Other People's Money

- Hey honey, what say we go down to that nice little gift shop on Church Street? Let's buy that nice glass vase we saw the other day.
- Ooh, you mean the lovely blue vase we both liked? But it cost £75, and we only have £80 to last us until pay day, and that's 5 days away. Oh, you're right, who cares? Let's get it!

Fact 1 - In this credit-crunching, wallet-worrying and penny-pinching climate, the above extract of scintillating conjugal conversation is unlikely to be heard in households across the land.

Fact 2 - I sell glass vases.

These are not vase-selling times, particularly not £75 vases. Today, the board of directors announced that 4 warehouse workers would be made redundant by the end of the month and that several departments would be 'restructured'. Happy New Year!

I am currently in Paris, on the eve of the opening of the season's most important housewares exhibition. Already, tales of insolvency and cash-flow concern abound. Within an hour of being on our exhibition stand today, I had been offered enough sales CVs to construct a papier maché Eiffel Tower, 1:1 scale. As I addressed my sales team this morning in the least inspirational speech since last year's sales meeting, the twisted irony that a fully-salaried person was trying to motivate a commission-only sales team was not lost on me.

This exhibition is a time to assess the economic implications of the global downturn, and how it will impact on our company. This is a time for planning and prudence and sound sales strategies and good marketing. But most importantly, this exhibition means one week of spanking the company credit card to within a micro-sliver of its laminated plastic life. This is the time to discover what the bottles inhabiting the lower reaches of the wine list actually taste like. Dessert? But of course, and send the cheese board and port at the same time, my good man!

There is nothing quite so grotesquely obscene as spending the money of others with neither care nor concern. Yet that is exactly what we are doing, and we are proving rather adept at it. Our eyes adjust automatically to focus on the most expensive dish on the menu and a rota is kept amongst all company credit card holders so that no-one will go home with more than one bill to his name. In the kitchen, another scuffle breaks out as the waiters fight amongst one another to serve us, for there is no better tipper than an expense account tipper.

As a pang of guilt threatens to resuscitate my conscience from its temporary coma, I remember that I am sacrificing another seven weekends this year to the glorious art of vase-selling, and that today is Day 11 out of 19 without a break.

As I open my wallet and lovingly thumb the unsuspecting card in and out of its slot, I let a gentle whisper escape my lips: 'You're in trouble, my flexible friend, you're in big trouble...'

It Takes All Sorts

Every Sunday evening, as I have just sipped the last of my hot chocolate and am about to take my slippers off and retire to bed with my comforting hot water bottle, a rather clever blog-reporting tool called Site Meter discretely delivers its weekly findings into my inbox. This utterlessly pointless yet fascinating statistical factsheet provides me with non-specific information on how 759 websurfers to date have had the shining path to eternal literary salvation pointed out to them.

Most of the esteemed and treasured visitors who have surprisingly chosen to not (yet) subscribe to my blog find their way to this nirvana of online enlightenment via my Facebook or CouchSurfing profiles. Some test the waters with a curious toe via a link on a mutual friend's own website, whilst others still locate me directly using a search engine.

The vast majority of my cyberguests, however, stumble upon my pretentious musings by pure coincidence. They are lured by the pseudo-intellectual references to Greek mythology or modern literature that Google's keen nostrils have sniffed out from within my wild ramblings. Most of these accidental readers disappear within seconds in order to quench their thirst elsewhere; some stay, dazed and confused by the sheer brilliance of these Pulitzer-worthy scribblings. All, however, leave a trace of their passage, including the original search parameters that led them erroneously to me.

It was one such search request in last week's statistical report that very nearly caused me to fall off my chair and swallow my tongue at the same time, so sharp was my intake of breath. Misled by Google combining one word from my post on training donkeys with a Cannibal Corpse song mentioned in another, one poor soul sitting in front of his computer at 10:04pm on a Friday night was quite unwittingly but very wittily redirected to my site, when his search wording hints at another line of entertainment altogether.

Search Engine: verizon.net
Search Words: equine sodomy videos
Visit Entry Page: http://jeanmarcknoll.blogspot.com

There really is everything on the internet.

Blot On The Landscape

Uh-oh.

I have just boarded the evening flight to Milan and am very patiently waiting for the elegant Italian lady blocking the aisle to retrieve her BlackBerry, Prada leather notebook, MontBlanc fountain pen and Gucci make-up bag out of her Louis Vuitton travel case before placing it in the overhead locker.

Upon registering this walking who's who of exhibitionist branding, my casual observational glance plants a worried frown on my brow and sweeps past her, scanning the other occupants of the entire cabin in a matter of seconds. As my poor uneducated senses are instantly and repeatedly battered by an earthy kaleidoscope of olive, brown and beige fabric, opulently fragrant perfumes and bedazzling jewellry, I take one look at myself and realise the severity of my plight.

I stand out.

Converse shoes - CHECK
Dirty blue jeans with frayed ends - CHECK
Grey zip-up fleece cardigan from Primark (£7) - CHECK

Instead of the image of a suave young entrepreneur confidently dashing across Europe for another business meeting that I was hoping to convey, I have instead managed to pull off a remarkably accurate impression of one of the first detainees from Guantanamo Bay returning home after sixteen months in an underground cell without any food, drink or, crucially, clothing allowance.

Yes, I may fancy my tongue to be sharper than a really sharp cocktail stick, and my linguistic ability is lauded by many, but when it comes to sartorial elegance, I clearly have all the class and style of a colour-blind clown with an obsession for sequins. As I sit down, deep in my shame, I allow a sepia-tinted glaze to mist over my eyes as I recall the haute couture simplicity of my heavy metal years. This season's de rigueur colour? Why, it's black again, hurrah! But those days are gone, long gone.

In the meantime, I take a 50 Euro note out of my wallet and slip it inside my passport at the photo page. This will surely be my only hope of avoiding deportation upon landing.

Welcome Back!

1 x short-sleeved t-shirt
1 x long-sleeved t-shirt
1 x wool sweater
1 x fleece jacket
1 x moleskin jacket (R.I.P. 187 brave and very soft moles)
1 x scarf

Unfortunately not my clothes-to-pack list for a weekend break in Stockholm, instead it is what I am having to wear at 9:20am on my first day back at work as I park my no-longer-plump-but-still-something-to-squeeze backside on my office chair and stare blankly at my computer screen for the first time in two weeks.

It is cold. Damn cold. -5c cold outside and not much warmer inside an office that has not seen people for some time. I turn on the electric heater in the vain hope that frostbite or, at the very least, chilblains can be averted, but my heart plummets as the machine murmurs rather than roars into life and I feel less warmth than I would from the dying breath of an ageing fieldmouse. There is further bad news as rumours spread that the food van will not come today. In the distance, gentle sobbing can be heard from behind the photocopier.

The first working day of the new year is invariably a cheerful one in the wonderful world of the office. Two weeks of peace, rest and relaxation, jolly Christmas spirit and goodwill to all mankind have all but evaporated as the harsh reality of the 9-to-5 backhand slaps me across the face with a wet haddock.

My first attempt to log in fails miserably as my gloved finger hits four keys at the same time. 'dfrt' is not the first letter of my password, it would seem. I glance at the clock and barely choke back my howl of despair. It is only 9:24am and I have to endure 486 further minutes until I am freed from this tyranny.

I decide to bite the bullet and get stuck in. I am a responsible person and am being paid and trusted to do my job, after all. The only question that remains is which shall I check first: Facebook or CouchSurfing?

Toilet Humour II

These things only happen to me, of this I am certain.

I walked into my hotel bathroom earlier this evening, intent on freshening up before heading out to dinner for one in gai Paris. 'Hmmm, veal or beef, I wonder...', raged the carnivorous debate inside my mind as I absent-mindedly reached for the after shave up on my toiletry shelf.

Now it is a well-known fact that I have the coordination of a one-handed raccoon attempting to peel an apple with a blunt chisel, so it was no great surprise to me when my brain mistakenly sent the 'knock after shave off shelf' command to my hand, rather than the 'pick up and spray on neck area' impulse it had intended. Again, knowing myself, it was with even less surprise that I watched the bottle of after shave leap from its lofty perch with the grace of an Acapulco cliff diver...

... straight into the toilet bowl.

Just as a hearty 'Woops-a-daisies!' was about to escape my angry mouth, I was overcome with a realisation so blindingly brilliant that my knees nearly buckled beneath me. I stumbled into my room and collapsed onto the bed, exploding with silent laughter. Before long, I was struggling to contain a gushing torrent of tears and my sides ached as though felled by the lusty blows of many rusty axes.

It took me a full two minutes to recover my composure and rescue the aptly-named Aqua by Carolina Herrera from its porcelain paddling pool. It would be a while before I would stop grinning from ear to ear as I came to terms with the fact that my after shave had undergone the most severe gender change the world of perfume has to offer.

For after shave it no longer was, it had become

eau de toilette...

Book And A Cover

It is 8:29am, I have a suitcase and laptop case and I am catching the train to Waterloo, the opposite direction to my usual routine. This is new territory for me. No longer the fresh salmon leaping freely against the flow of this raging commuters' torrent, I am now a common sardine waiting to be packed into an oily tin heading for the big smoke. I am not in my element as shoals of umbrella-laden piranhas patrol the platform, I am uneasy. That I have not been torn to shreds as the train pulls in is remarkable in itself.

Having fatally misjudged the positioning of the train doors, I entered the carriage in 23,682nd position out of a possible 23,682 and earned myself pride of place: half wrapped around the central holding pole, with the dulcet tones of some 78 kazillion decibel hard house sounds inches from my right ear and a luxurious leather briefcase engaging in unsolicited flirtatious activity with my posterior. Only 32 years to go until I can draw my pension, woot woot...

By 8:38am, as the train drew into Queenstown Road station, I was preparing my insanity plea for my projected defence against 23,681 counts of Mass Homicide With Nokia E65. Just as I was concluding my case with an emphatic 'Wot-evah, dem all deserved it, innit?', the doors opened and a ray of sunshine pierced through the storm clouds as an angel squeezed past the peasant hordes and took her 17 square inches of commuter allocation opposite me.

She was pretty in a simple and understated manner, with looks that attract a second glance a full ten seconds after the first, and a good many thereafter, but with neither lust nor leer. As she too sought shelter from the early morning madness, she gripped the orange pole just above my hand, looked at me, smiled sweetly and opened her Lonely Planet to Berlin.

As I half closed my eyes, her delicate floral perfume and wispy golden locks transported me momentarily to a safe haven of peace and calm, a beautiful oasis of tranquility.

Then, the unthinkable. Delicately balancing her book in her left hand, she slowly extended the exquisitely manicured index finger of her other hand and plunged it without hesitation deep into her right nostril. Trying not to think of hot knives and butter, I stood stunned, transfixed and very nearly tearful as I watched this raw commuter wildlife documentary unfold. My oasis of calm was battered to the ground by the wildest of desert storms.

Foraging for an eternity with the wild abandon of an award-winning truffle-hunting pig, the hungry digit eventually emerged triumphantly with a fragrant trophy delicately perched on its tip. With the same distracted expression she had worn throughout the excavation, the prize was cruelly discarded to the floor with a deft flick of her thumb. Just like that.

The mining operation having duly been conducted and completed with the military precision it required, she re-entered the land of the living and looked up. Straight into my eyes.

It is hard to say which of our faces achieved a deeper pantone of red, so fleeting was the moment of mutual realisation, shock and, ultimately, horror. As our eyes developed an instant and quite possibly fatal allergy to each other, one final unspoken conversation played itself out in that last parting glance. 'I'm sorry...', her anguished eyelashes fluttered in a silent apology to my heartbroken 'Why?'.

We are not always what we seem.

In Sickness And In Health

It all started this morning, at precisely 10:34am. The sound came from the other side of the building, possibly from one of those footloose and fancy-free creative types in the Design Department, or likelier still, from the devious stock-pinching rascals in UK Sales. It wasn't loud, but there was no mistaking its impact and the resulting shockwave that would be felt by every single joyous employee of this fine company.

It was a sneeze, and a mild sneeze at that. But this seemingly innocent shattering of the early-morning office torpor meant more than a sore throat and blocked hooter for one poor administration urchin. No, this sneeze represented doom and gloom for all of humankind for it signalled the opening of the dreaded Office Sickness Season.

All activity ceased at once as surprise, shock and fear etched their unwelcome features on the faces of office and warehouse workers alike. So it had begun.

The initial stunned silence rapidly gave way to the loud rumble of angry thunder and the building reverberated to the sound of desk drawers being violently rattled as each and every employee frantically searched for the leftovers of the previous year's medicine supplies. 'Nooooooo...' howls the front desk receptionist as she realises that her last Lemsip Cold & Flu sachet has split and is now neatly layered around her box of multicoloured paper-clips.

There is no escaping the spread of the contagion either. As our antibodies prepare themselves for interdepartmental biological warfare, the hallways echo with the dulcet tones of hacking coughs, sinus-imploding catarrh inhalations and the violent trumpetings of red raw noses. Those with more robust constitutions will be ground down into sick submission by the alternating blasts of hot and cold air emanating from scalding heaters and open windows as the feverish strive to cool down and the frozen attempt to thaw out.

On this day, Tuesday October 21st, the 2008/9 Office Sickness Season has started early. There will be many casualties as strong and weak fall like toy soldiers and the surviving few struggle to breathe and function in this cursed and impure air. As in times of plague, the desks of the diseased are marked with a yellow Post-It note, their occupants dismissed as office pariahs until they have passed their ailments on to the next sufferer-in-waiting. Once the circle is complete, the merry-go-round starts anew, and a-tishoo, a-tishoo, we all fall down...

It will be a long winter.

Where Is My Mind?

I have long given up trying to understand and unravel the big ball of yarn that passes off as my mind. No, nowadays I find it much easier to go with the flow, to accept the sheer random and incoherent nature of the thoughts bouncing around the inside of my skull. I smile and nod as I recall last night's dream that saw me running up ramps leaping over barrels thrown at me by a giant spasm-muscled gorilla, even though I have not played or even thought about Donkey Kong since 1989. In the middle of a presentation to the board of directors of a department store group, I pause to think about what life would be like as a penguin. Nope, this nut is best left uncracked. I have learnt to live with it, but sometimes, every now and then, even I have to pause and think 'Where the hell did that come from?'.

I was killing time flicking through magazines at the supermarket during my Tuesday lunch break - the highlight of my working week - when an article headline on the cover of a magazine caught my eye and stopped me dead in my tracks.

MULES, ASSES, DONKEYS: YOU CAN TRAIN ANY EQUINE!

Having never previously purchased Horse & Rider magazine, I was totally unprepared for such a bold statement. The provocative nature of the italic 'CAN' added highly-combustible fuel to the fire that had instantly ignited in my mind and immediately prompted me to wonder angrily why the world had been misled for so long that a bad ass and a stubborn mule could not change their ways. My mind began to visually portray the ground-breaking session when the horse whisperer became the donkey shouter in one final attempt to break the beast's resolve...

A bruising encounter between my calf and a supermarket trolley tore me from my equine reverie and nearly earnt a frail old lady a reverse slap from my left hand. She apologised, I smiled sweetly at her, assuring her that the gaping flesh wound would heal rapidly as I mentally wished her a particularly nasty bout of arthritis that evening. I continued with my shopping, returned to work, finished work, went home, went to the gym, had dinner and went to bed.

On Wednesday, midway through an afternoon of boundary-pushing office tedium, a curious but scrambled thought popped into my head and nibbled gently on my brain, arousing my curiosity. It disappeared almost instantly, leaving me in a state of slight bewilderment, as though my mind had been subjected to a bungled attempted robbery. The following morning, just before lunch, it happened again. This time the thought was a little clearer, but still I could not decipher it. I let it drift away again, if it wanted to make itself known, it would do so.

At precisely 12:53 on Friday, with motivation at an all-time low and my mind already in weekend mode, the mysterious impulse thought returned. There was no subtlety or subconscious approach on this occasion. No, it announced itself with a full marching band, tubas and trombones blaring the brassiest of questions inside the hollow cavern of my mind: can one really train any equine? I had to know.

Displaying a streak of rebellion worthy of James Dean, I left my desk a full THREE minutes before the official start of my lunch break and set off for Tesco's once again at a brisk pace, like a man possessed. I have no idea what I was hoping to gain from this little escapade, but the urge to read that article was stronger than me. I raced into the store and headed straight to the magazine section, pausing briefly to look around me in case my chariot-racing nemesis was in the vicinity, but she was nowhere to be seen. Her lucky day, you don't come between a man and his Horse & Rider magazine twice in one week...

As I began to read the article that had been taunting my subconscious for three days, I realised that I was venturing into a world about which I knew NOTHING and the facts were hitting me hard and fast.

Unlike canids - think dogs, wolves, jackals, coyotes - equids (the family to which horses, asses, donkeys and zebras all belong, not an electronic pound) often look beyond their immediate species for extra-curricular fun and frolics. In fact, research has shown that equids are so sexually driven that they are known to try to play a quick game of 'How's Your Father?' with pretty much anything that has a pulse. This is undoubtedly the reason dogs stick to dry-humping your leg, they haven't got the genetic make-up to go all the way.

Having scribbled a mental note never to stand with my back to a horse again, I continued my equine education. Hands up all those who knew that a mule is in fact the result of a horse interbreeding with a donkey. I did not, although had I been entrusted with the honour of naming this new animal, I know that it would now be referred to as a honkey rather than a mule.*

The title of the article - 'Who's A Smart Ass?' - ought to have prepared me for the worst but the opening sentence of the second paragraph blew even me and my love of casual innuendo and cheap puns right out of the sky. 'And a chance encounter with a special ass proved uplifting...' induced a snort so powerful that the security guard and two nearby shoppers turned to look at me with a puzzled look. Upon noticing my reading material and instantly labelling me as a deviant, they hurried away. The security guard kept an eye on me however, I may have to shop elsewhere.

After re-reading the article three times, I reluctantly tore myself away from the magazine, my thirst for equine education having been well and truly quenched.

My mind can now rest in peace. I now know that mules are not stubborn when they refuse to move, they are simply assessing the situation for any danger. And the Himalayan Mountain Ass can be trained with the right combination of love and patience but will not trust any human it has not met before it is three years old.

The only question that remains is that of my own sanity, welcome to my world...

* I have since discovered that I am apparently the ONLY person in the world who did not know this. So much for the private school education...

I Am *gulp* Not Always Right

'Oh my Achilles...' is an expression one might reasonably expect to hear at a Greek play depicting the fall of Troy, the poignant wailing cry of Hippodameia as she realises that her master and lover has been brutally slain, leaving her to fend for herself in a world ravaged by war. Instead, it is the expletive of suffering that echoes around every stairwell at work and at home as I wallow in the pain and misery of my first sporting injury.

'Remember to stretch, and don't overdo it at the beginning.' advised the fitness trainer during my gym induction, as did my flatmates, one of my work colleagues, two good friends, my mother, the homeless man who sleeps outside the newsagent at the corner of our street and the ticket inspector on the 08:19 to Kingston.

Being famed across the land for always listening to good advice and not thinking that I know better than everyone, I decided to stretch, nay, hyperextend my index finger to increase the speed of the treadmill to 11km/h before even setting foot on it. As I observed the well-toned athletes and gym class regulars on the machines to the front, back, left and right of me, I can even remember my sense of overwhelming superiority as I mentally castigated them for wasting such precious calorie-burning time warming up and down. Stretch? Pah!

Similarly, a running sequence of 10km, 5km, 10km, 10km, 5km and 5km on consecutive days one week after joining the gym and doing exercise for the first time in 7 years might also be regarded in cardiovascular circles as 'overdoing it'. Pride before a fall indeed...

The result is a cute little chipmunk-blowing-bubblegum popping sound in my left ankle every time I go up or down stairs, the limp of a freshly-castrated snow leopard and a no longer reluctant admission that I am a Grade A tool of the highest calibre.

My lofty perch is now riddled with woodworm as everyone at work seems to recall long-forgotten tales of tendinitis and tendinisis, 'Did you stretch before running? No? Well that explains it.' becomes the office mantra and the canteen has a fixed menu of humble pie for the rest of the week.

I can only be grateful that my parents are on holiday and cannot impart the most bruising 'I told you so'. Until next week...

Toilet Humour

The Colosseum in Rome, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the majestic Gateway Arch in St. Louis, the Mayan temples at Tikal in Guatemala, the Sydney Opera House, the Great Wall of China: all magnificent examples of man's constructive creativity.

To these masterpieces of ancient and contemporary design can now be added the Toilet of Room 552 at the Hôtel des Bains in Paris, a slightly less illustrious but no less worthy addition to an international Who's Who of architectural genius.

I could easily express my anguish as my predicament dawned on me. I could bluntly convey in several poignant phrases the pain as I incurred three trapped nerves, two pulled muscles and a short but electric bolt of sciatica in my upper back in my futile attempt to grasp my Holy Grail. But on this occasion, words cannot do the situation justice and I shall let a picture do the talking.



Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the world's most ridiculously located toilet roll dispenser.