Thursday 22 January 2009

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...'

Wednesday 14 January 2009

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.

Tuesday 13 January 2009

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.

Tuesday 6 January 2009

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?