In private sector management, the way to deal with a useless workforce is by force of personality or, if you don’t have a personality, force. Not so in it’s simpleton cousin, the public sector, where staff, such as the ones I was managing in my previous job up the council, are unsackable. Upon reflection this is harsh, because uselessness only accounted for three, or one and a half metric tonnes, of them. The others were perfectly amenable and made my job just about doable, to the extent that, had it been the footie, I would’ve scraped out a narrow 4:3 victory after extra time. Had it been a figurative riot in a cake shop or some kind of buffet clearing contest I would’ve been severely trampled, obviously, but fortunately that was not the case. I left the position as the actual, bona fide, victim of gender discrimination, the details of which I am obviously not at liberty to discuss. Anyway. The matter is closed and everyone has moved on, even those whose only way of sustaining motion would be to be strapped to a barge and floated downstream along a major waterway.
My previous manager, who is clinically insane, was in no small part responsible for my current post. Yes, he insists that he was the drummer in the Boo Radleys and yes he claims to regularly run to and from appointments at County Hall from home – a round trip of almost forty miles – but he must capable of string-pulling at some level or other, because he sorted this out quite nicely. There was a curiously hysterical quality to his untruths which I enjoyed. For example, during our final meeting when I mentioned my cycling exploits, he claimed to have a bike so rare as to be uninsurable, having previously belonged to a member of the Basque team in the 2016 Tour de France. I said he could simulate insurance by giving me a tenner a week which I might or might not give back if anything happened to it, but this was a non-starter, because the real reason it is uninsurable is because it doesn’t exist. When I mentioned my Open Unive
rsity course, he claimed to be studying, at five grand a day, a Crisis Management qualification that, when successfully completed, would empower him to evacuate a country. The phrase ‘evacuate a country’ sent me into lolz because it is just so ridiculous, and when he handed me the contract for my current post, I was barely able to focus on it through the tears of mirth. Even the Human Resources lady who was also present covered her face with a folder, although I could see her shoulders going and hear the muffled shrieks. It was quite a moment.
The thing is, though, nonsensical untruths, lol-worthy as they are, ultimately end up rather sad. I mean, everyone fibs, because everyone understands, at least subconsciously, the advantages of being tactically more interesting on an essentially harmless, short term basis. However, my now ex-manager’s fantastic (in the literal sense of only existing in fantasies) untruths must be driven by something greater. I assume it is autism of some kind, or a version of Tourette’s whereby, instead of wandering round Tesco telling people to fuck themselves, you’re claiming to be road manager for the Bootleg Beatles or a senior consultant on the Thames flood barrier. Now I come to think of it, that would make his behaviour compulsive and therefore essentially involuntary, rather than fantastic, because a fantasy needs to be constructed whereas a compulsion happens of its own accord. Be that as it may, it is sobering to reflect upon him going home every evening and thinking ‘What the fuck did I say that for?’. ‘All the lonely people – where do they all come from?’ pondered Paul McCartney via Eleanor Rigby in 1966. If this evidence is anything to go by, they come from Winterton on Sea, and spend a lot of money on running shoes.
So here I am, passing the winter months in an obscure department in an obscure district council until the coming of warmer weather means that operations at Runton can begin again in earnest. Most of my work consists of recording obscure details about the effects of spring tides on the mussel beds at Wells on obscure spreadsheets that no one will ever look at. I also take the post to the post room at quarter past three, and drop off and subsequently pick up the departmental laundry when it is returned from the cleaners. I fold things, put things in envelopes, attach things to emails and discuss the weather, the footie, and amusing stuff toddlers do with the other obscures – there are six of us in total. Most afternoon we have enormous bags of cakes, which is difficult for those of us who like to avoid carbs. It’s even more difficult when those of us who like to avoid carbs are having a binge day, because then we have to buy two enormous bags of cakes – one to share with the team, and one to scoff alone on the far side of the car park. I am kept abreast of Eastenders and Love Island, and in return discuss bits of my studies. Maybe it’s fear of obscurity that drives my ex manager to talk nonsense, although it strikes me that striving to avoid obscurity is a foolish pursuit, especially as oscurity it is, in many ways, comforting, or at least welcoming. For all this upswing in events, however, reminders of my previous job persist: last week I received in the internal post the keys to the Ford Focus that comes with it, despite the fact that left the job five months ago and don’t drive anyway. It is still in the car park, and I use it to put my bike in when it’s raining. Idiots.
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Photards:
Main: rams or sheep or something in a field.
Top inset: my son at his nan’s with a litter bin on his head.
Middle inset: coffee made for me at work by an environmental health officer. The residue at the top reminded me of a series of sleighs being pulled by reindeer, although this was around Christmastime.
Lower inset: my dog guarding the stairs in our house when renovations were going on.
It is January 14th, 2020 and I have just taken our Christmas tree from the living room to the garden. It is a real tree, so it can come in again next year, but even this is too annoying for me – I wanted a plastic one we could keep by the telly with a tea towel over it till December. Across England, from the mid Victorian country estate of Runton, where Joe is mending llama chewed and goat rammed petting zoo fences, to the Leeds side streets where ‘Anton’ is fixing the faulty wiring of his elderly and distrusting Asian customer base, to the obscure Norfolk council department where I have found employment for the winter months, tinsel has come down, Rudolph and his very shiny clothes are sound asleep, and bopping desktop Santas have had the last tango in Briston. For now, Christmas is old news, and the bleakest part of the bleak midwinter is upon us.
using them as a vote winner, are they. Incidentally, in case you’re concerned that you might have voted for a racist party – anti-Semitism and racism are completely different things, like twins, so there’s no need to worry.
This is imporant, because shouting at people for being stupid literally is middle class politics. Also, they already have enough to keep them busy, what with the Winter Olympics, hummus, transgenderism, picnics, yoga, food intolerances, pop up bakeries and telling us how to be working class properly, so it’s not like they won’t have anything to Tweet about. Instead of going to festivals to wave rainbow flags about and leave litter everywhere, they should use them as an inspiration to get into music, where they have a solid track record – my own beloved Beatles are built upon the most middle class musical partnership in history, after all. This became apparant when half of it starting singing about being a Working Class Hero from a recording studio in his stately home, which also featured seventy two acres of grounds, a herd of deer, a lake specially dug so it was visible from the master bedroom and a purpose built heated room for his conceptual artist wife to keep her fur coats in. That said, he did strike a blow for the Many by having his chauffer return his MBE to Buckingham Palace in a Rolls Royce, so there’s that. Then again, he also wrote Imagine, the most patronising song in the history of popular music. I mean, it’s a lovely tune and as a sentiment it’s difficult to argue with, but it assumes, as all middle class people do, that no one except them has ever thought about how nice it would be if everything was marvellous. For all this, though, I remain an enthusiastic supporter of the middle class, because a middle class is how you know you live in a democracy, but they have got to know their limits. These people meddling in things is why it costs fifty quid to see West Ham, why gluten free batter is making fish and chips more and more expensive, why the Labour party wouldn’t save you even if it could and, understandably, why the aliens won’t fucking talk to us.
There was once a small clothes shop on Holloway Road, just past the Lion pub, opposite Archway tube on the way to Camden Town, and in the window was a sign saying ‘Skinny Jeans Can Fuck Off’. This would date it to around 2008, when Joe and I would tumble in to and out of the Lion after Saturday trading, tumble into Planet Kebabs, and tumble back to his squat in Bracegirdle Street which, as it turns out, was next to a money laundering operation. These were fearless times: the most we had to worry about was the DJ who used to play outside the veggie burger place at Camden Lock Market, who would corner us on the Northern Line and explain how he was changing his DNA to counter CIA mind control techniques. Someone mugged us on Archway Road around this time, and even he was a larf, once he stopped waving his butterfly knife about. We ended up sharing our chips with him, and I think we might even have given him a tenner. What we should have given him was a solid kicking of course, but I had a downstairs flat in Kentish Town and a vintage Vespa with chrome and mirrors all over it, Joe and Becka were about to get married and, in that vanished world of N19, it was a veritable Summer of Love.
ery time they put a kale vol au vent or whatever on a reusable plate they subsequently leave in a hedge. The wedding party was typified by a Boden catalogue who rampaged across the cous cous while snarking on about a recent dentist visit she had undertaken. The treatment, for a root canal, had required a subsequent appointment. The dentist told her there would be a four week wait, but the ‘good old working class receptionist’ had managed to squeeze her in next Thursday at three, with the overall impression that between them they had scored a victory over what counts as oppression for white girls like this. I was tempted to explain that, when you think about it, the job of dentist and dental receptionist are quite different and, to illustrate this, perhaps next time the dentist could take care of the appointments while the receptionist has a bash at her root canal surgery, and see how that works out. Also, had I been the receptionist I would have been tempted to take advantage of the fact that she was full of anaesthetic by leaning over my little reception desk and punching her in the fucking mouth.
Along with banjos and replica firearms, we carefully folded their flags into a suitcase with an Ibiza sticker on it. Confederate flags are often reviled as a symbol of slavery, being that the Confederacy was a slave economy, but I can’t really think of anywhere that isn’t. The Pyramids were built by slaves, and no one’s boycotting Egypt. People are worked to death making iPhones or handbags or trainers, but no one really minds. There are many many more slaves these days, but I suppose we don’t mind because we can’t see them. Anyway, at least the Confederates were up front about the unpleasent nature of their society, and in that regard perhaps their flag is the most honest that ever flew. For some time we reflected that, while the world of the Archway clothing shop and its views on contemporary legwear are long gone, as is the Lion public house and our Camden trading empire, the world of the Confederates is more evident than ever and we may therefore assume that they won their civil war pretty easily.
Matt’s kitchen for the time being is in the Keeper’s Cottage. It was busy because Hugh the Wedding Planner, a scam artist fleecing the happy couple, and Princess Leo, a drag artist providing Star Wars cabaret for the reception, were also in attendance. I learned about blending stick foundation and disguising your Adam’s apple from Princess Leo while Matt and Hugh talked about food allergies among the wedding guests, because it’s not every day you get to talk to a drag artist. Outside, it was a beautiful day. The sun shone upon the vegetables being harvested by tiny Forest School hands in German Field and upon glampers and the petting zoo. It shone upon East Field, it shone upon the West Field and it celebrated all the trees and greenery across the entire Estate. It also shone upon the furious and protracted shouting that followed Graham’s decision to reveal that a circuit breaker only needed to be flipped in a forgotten junction box for the electric fence around the paddock to once again carry quite a substantial current, shortly after ‘Anton’ started urinating on it.
The Runton Diaries 