Working out your differences

FOR a lot of people today, due to the impossible house-buying situation, it’s pretty standard to live with housemates before settling down.
And it’s crucial that they find the right people to live with. Renting a place with people whose hygiene is similar to a ripe camembert is never desirable; neither if they try to offer a packet of batteries and a pineapple as payment for rent; nor if their idea of interior design is based on making sure there is a small path through a wall-to-wall collection of carrier bags, old food, body hair and stuff found in skips. 

So when you have spent time and energy sorting that situation out, it must be even more frustrating when you realise you have very little say in the choice of work colleagues.
As we work for a vast percentage of our lives, it’s not surprising how such a little thing like who your desk neighbour is can have such a large impact on your state of mind.

I’ve encountered a practice I’m sure is used as a form of torture in some countries. 
A colleague, come rain or shine, will religiously switch a desk fan on.  And due to the scarcity of sockets, she has to have it situated about six feet away from her desk, aimed somewhere in her vicinity. The trouble is that it's also aimed at me. And no amount of angling it when she isn’t looking will change the fact that she’s creating a micro-climate similar to that of the Arctic right by my feet. 
It’s causing me to sport a rather fetching appearance of goosebumps all along my legs as well as develop an involuntary shudder. In short, I am freezing. 

I spent all of last winter wishing the weather would get warmer so i could shed the obligatory coat-in-office look and 100 denier tights that I had been shuffling about in for what felt like an eternity. 
And now, in mid August, I find myself digging out my winter wardrobe - already - because of one woman’s love of a bargain from Argos.  I would be lying if I said I hadn't considered buying a portable heater and placing it side by side with her fan.  Like two gods controlling the elements, we could have these dramatic battles as our power and energies clashed and threatened to cancel each other out of existence... albeit on a much more feeble and pathetic basis.  Infact probably the only spectator would be a very weary H&S officer whose main concern would be the number of electric cables lying across the office. 
 
But these special little eccentricities exist everywhere in the workplace.  I know of an office which went to the extent of issuing memos asking people who ate lunch at their desks, not to.  Well, it was specifically aimed at the fish and egg sandwich lovers.  The smell was upsetting their colleagues who had felt it necessary to complain to management.  True the aroma of some foods can be pretty revolting, but for the 7.4 minutes it takes to consume them, is that really enough to ruin your entire day?  Do you really return home in the evenings, fuming that the default scent surrounding your work area of perfume, lip gloss and coffee was rudely interrupted at 12.47pm for a short while, thus ruining the entire feng shui of your environment?


And it makes me curious to think how far these niggling habits from our workmates will stretch; how long before you'll hear someone bitching by the coffee machine that Maureen from Accounts creates too much fluff and dust on her desk and it's irritating their allergies. Will management then issue lint removers and exfoliating scrubs to every employee?


With people facing increasingly longer working weeks, perhaps working from home is the way to go. That way you can install a industrial-sized fan so your room temperature is constantly below zero; munch on a feast comprising of fish heads, raw onions and boiled cabbage; and then spend the afternoon inspecting every bodily crevice you have for flaky skin, pluckable hair or that inexplicable blue fluff and scatter your findings merrily into the atmosphere, not worrying that your habits are of any consequence to anyone.


That is, of course, until your housemates return home...

A wave of confusion

DOG owners generally develop some very odd habits; purposefully leaving a bit of whatever they eat to offer to their mutt, for example.

It becomes an automatic reflex, done at every mealtime without conscious thought - to the extent that some will do it in posh restaurants.  You'll spy them squirrelling pieces of meat and other tasty morsels into their napkins and then smuggling that into handbags.

But the habit which confuses me the most, perhaps, is something the village-based dog owner will do when out walking with their trusty four-legged sidekick.

You'll see it in little villages and parishes throughout the UK.

Drive past them, and 98 per cent of the time, the walker will stop with their dog, watch you pass, and wave at you.

For years I have driven past people in my local village, thought they recognised me and were just being neighbourly as they waved.

I now know this is not the case. Travelling through random villages from the comfort of my five-door hatchback, I  have witnessed owner after owner stop and perform this choreographed oddity. 

I have no idea why they do this. They don't know me.  They often look quite proud as they do it: "Yup, I'm walking my dog... got my pockets full of biscuits, and any minute now I am going to be crouching in the muddy undergrowth with a little sandwich bag clearing up the end result of feeding my dog too many biscuits."

They could be doing it to thank me for not hitting their dog with my car I guess. But surely it would make more sense to wave in advance, just to make sure I have noticed and can swerve away from them if needs be?

Absurdly, I will wave back. It's like a rather rubbish, canine-related, two-man Mexican wave. And just like a Mexican wave you get swept up in the moment and then feel a little bit disorientated and grubby afterwards.

I've joined friends walking their dogs who will wave at traffic, then turn to me and ask: "Who was that?" I just stare back at them in disbelief. 

Nobody knows what is going on, we are all just waving (not drowning) and all the while the dog is blissfully unaware of this social situation and currently his sole purpose in life is to follow the human who hours before, filled his pocket with a napkin full of meat and has forgotten. Ahh it is indeed a dog's life. 

Be bold, be British

WITH the release of the second Sex and the City film on 27 May there will be a collective sigh across the land and a lament from women everywhere that they want to be styled by cool fashionista Patricia Field.
"I wish I could dress like that all of the time - I wish I could take my wardrobe to a whole new level," a friend of mine said this week after seeing the film trailer.
And she wasn't talking about the designer labels either, but the combinations of colours, styles, patterns and the ever-refreshing twist given to each outfit seen on Carrie and co. 

True these are New York ladies with money to burn but apart from that, are they really so far removed from us? 
Is their eclectic fashion ever suitable for us mere mortals?
Actually, I would argue that as a Brit, you have more encouragement than most to dress like that.  Last week my French mother told me about a middle-aged couple she had seen walking down the street; he was wearing a burnt orange cord suit, she was in a long tutu with a raincoat slung over the top.
As other shoppers stopped to witness the spectacular sight, mum smiled and told me later: "It's only something you would see in Britain and I love it." 

And she has a point. As a nation we are known for being eccentric (bog snorkelling and cheese racing anyone?), but cool Britannia is still a phrase commonly heard too and I think the two ideas are very closely linked.
After all, when was the last time you saw someone in comfortable jeans, shapeless sportswear top and bland trainers and felt a deep respect and admiration for them?

It's our ability to be eccentric which has earned us a place on the fashion radar. 
There doesn't have to be any hard and fast rules about fashion so when you choose your clothes in the morning, the last thought you should have is: "Does this top stand out too much?" or whether the colours clash.  Sure you can dress accordingly to the occasion, whether it's office wear or a weekend look with friends and family, but don't for a minute consider that you are confined to blending in with the background or that you don't deserve to look good.

Clothes aren't about how much they cost - they are about how much they make you feel.
And if that feeling is less than £1million, then don't bother with it; your country needs you goddammit.

The tweets and the bees

I NORMALLY get the hang of social networking sites very easily, MySpace? Yup. Facebook? Yup. Bebo? No, I'm not 14. 

So after a news-training course at work, I was feeling particularly inspired to sign up to Twitter (yes I'm aware I'm about two years behind the rest of the world). The benefits for keeping up-to-date and looking out for potential stories were highlighted and I thought it would be very exciting. Uploaded my photo, linked this site to it, hunted down celebrities to follow and wrote a couple of tweets.

Within a day I had three random people following me. Fantastic, going by those statistics, I should have an army of followers within a month.

However a few days later I had lost two of them. Clearly they weren't impressed by my tweets: "Why are there so many bumble bees this year?" and "I keep finding glitter on my skin, maybe I lose it through my pores."  So for a day or two after that, I was suddenly scared to tweet - just incase I lost my one remaining follower.  And I felt ashamed, I did want to announce my new Twitter profile to my Fbook friends but then worried that they would laugh at the one-follower freak.

I searched through other tweeters - and I'm still failing to see the difference between my bumble bee observation, and someone else who has nearly 200 followers and their latest tweet was about buying asparagus. And the person wasn't even famous.

And that's another can of worms: you can follow celebrities.  You can literally keep up to date with what they are doing daily. If I tried to follow them in real life and watch them pop into Asda for a packet of Nik Naks or try to climb in the same black cab, I would have a restraining order slapped on me in no time.  The cynic in me asks how long will it be before some American wins a legal case against a celeb for stalking them because they were already posting that info on a tweet anyway?

Obviously the celebs have high numbers of followers and it's a good way to keep fans updated; I can see how Twitter works from that perspective. 

So I don't know how much longer I will keep tweeting. I'm confused by all of the little symbols you need to use; and the fact you have to shorten links; and I'm already feeling trapped by the 140 character limit; and generally for something which offers the virtual spacial equivalent of a Post-It note, it is causing me so much more stress than I had expected.

Perhaps I'll just concentrate on answering the great bumble bee question and keep my thoughts to myself. 

Caffeine? Only in a traveller's dream.

I AM cursed. Doomed to wander this lonely planet of ours without the single thing which keeps me relatively sane; caffeine.

Alright technically it's not wandering on foot, it's by rail. But no matter what train I travel on, my sheer presence ensures the immediate disappearance of the drinks trolley or a functioning hot beverage machine.

The last journey I undertook, is a prime example. Despite assurances from the over-friendly driver ("Hey there! Call me Nick - just checking out your ticket sweetlips!") on the first of three trains that the snacks cart will board at the next station and will serve hot drinks and a selection of 'lite bites', it never materialises.

On the second train there is a buffet car. Grabbing a seat near-by in eager anticipation, my caffeine dreams are shattered as some nasal voice overhead announces the hot drinks machine is out of order. Damned straight it is.

The third train is as empty as my expectations by then, three quarters of the way into a six hour journey and so far not even as much as a used teabag or empty sugar sachet to prove the existence of a hot drink has made it onto a train. My cynical side questions whether it might just be the Fates' way of suggesting I'm not made to travel and perhaps a life of agoraphobia and collecting Persian cats would be preferable. Just live my days out watching through windows, clearing up furballs and shopping via the web.

It isn't just my quest for caffeine which raises these questions. I book my tickets in advance like the adverts cheerily suggest; Coach D, seat 50A. I board the train, wander through coaches A, B, C and... E. I ask staff for directions to my seat (just incase it's a bit like Harry Potter and I should be jumping into some gap between platforms or something); with a reassuring smile they inform me that coach D won't be running today so I can sit anywhere... Anywhere except - as they clock my appearance and distinct lack of laptop, Blackberry or terribly important briefcase - first class.

I take my rightful place between a family of pale-pink sportswear-clad chavs and a woman struggling with a cello.

The stations are once more a reminder that I'm not a born traveller as I get stuck at virtually every ticket gate. The machine rejects everything I offer it, from valid tickets to old ones, Boots Advantage cards and petrol receipts. As a crowd of frustrated commuters gather behind me, bouncing off in other directions, confused that their very regular and rigid flow of people - like a line of ants following each other - has been disrupted, I am made to stand to one side.

The line of commuting army ants recovers and continues onwards as I explain to a very official-looking man with a walkie talkie how exactly I had escaped my little town and made it this far into the big wide world without being stopped before now.

Eventually I am allowed to get on my train and as it pulls away I observe two characters called Teko and Zarx have been very busy bees. For at least a mile or two from the station their names are spray-painted in graffiti on every wall, electricity box and even a forgotten wheelbarrow.

For just a fleeting moment my caffeine-starved brain seriously believes that next time I dare to join the railway elite, I should offer a sacrifice of coffee beans to the Train Gods, Teko and Zarx. After all, they have perfected the celestial skill of omnipresence; well, for a mile or two anyway.