aesthetic appreciation. To my left, as I descend the
stairway to my daytime doom, is a sight that would make Dante’s 9th
circle of hell seem as inviting as an aquapark on the Algarve in mid-July. Brutalist
1960s office concrete to make any soviet architect green with jealousy juts
angrily against unsightly angular corrugated iron warehousing. I flinch to the
right only to see menacing barbed wire railings and long-redundant faded fencing
torn from its concrete pillars welcome me silently to another day in
colour-blind paradise. In the distance a flight of pigeons ferries disease
unnoticed from grey roof to grey roof via grey skies, utterly camouflaged, the
natural world’s true chameleons in this barren environment of industrial
wasteland.
Goodwins: a good reason to shop online
The bridge of despair and the stairway of sorrow
Google head office, Sunbury-on-Thames
Three years ago, in a poignant example of nature’s toiling
effort to preserve life against all odds, a lone wild tomato plant with one
green fruit was spotted sprouting hopefully between two more liberal cracks in
the otherwise harsh bitumen. The next day it was gone, crushed under the
careless sole of a disillusioned office worker in pre-drudgery autopilot
denial. Hope springs eternal, but not from grey asphalt.
And this is now grime prime time. This is October: long
after the last hopeful rays of the Indian summer have disappeared; when the
skeletal trees’ leaves are but a mushy ratatouille of canine excreta trodden underfoot;
long before the reassuringly crisp cold air and ice-blue skies of winter
reanimate those buried memories of summers past and future. This is a time of
year when wind and rain unite in an unholy alliance to distort their gravity
trajectory into the slightest gap between umbrella and bitterly frowning face;
when the damp seeps through and beyond skin and bones to permeate one’s very
soul.
So carpe colorem
is the order of the day on every single escape attempt. To Munich, to
Copenhagen, to Nice! To anywhere! I must fill my eyes and memory with enough primary
colours to provide the soul energy that will allow me to hibernate through the
next age of grey. I must treasure in my impregnable memory vault the rich
mosaics of Madrid and green parklands of Paris, the crazily-daubed tower blocks of Tirana and mesmerizingly contrasting colours of the Croatian coastline.
And so it is that as I sit on the tube at the tail end of a
sixteen hour round-trip to Vienna for a one hour meeting, far enough in mind
and body from the glum humdrum of everyday office existence, I am aglow with
the finest travelling vision I can be fortunate to experience: the near-infantile
innocent enjoyment of both sunrise and sunset witnessed from the air and high
above the clouds, on the very same day. I treasure my in-and-out day trips to
Europe's far-flung corners for this very reason; I book my flights accordingly,
enduring a needlessly exhausting trip there and back for the simple pleasure of
witnessing the changing colours of the sky at sunrise and sunset, from the
skies.
The interwoven layers and textures of cloud blankets within
a rotating prism of sunset colours interact like a giant kaleidoscope as the
plane banks left or right. So many shades of orange, red and blue that I do not
know where to look, my only regret that I will not see the darkening shades of
the sky as night gradually falls. And as the plane finally dips through the
final sheet of cloud cover, revealing a drizzle-heavy English evening on yet
another interminable approach into Heathrow, the colours abruptly disappear
leaving an indelible memory recognisable only by the smile on my face. I am
recharged, and ready for the grey.
The happy place...
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