Action!

The commercial shoot today was fairly shambolic, as they often are.

Takes had to be timed around the noisy flapping of a lost pigeon doing circuits around the high ceiling of the studio.

The wardrobe lady didn't seem to have taken our actor's measurements at all. He was meant to be paying a cool young guy, but his straight-leg jeans ended a couple of centimetres above his shoes, his jacket had sleeves so short it looked like he borrowed it from a 12 year old, and the striped shirt tucked into his waistband bulged outwards with a slightly overhanging belly. Or maybe that's the hot new look.

He also had some sort of mental block with his lines. The words 'it's got a 1600 engine' were so incredibly complex he forgot them every time.

Our director had spent a year studying in America, and had returned with a quite unconvincing but apparently permanent pseudo hip-hop accent. Whilst this did not impact directly on the success of the shoot, it did add an extra level of irritation. For me, anyway.

crack lip

Committed murder in my heart repeatedly today. Eventually resorted to throwing things at the MAM every time he HAARRAGHed his throat clear of phlegm.

He had a prominent burn smack in the middle of his lower lip today, not for the first time. He claims the filter of his cigarette sometimes sticks to his lip and causes a burn. But having mentioned this to a chain-smoking acquaintance who is - how shall we say - no stranger to the seedier side of life, this seems unlikely. Apparently you sustain a burn like that if you're a bit careless when your crack pipe gets too hot. Eeeeeek!

This would certainly explain the red-rimmed eyes, irritated mucous membranes and nervous fidgeting. However, loss of appetite and malnutrition are a noted side-effect, so his devotion to pies might blow this theory out of the water.

Reunited

Uneventful return to office life. MAM sadly has not succumbed to chronic emphysema in my absence, but hacked and snorted his way through today's obligatory 8 hours. His new shoes are starting to take on the aroma of his former pair, turfed out after I informed him they smelled like a dead rat.

Next week we are on a TV shoot together! I have to endure his insistence during casting sessions that the little boy in the commercial have a 'hot chick' playing his mother. Saaaaad.

Baggage.

Introducing some conditions as yet unnamed by science, which are endemic to the average airport baggage reclaim area:


Invidia Saccus: Feelings of envy and wrath towards those who are smugly plucking their bags from the conveyor belt.

Excrucius Cervix: Damage to neck from peering fruitlessly towards plastic flaps where suitcases are meant to pop out.

Paraphernalia Impatiens: Mounting irritation at non-appearance of bags.

Odium Portatus: Deep hatred of that ugly blue suitcase with the offensively cheerful rainbow-coloured strap around it, now making its 25th circuit of the carousel while there is no sign whatsoever of your bags.

Saccus Incredulitas: Disbelief that bags have STILL not appeared.

Impedimentia Culpa: The dawning of a dark suspicion that someone has surreptitiously loaded your baggage onto their trolley and made off with it.

Apparatus Pax: Grudging relief at eventual appearance of bags.

Whale-Watch

We did not see this whale.

We saw this whale.

This being a lovely spring day, we took the long drive out to Hermanus - a town fronting a stretch of ocean which is famously the favoured haunt of several whale species, notably the Southern Right, Humpback and Bryde's whale.

They are reputed to breach the water regularly here, leaping out in spectacular displays of size and power.

Now, I'm not saying this doesn't ever happen. Merely that it was yet another demonstration of the Dream vs Reality syndrome. We were very lucky in that there was a whale virtually everywhere you looked. Throw your ice cream cone into the sea and it would hit a whale.

It's just that they weren't feeling all that terribly energetic, and were mostly impersonating massive barnacle-encrusted floating boulders.

Then again, this could be the curse of the camera. There's the spectacular professional camera with mega-lenses which a photographer can use to capture and enhance a fleeting event, making it even more impressive than it would appear to the naked eye (photo 1).

Then there's the camera the rest of us use, capable of taking a fairly awe-inspiring sight and making it look ten times further away and more insignificant than it would appear to the naked eye (photo 2).

And no, this is not down to the poor skills of the photographer. Well, not entirely.

That Green Airline

Just because it's a low-cost airline, does that mean it absolutely has to smell as though the floor's been mopped with a bucket containing a solution of 1 part water to 3 parts urine?

And while I agree that having hygienic little covers to encase the head-rests is a genteel touch, it's less useful when they are all missing - leaving 180 velcro-topped seats to anchor your clothing the instant you lean on or even brush past one. Judging by the crop of faded multi-coloured wool trapped in the velcro, this has been a long-standing conition.

Added to this, the flight was 20 minutes late, ran out of sandwiches after we'd been in the air just a short time, and I had to endure the pain of watching a teenage girl ram her stuffed cabin trolley into the overhead locker right on top of my fragile, artfully gift-wrapped paper bag of Body Shop goodies.

I've been on trans-continental flights that seemed shorter.

But It was all worth it because here I am with friends in the lovely Cape for the weekend, trying to stop obsessing about the sluggish legal battle to recover my missing fortune from dodgy pony-tailed laptop guy.

It's a sign.

Seen on the way to work this morning:

Love actually

Impossible as it seems, the MAM has actually managed to get himself a date for tonight.

Imagine, some lucky lady will be on the receiving end of the treatment this sausage roll is getting.

Here are a few of the qualities a potential mate of the MAM would require:



- Fundamental dislike of the condition of sobriety
- Limited or no sense of smell essential
- Impaired eyesight a plus
- Ditto, hearing
- Own plentiful supply of Peter Stuyvesant
- Appreciation of crass sexist witticisms

Laptop drama update

I have a 9 o' clock appointment tomorrow morning with the company to whom I have paid a monthly legal insurance premium for several years. I suspect that my vision of the crack legal team at my disposal (derived from watching 'Law & Order') might be overly optimistic.

I researched them on the local Customer Service Reports website and this is what I found...

Happy customers yellow, angry ones purple.

Appetite-Stop

I've just been assaulted by one the most horrific sights you could possibly imagine. I was contentedly eating a lamb chop and baked potato dinner while watching TV, when on came a badly-made advert for something called Epil-Stop.

The low production values were sickening enough, but I actually cried out in involuntary disgust when a very tanned female leg from thigh to calf appeared, covered in what can only be described as a coarse, dark, curly mat of pubic hair. An arm then swooped in to pull off a long waxy strip covered in this fur, and I was facing a struggle to keep my lamb chop down.

Should such offensive material be allowed during prime dinner-time viewing, I ask?

asphyxia

I'm putting my recent poor decision-making down to spray glue.
We use spray glue to mount up work for presentations. It's a harmful chemical though, and guidelines call for gloves, eye protection and safety masks to be worn when using it.

Being an ad agency we prefer to live on the edge, therefore my safety precautions involve i) sucking in a giant breath of air before entering the spray booth, ii) running inside to spray as many pieces of paper as possible while holding my breath and squinting, iii) staggering back out purple-faced and gasping.

I suspect repeated inhalation of spray glue over the years to have adversely affected my health, notably my powers of reasoning.

The longest day

Yesterday at the office the Most Annoying Man truly surpassed himself. I was not in a sunny & tolerant frame of mind due to the ongoing laptop debacle, so naturally MAM chose yesterday to be afflicted with his most chronic post-nasal drip to date. My bleak musings were interrupted with clockwork regularity every 25 seconds by a loud and phlegmy throat-clearing HARRUMPH, followed up with a foul snort. Torment does not begin to describe the ordeal. It's a mystery why he's in advertising when he could be earning big bucks wearing down the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay.

BOING!

That pony-tailed little rat. At least I was spared the seven working days of suspense, as the cheque has bounced instantly on day one. Could it be that Abdul is not the scion of a millionaire dynasty after all?

Time for the wheels of justice to swing ponderously into action.

The date is definitely off...

The Countdown Begins

My encounter last night with pony-tailed shady guy (let's call him 'Abdul') didn't go quite as planned.

He remained immovable on my sofa for quite some time, relating to me his history as a promising soccer player before injury put a stop to his ambitions. He was at pains to impress me with tales of his family's great wealth and connections, although I noted that he showed up in a dented Volkswagen.

He complimented me on my 'sexy accent' and appeared to be implying that I should go out on a date with him as a thank-you for leaving his palace and travelling out to my hovel in the 'burbs to give me my money. Speaking of which, he had not sufficient cash with him to pay back the entire 15k. My resistance was low by this time, it was getting late and being mistrustful and suspicious is quite draining. Abdul finally departed, leaving me with a cheque and grave misgivings.

On presenting the cheque at the bank this morning I discovered that even with my laughably-named Platinum account it will take SEVEN WORKING DAYS to clear, if indeed it ever does. Gah!
No more dealings with the Underworld.

Thanks to Darryll for introducing me to the enchanting term 'Rubber Gregory' - cockney rhyming slang for a bouncing cheque. (Gregory Peck = cheque)

More good news.

He's given me a cheque.
Do NOT laugh.

There's good news and there's bad news...

Let us be honest - when people hit you with that one, they are in fact saying: 'Here's some bad news.'

A laptop has finally materialised, but not in the hoped-for, pristine, designed-in-California, brand new packaging. Au contraire, my go-between delivered it encased in a slightly scruffy laptop bag belonging to the shady guy's wife, to whom this pre-loved laptop had formerly belonged. Apparently.

Finally getting hold of one of the shady guy's various direct contact numbers, I made it clear that this was not an acceptable substitute for the quoted item. He assured me that this laptop was in perfect working order with extra memory and a personal warranty assuring his services for 2 years. I pointed out the dubious value of a personal warranty given by someone who can virtually never be contacted, fails to turn up at appointed times and offers his wife's cast-off computer in place of a new MacBook Pro.

The shady guy accepted this harsh assessment, and told me he would pop by to retrieve the rejected laptop. I told him I wouldn't be giving it up until I got my money back. Affronted at my 'lack of trust', he is coming to my house in person in about half an hour's time for a espionage novel-style contraband-for-cash exchange.

Dodgy dealing

According to the technicians, my MacBook Pro is not going to bounce back to full health after its coffee bath.

So with the insurance payout, I made the informed and sensible decision to get a replacement through a guy at work who knows a guy who knows a guy who can get me a really good deal... etc.

In a tiresomely predictable scenario, the guy's guy and my money and any laptops are, at the time of writing, nowhere to be found.

Uh-oh.

All trained up

You might imagine that my new all-dough diet means that I am no longer in a position to sneer at the MAM's breakfast pie-fest, but you'd be wrong.

The office was relatively peaceful today, so I took the opportunity to complete the mandatory online corporate governance training demanded by our US parent company.

This took at least an hour more than necessary because of the 'fun & interactive' game show interface they'd designed. Virtual employees answered questions on corporate conduct put to them by the game show host, and you had to decide whether or not their answers were correct. No amount of stabbing the fast forward button and screaming 'GET ON WITH IT' could cut out the idiotic 'banter' between host and contestants.

Personally I sided with the contestant who thought that the expansion of the business into new territories could be helped along by small gratuities paid to government officials, but apparently this is frowned on. I wasn't so keen on the woman who wanted charitable dollars forcibly deducted from every employee's account on a monthly basis. Sadly for her this turned out to be against company policy too. And so it went on, interminably.

There may have been a bit in there about not defaming your employer in your blog, but I was occupied with one of my jam doughnuts at that point.

Doh!

Forgot the First Rule of Supermarket Shopping this morning:
Do not shop under the influence of hunger.

The mind-altering nature of hunger creates a skewed perception of reality in which rational decisions simply cannot be made. I am not actually going to be able to eat a madeira cake, two pork pies, six hot cross buns, four jam doughnuts and a couple of chelsea buns. At least, not before they get stale.

But in my carbohydrate-deprived state they seemed infinitely more appealing than the fruit and vegetables on offer. On unpacking, I have realised that the shopping bags basically contain nothing that isn't made out of dough. The odd sultana in the hot cross buns seems unlikely to provide me with the 5-a-day portion of fruit that the human body apparently requires...

Parental Dilemma

Today my 4 year-old niece began making enquiries of my sister concerning the nature of food, particularly meat. As a veteran of stroking doe-eyed herbivores at petting farms, the news that we fricassee and eat animals predictably came as something of a shock to her.

In fact, she outright rejected this notion as appalling, heinous and simply impossible. My sister indicated tacit agreement with these views while discreetly encouraging her to finish the ham she was eating.

&*(%$@#%^!

As it happens, the call of duty to the badminton courts last night was a lucky break for me. Back at the office the inevitable last-minute night-before-pitch crisis arose, resulting in another evening of toil for my fellow minions.

Meanwhile, despite my dismal performance, our side scraped a narrow victory against the opposition. During the course of the games I noted a telling lack of finesse on our part: on the rare occasions that premier league players miss a shot or otherwise suffer a reverse, they accept it with a certain degree of dignified stoicism. Perhaps a furrowed brow and curse under the breath.

Our games (mostly mine), on the other hand, are a chorus of piercing yelps, howls, blasphemy, shrieks of frustration, gnawing of the racket handle, and arms raised in supplication to the heavens when a particularly easy shot is fluffed.

These dramatics probably take up a lot of precious energy, now that I think about it.

8.32pm

Spectacular performance by me, in which I made several killer drop-shots.When no-one was looking. The rest of the time, not quite so spectacular. Tall asian man won 21-14 in the first game, but I improved during the second and it looked as though I might actually win until I cracked under the pressure and he won 21-19.

I knew we were in trouble when the opposing team arrived wearing matching club shirts. That always signifies a more serious and competitive mind-set. Our motley crew are clad in an array of brightly coloured leisure-wear, marking us out as the amateurs we clearly are.

7.57pm

I wish I were prone on the sofa at home, but duty calls. I have been summoned to play in a badminton league match against a side that for some reason consists only of men. This means I have to play a singles game against a gangling 6'3" asian gentleman. I am currently watching him from the sidelines for signs of weakness. Haven't seen any yet.

Towering Inferno

To my infinite disappointment, a fire which broke out today in the wasteland adjoining our office failed to result in the mass evacuation of our building. This was not as unlikely a prospect as it might sound, as our office has a venerable history of disasters involving fire and flood.

I still have fond memories of the morning we showed up to find the ground floor partially submerged due to a burst pipe upstairs, with the central staircase transformed into a dramatic cascading water feature. Nobody could enter since exposed wiring had turned the foyer into an electrified death-pool, and we were sent home.

No such flipping luck today though. All the fire achieved was to add to the pall of smoke which usually surrounds our building thanks to the 40-a-day habits of the workforce. However, there is light at the end of the smoky tunnel. My contribution to the collective pitch effort is almost at an end (I hope), and I dream of collapsing into a period of utter slothfulness.

9.05pm

STILL AT FECKING WORK

Epiphany!

It came to me this evening at about 5.15pm as I was beavering away on the big pitch: I've chosen a career which is the nearest possible thing to still being at school.

Consider the similarities:
Spending the day writing & drawing, then having my efforts assessed by an authority figure. Check.

Being surrounded by naughty little boys who spend most of the day hanging around the back of the building, smoking. Check.

Regular assemblies (or 'staff meetings'), in which we are lectured by the headmaster (or 'CEO') on the virtues of discipline and hard work. Check.

Frequently summoned to the office of the uptight spinster head-teacher for a dressing-down. Check.

Detention. Check.

I could go on indefinitely.

Does this choice of career point to a certain immaturity on my part? Check.

Feet crime

Today I suffered the twin offences of having to spend the day in a windowless room trying to come up with ad campaign ideas, and being exposed to the MAM's weekend footwear - grubby sandals from which protruded unhealthy white toes with a hint of fungal nail infection.

There was a moment during our brainstorming session today when I became briefly disorientated, struggling to recall the day of the week and trying to calculate how far off the weekend might be. Then I remembered to my horror that THIS IS the weekend.

Another review is scheduled for 10am tomorrow morning. Joy.

The Unbearable Crapness of Being

A week of unrelentingly hard slog is to be rewarded by... you guessed it, a weekend of unrelentingly hard slog. Except no 'working from home' this time. Both Saturday and Sunday are to be spent in the office under beady-eyed supervision. It goes to show that no matter how bad things are, there is always room for deterioration.

Directorial debut

Yesterday I was dispatched with two cameramen and a sound guy to film a couple of our clients testifying to the thrilling experience of working with the agency. This would then be edited into a dynamic presentation to impress potential future clients.

I was equipped with a script detailing questions I should ask, along with the desired answers. I instructed the clients to keep their remarks short and punchy, and I carefully framed the shots to show hints of company logos and artwork behind them. It seemed to go quite well.

On viewing the footage today however, the project was not quite the success I had imagined. Somehow I had captured a series of rambling monologues in which very little of value was said at all. There were many 'ums', 'aahs' and shifty darting of eyes. The interviewees all contrived to look slumped, grey-faced, confused or otherwise unhappy.

I blame the cameramen.