Stuff

What have I been doing.

Last thursday I went on a sort of date thing with someone I met off t'internet. It was an experience I don't think I'm going to repeat any time soon. Nice enough, but I couldn't quite get over how out of sync she was with the mental picture of her I'd built up in my head. We went for a drink in Camden, before making mutual excuses and heading our separate ways. Actually, she made the excuses, but it's my blog.

The most annoying thing about the night was, while waiting at the top of the escalators at Camden tube, a policeman came over and started talking at me while I was trying to send a text.

"Can I ask you what you're doing sir?"

he enquired.

"I'm waiting for someone" I answered

"and do you often wait for them here?"

"it's the first time I've met them"

"and who might they then"

"it's a date"

"Oh a date is it" he said, staring off at an angle perpendicular to my head. All the time he was maintaining a studied bored monotone, and I didn't much care for the sardonic edge to his voice that suggested all this was the dramatic build-up to some cretinous punchline. He was going to ask me to move, and I found his circuitous route both irritating and irritating.

"look, shall we cut to the chase here?" I asked, wolverine style claws pricking at my knuckles.

"don't take that attitude with me" he said, all traces of flaccid humour suddenly having evaporated "move out of here and stop causing an obstruction"

Which I duly did. What annoyed me was the moment I exited the turnstiles I was duly pestered by various people trying to sell me 'skunks', all of ten feet from robocop, who stood officiously staring at the hall of the tube station, ready to thwart wrong-doing in all its static, loitering forms.

Don't get me wrong, I've nothing against the police (some of my best friends are police) but shouldn't he have been out trying to catch some real criminals? James Blunt and the person ultimately responsible for the 'Tom Tom' sat-nav advertisements are a couple of obvious examples, but I could go on.

Anyway.

This week I've been working at a Corporate Identity consultancy with lots of Germans, which was either miles better than that sounds, or lots worse, depending on your perspective. The grid system was king, and there was no decent coffee – for me at least.

Their offices were in a huge victorian terrace with white walls and wall-to-wall blue carpeting. It was pretty much silent but for the ocasional conference call and the incessant clicking of mice. Every once in a while an insect would stray into one of the uplighters on the wall and perish with a piercing smell like burning hair.

Tasty.

Now it's the weekend. Went for a bite to eat at a Spanish place in Hackney with Sam and Kay, before going back to theirs for a couple of glasses of wine and a game of 'Buzz'. Also bought a copy of the Guardian, soley because today it came with a free poster depicting various types of octopi and squid (and cuttlefish). It's now pinned above my desk and I can tell it's going to be a slow month.