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On the twelfth day of Christmas the office plebs subjected me to…
Twelve ungrateful children stories,
Eleven far too expensive presents,
Ten Christmas TV discussions,
Nine badly decorated Christmas trees,
Eight Christmas diet plans
Seven office Christmas party plans
Six weans a playing up
Five expensive foreign holidays
Four crap Christmas jokes
Three stories about shopping centres
Two laptop present recommendations
And shit load of Twilight discussions
Once again I find myself sitting here with an incredulous look on my face and shaking my head in disdainful wonder at the so called “Great British Public”.
The BBC news has an article today that details a list of fifty unsung British heroes that the National Lottery has assembled as part of its 15th anniversary celebrations. You can see the full list here, but I’ll try to limit myself to a short rant on the contents of the top ten:
1: Michael Faraday, physicist
2: JM Barrie, author
3: Edward Jenner, smallpox vaccine pioneer
4: John Peel, broadcaster
5: Alan Turing, mathematician
6: Baldrick, Blackadder character
7: Midge Ure, singer
8: Percy Shaw, cat’s eyes inventor
9: Tim Berners-Lee, worldwide web inventor
10: Fred Scott, BBC cameraman
Admittedly some of the people in the top ten are underappreciated for their contributions to science, arts and society in general. Others though I would say are very well known, and some, well some shouldn’t even be on a list of people who are supposedly “heroes”.
Apologies to people of a nervous disposition, but I have to get something out of my system before I continue.
BALDRICK is a fictional character you FUCKING CRETINS!
Sorry about that.
The rest of the list is a strange mixture. As I’ve said I agree that many of the people mentioned on the list are deeply underappreciated by the public. The news was recently filled with the demand that the British Government apologise for basically hounding Alan Turing to suicide after the Second World War. His contribution to the fledgling art of computing and cryptanalysis during the war cannot be overstated and I believe he rightly belongs near the top of the list.
Midge Ure however is a world famous musician and responsible for a good chunk of the organisation of Band Aid, and the Band Aid Trust charity. I don’t see why was he chosen over the heads of other worthies such as Sting, Fish or even, dare I say it, Bob Geldof who was the more visible partner in Band Aid. I suppose at least Midge managed to do more than spend his life riding along on a one hit wonder band and thumping tables at charity gigs.
Another odd entry is Fred Scott the BBC cameraman at number ten. He’s the award winning cameraman who was filming when John Simpson and his Iraqi translator Kamaran Abdurrazaq Muhamed were caught in a friendly fire incident during the Iraq war. Kamaran was unfortunately killed when a US warplane bombed the convoy of Kurdish vehicles they were travelling in. Simpson was left deaf in one ear as a result. It was an important moment in the media coverage of warfare. I wouldn’t go as far as to rank Fred as high as 10 on this list, but I wouldn’t do him the dishonour of ranking him lower than FUCKING BALDRICK.
The more I read this list the more I begin to wonder if the people who voted for it were even aware of whom many of these people were. To me it reads like a list of people that young, trendy eighteen to twenty-four year olds have vaguely heard about from various sources and they picked them out of the hat. The inclusion of people like Stephen Merchant who co-wrote The Office seems like it was thrown in by some insane fan and the inclusion of the FICTIONAL CHARACTER of Jeeves the butler from the Jeeves and Wooster short stories strains credibility. Why not replace Jeeves with P.G Wodehouse himself? He’s not exactly well known now as he was when he started publishing stories.
I’m going to lie down in a dark room before I decide to go all Dr. Evil and try to put end to this farce we call society once and for all.
Has anyone else noted that onions, and specifically red onions, seem to be creeping into every facet of the restaurant and fast food business? I can’t seem to get anything today without some bit of stingy, crunchy onion turning up inside it.
The worst offender so far has been Frankie and Benny’s Restaurant chain. It’s a shame because I love going to Frankie and Benny’s to take in the faux Italian-American décor, good food and generally friendly service.
OK that’s mostly bullshit.
The main reason I love going to Frankie and Benny’s specifically because I adore their roasted potato skins with cheese and bacon bits. I could eat them all day long and never get bored. They were simple, straightforward and no doubt fattening as f**k, but they’re tasty so that doesn’t matter. Every visit I made to F&B’s would begin with some potato skins despite El Kat’s prompting that maybe I should try something different. I say, NO! As long as we’re in Frankie and Benny’s I’ll be whacking back the potato skins, or so I thought.
Frankie and Benny’s had other ideas it seems, and suddenly one day I cheerfully demanded Loaded Potato skins from the friendly waiter only for him to apologise profusely that they no longer served them. So it was with a heavy heart that munched down some chicken things and refused to return to F&B’s until my favourite starter was restored to its rightful place on the menu.
El Kat, who is ever tolerant of my foible and idiosyncratic ways, shrugged and said OK have it your way you six foot pest. Of course she said this in full knowledge that my daft taboo did not apply to her if I was there, and while out with some of her family at F&B’s she spotted the return of potato skins to the menu.
Naturally upon hearing this news I demanded that we go straight there this weekend, and I fired in trying to order potato skins even before we were properly seated. The friendly waiter duly obliged and a familiar plate of three potato skins appeared in front of me. They looked better than ever with each one looked stuffed to the gunwales and coated with mighty layers of cheese. I grabbed the first and took a giant enthusiastic bite, and that’s when I got what we in Ayrshire refer to as “a gunk”.
A crunching, mashing, distinctly organic texture assailed my senses. I sensed a great disturbance in the force. There was more to those loaded potato skins than just cheese, bacon and potato. Truth be told the taste of the entire thing was overwhelmed by the presence of GOD DAMNED RED ONION. I put them down in disgust. I couldn’t bring myself to eat another bite. This wasn’t what I signed on for! I wanted potato, bacon and cheese, not some damn miniature salad mixture sneaking about disguised as my sacred starter.
My sadness and disappointment were almost palpable, and El Kat reassured me that the mean proprietors of Frankie and Benny’s would be punished when the revolution came. I nodded in sage agreement and we departed from that place of culinary betrayal determined to fight on against the ever encroaching forces of the onion invaders.
On my desk at THE WORK I’ve got one of those tear off calendars that’s much beloved by Hollywood movies who want to show the passage of time. It’s one of those low cost things that contracts give out at New Year to remind you to think about them when organising work. The thing itself is a self standing triangular thing made of cardboard coated with PVC and emblazoned with the contractor’s logo and contact details. It’s fairly generic as corporate souvenirs go, but it saves me buying my own calendar. Each day is printed on a separate sheet of paper and you tear off the days as they go by. The only thing that piques my interest for this particular bit of otherwise generic tat is the fact that every day has an “on this day in history” factual snippet, and a Chinese fortune cookie-esque platitude. I’d post a picture up, but I don’t have one to hand at the moment and I don’t want to give them any free advertising.
You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you all of this. Well this morning, like any other morning, I arrived at work and booted up my soviet era laptop, and while I waited for it to wake up I reached over and tore off yesterday’s sheet to see what words of wisdom the calendar might regale me with this time. I was shocked and amazed to find out that:
1497 – Englishman John Cabot discovers and claims Newfoundland for King Henry VII.
Now before I explain my shock and amazement I’d like to point out a few important factual inaccuracies in the calendar’s factoid. Firstly John Cabot was an Italian, not an Englishman. He was like so many Italian merchants and explorers of the late middle ages, sought foreign sponsorship for voyages of discovery. In this case his trip was sponsored by Henry VII of England to discover and chart a northern passage to the East Indies. He failed spectacularly of course, but he did manage to stumble across Newfoundland and possibly Canada which were subsequently claimed and colonised by England so it didn’t turn out as bad as it could have for poor old Cabot.
Secondly, and more importantly, we don’t know where the hell he actually discovered, and it’s unlikely that Cabot did either. In fact he was such an outstanding navigator and admiral that after his discovery he returned to England, fitted out another expedition with five ships and sailed off never to be seen again.
So anyway, I was shocked and amazed, and you’re probably wondering why. Well it’s a well known fact that I like my dad, granddad etc, am a Nationalist. You may have picked up the odd hint here and there across my posts. It’s through my deep interest in Scotland, and most importantly its history, that I’m well aware of the historical importance of the 24th of June in our nation’s history.
To those of you reaching for the history books or typing 24th of June into Wikipedia right now I’ll save you the bother and tell you that on the 24th of June 1314 a small Scottish army under Robert the Bruce defeated a large and far better equipped English army at the Battle of Bannockburn. An event that would secure Scottish independence for nearly three centuries and that would echo down through history even to this day in the words of Bruce’s Scots Wha Hae and the Corrie’s Flower of Scotland.
Now admittedly a lot of stuff has happened on the 24th of June throughout history, including the start of the Battle of the Somme. The arrival of a Italian explorer in Newfoundland hardly seems particularly important in comparison. Especially since the Native Americans and even the Norse had beaten him there by nearly a millennia.
I don’t know how much the contractor will sympathise with me though. All they really want to do is lay asphalt on the roads…
I spotted a news story today in The “Scottish” Sun that I feel really sums up the age in which we’re currently living. Most of the story won’t be surprising to anyone that’s been on public transport in Glasgow. It’s the same old merry-go-round of a nutter getting on the bus, verbally abusing the driver and then rounding on anyone that looks at them the wrong way.
This time the nutcase boarded the 62, in the middle of the afternoon on bank holiday Monday, and started abusing the driver about the increase in the fare to his intended destination. Incidentally the increase started away back at the end of March and was widely publicised about the buses and in the Evening Times etc.
The next step for this guy was, of course, to turn his anger on the other passengers travelling on the bus. The nut job is now firmly entrenched on the bus and even goes as far as to start abusing a primary school kid because he was wearing a Rangers top. The boy and his dad were both, probably quite rightly, too scared to do anything about the eijit and presumably ignored him or smiled politely in the hope he would go away. No doubt the rest of the bus were quite happy that he wasn’t picking on any of them directly and muttered under their breath that somebody should do something about him. One passenger though, a guy by the name of Barry MacDonald, didn’t just mutter. He actually took it upon himself to challenge the nutter about his behaviour in a rare act of personal bravery and social responsibility.
Naturally the thug stewed about this for a bit, and then as his stop approached he pulled a knife and stabbed Barry in the stomach. Nobody tried to stop him, or even try to get hold of him before he fled, and nobody on the packed bus has come forward as a witness to this attack. Still it’s a well known fact that the people of Glasgow have no love for the police eihter. I can’t very well blame the nutters entirely; if they do something and get away with it then they’re more likely to do it again. If we’re honest with ourselves this wasn’t the first time that someone was attacked or even murdered in broad daylight in a busy place and nobody can remember seeing anything. I’ve even seen it myself on occasion while passing by a bus stop. The police dragging some drugged up lunatic off a bus while the passengers berate the cops for being thugs, pigs and bastards even though I guarantee before the cops showed up every man jack of them was praying that the nutter would either get off at the next stop or that someone would do something about him.
As an aside I’d like to say that I don’t know what it is about Glasgow, but there seems to be an ever increasing prevalence of thugs like this lately. Every single time this kind of stuff happens it’s a sad step back for a city that’s tried so hard to lose the image of scar faced razor wielding hoodlums. It doesn’t matter how much they spend on Chinese granite and urban regeneration. They still haven’t managed to tackle the root causes of all the problems: That quintessentially Glaswegian nutter element that has consistently dragged the city down to their level.
So shame on you Glasgow, the city that breeds a generation of dangerous thugs and then hasn’t the courage to face up to them. Shame on the people who sat and muttered and hoped that “someone” would do something about the bam that boarded the bus but hadn’t the courage to help the one man who tried. Finally shame, and thrice shame on everyone on that bus who went home and probably told everyone they knew about the excitement of the day, but hadn’t the decency, bravery or social responsibility to phone in to the police and say “I saw what happened on that 62 when that boy was stabbed.”
It’s often said in Scotland that the British Broadcasting Corporation should be renamed the English Broadcasting Corporation. Their radio and television channels display a remarkable level of Anglo-centric behaviour and a great many of their Scottish programs are just the English ones with a bit of tartan and shortbread sitting beside the presenter.
If their general programming is bad for this national bias then their international sports coverage is many times worse. of Scottish, or indeed Welsh and Northern Irish is infamous for English bias. It’s fair to say that as long as a sportsman is winning they will be British, but as soon as they start to loose they are instantly returned to their respective nationality. The Scottish tennis player Andy Murray is an excellent example of this phenomenon: when he’s winning he’s a true Brit and a great British sportsman. The instant he loses he’s back to being just a Scottish tennis player or that plucky young boy from Scotland.
Today I found yet another cracking example of the English Broadcasting Corporation at it’s finest. It was while checking the RSS Feed for the BBC news I spotted the following headline:
The RSS hyperlink is entitled “Evidence of McFlinstones Found” but the actual page is headlined with the far more descriptive “Signs of earliest Scots unearthed.” I may be over-reacting but I can’t see this as anything more than yet another quick pun at the expense of Scotland by a London based media. I’m surprised they didn’t just entitle the entire article “Jocks find some rocks and don’t try to eat them!” or “kilt wearing haggish munchers find rocks.”
It’s time we cut these arseholes off entirely and got our own Scottish news media on the go.
(And don’t talk to me about STV. They’re just the poor man’s BBC nowadays.)
I’ve never had any time for the late Jade Goody or the rest of the idiots that have come bubbling to the surface with the rising tide of so called reality television that infests the schedules. The vast majority of these so called stars are untalented, feckless idiots with few redeeming personality features and even fewer scruples. I’m therefore totally mystified by the sudden, and very manufactured, outpouring of national sorrow over Jade’s death at the weekend.
The papers are full of news about who will or won’t be attending her funeral. There’s full page photo spreads of the mountain of floral tributes, thousands of column inches devoted to her life and achievements and the great and the good are coming out of the woodwork to say how much of a shame it is that she died. Now I’m even writing about the whole affair in my blog and her mother has even started comparing the public reaction to the frankly baffling mass hysteria that followed the death of Princess Diana back in 1997. I can’t wait for the song that they chose to bring out in memory of the peoples latest princess.
Might I suggest this one?
Now don’t get me wrong here, Jade’s death was as tragic as the death of any human being, and she chose to embrace the media rather than shy away from them. I do however take issue with the relentlessness with which the press, and in particular the tabloids, have pursued the subject. Jade’s health has been front page news for nearly three weeks and has successfully squeezed out nearly anything else that’s happened in the world during that time. You know, little things, things like the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the global financial meltdown and the murder of two soldiers and a policeman in Northern Ireland. I would have thought that they would at least have backed off a little when it became apparent that her death was imminent. I get the impression that the paparazzi would have been sitting round her bed ready to catch a snap of her last breath if they could have. Someone out there has been making a fortune off the back of Jade Goody’s misery, but I doubt it was her two young sons, I wonder who it could have been?
The life of Jade Goody should serve as a warning to a generation of fame hungry young people around the world. She managed quite successfully to live the dream that thousands of self centred arseholes around the world are desperate to emulate. You only have to watch some of the cringe worthy outtakes from the deluge of reality shows to get an idea of how self deluded some of these people really are.
I often wonder how many truly great artists that have remained undiscovered over the centuries simply because they never had the forum, opportunity or support to be recognised for their gifts. I think fame used to be like life in the wild, only the strong and truly determined manage to survive. It took determination, talent, guts and no small amount of luck to make it to the top. Nowadays however the whole process is broken and backwards. You don’t need talent to go on Big Brother you just need to be a preening self centred arsehole and hope that you manage to stay just the right side of the media to stay on the show and win the prize. There’s no talent in that, I could get a similar thing by locking a bunch of jakes in a static caravan and dropping cans of super lager in through the roof.
Now before someone comes crashing in here ranting on about those glorified Butlin’s talent shows like Pop Idol and Dancing on Ice I will admit that some shows do promote people with genuine talent, but they do it in such an arrogant and showboating style that it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Prime example of this would be anything with Simon Cowell on it. The show pretends that it is about finding Britain’s Next Top (blank) or making an ordinary person a (blank) idol, but let’s be frank here: The real stars of these shows are the judges who are even more conceited than the fools that appear on the shows, and the real benefactors aren’t the hapless simpletons that win: it’s the production companies that make an undeniable fortune out of the public phone and text voting on each episode.
Far from supporting the argument that you need genuine talent to succeed on these shows I think it just highlights the sheer number of deluded fools out there that think they have that talent. Just take a look at some of the failed auditions that I was talking about. These people really believe that they have some talent you know, and worse their family and friends have probably been feeding their narcissistic delusions.
Now I’ve gone off on a rant about reality television shows, but that notwithstanding any of this I think we need to remember that behind all this crap there’s only one truly important fact: a woman with a young family has died. I think everyone should take a deep breath, say that’s terrible, and then FUCK OFF to leave them alone so they can grieve in peace.
I regularly read a blog called /film which deals with movie industry news and gossip as well as humorous short parody films found around the internet by the writers. It’s content has recently begun to annoy me, although it’s not the blog itself that I’ve found fault with: it’s the Hollywood Movie Machine. /film reflects the movie industry, and as the movie industry seems to be currently suffering from a high imbalance in the talent to toe-rag department. Frankly it’s currently churning out piles of shite in desperate search of dollars and worse than that it’s dragging the English language down with it.
As a result I move we excise the following Hollywood-isms from common speech:
Reboot – Several online dictionaries list the word reboot as a noun, but I consider it more likely to be a verb. You put on boots, but you reboot a computer. I particularly despise reboots – the plural form of this word that’s appeared lately in conjunction with Friday the 13th and others.
RetCon – Retroactive continuity – This is where things are added, taken away or altered to fit the current storyline. Comic books, especially in the 50′s and 60′s were particularly bad for this as they were never written from the point of view of having an overreaching internal logic. Later on as the kids who read them grew up into self obsessed nerds the writers found that they had to write stories that made internal sense or risk the wrath of the fan boys. Retconning allows the writers to resurrect dead characters, change heroes powers and generally get on with telling the story, but it also tends to degenerate into screen time that has to be wasted to avoid a fan-rammy.
Franchise – Just give it up. If a movie makes money it doesn’t have to become a deluge of action figures, novels and worst of all sequels.
Adaptation – Taking a story from another form of media for example comic books, novels, computer games or even burger restaurants and making a movie out of it. Will someone, for the love of god, explain to Hollywood that many of the things their adapting worked perfectly because they were written for the medium in which they were originally presented? No two hour movie will ever capture every nuance of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and no movie adapted to a video game has ever been good.
Sequel – I’ll admit that some stories deserve a sequel, and they do often set the scene correctly at the end of the movie, but for every one that does a hundred more are made because the original was a money-spinner. Star Wars was fine with the first three movies, the lord of the Rings needed three movies to tell the story, but the Matrix should have quit while it was ahead. If the story can be told, and told well, in one movie we don’t need to see the characters going through it all again no matter how entertaining it was, and we certainly don’t need:
Prequels – A sequel where the action happens before the original movie. WHAT THE HELL IS THE POINT? The movie is supposed to be a heroic journey. The critical event in the hero/world/universes existence, but Hollywood doesn’t trust the audience to sit back and accept the world’s backstory. They’ve got to try and show it with better CGI, bigger name actors and huge special effects.
Hollywood-ism – I know I only coined this about 400 words ago, but it annoys me already.
I don’t know if you’ve all been following the news about the shooting in Northern Ireland, but I find myself outraged. This wasn’t an attack on an armed British patrol making its way through the Rathenaw Estate or a riot in the centre of town of British treatment of a republican prisoner. This was a deliberate and calculated act of simple murder directed at two pizza delivery men whom, in the course of doing their job, had to deliver some pizzas to a British army barracks. This wasn’t anything out of the ordinary: they had been there regularly on a Saturday night for months, maybe years. They weren’t armed, the soldiers weren’t armed and nobody could have foreseen that a bunch of extremist maniacs would try to kill them for delivering pizzas.
There hasn’t been a British solider killed in Northern Ireland since 1997 and I’m sure everyone in Ulster had begun to believe that it could never happen again. The peace deal struck between the terror groups, politicians and the people of Northern Ireland has brought peace and stability to a land in desperate need of calm. It changed the future of Ireland and gave the people there new hope and much needed optimism. I hope that they won’t let that future be destroyed by the actions of a handful of idiots.
I suppose fundamentally these men believe they are fighting a just war against an occupying power. I think they seem themselves as cavalier heroes fighting against a faceless jackbooted tyranny, At least I hope they do, the alternative is that these people just like killing and the presence of British soldiers in Northern Ireland just gives them an outlet and a target.
Just as a last thing, something I’ve wondered about, is the difference in how the unionist and republican terror groups are treated compared to Al Qaeda and other Islamic fundamentalist groups. If I didn’t know any better I would say that the western world is far softer on the Irish paramilitary groups. If you’re a Muslim and you even looked the wrong way at a plane you got a one way ticket to Guantanamo Bay but the paramilitary types barely even seem to get a look in. Entire gangs of people are being lifted down in England and held for days without trial or lawyer under what appears to fairly flimsy evidence. Meanwhile nobody noticed a disgruntled bunch of Irishmen complaining about Domino’s pizza delivering to the army and polishing their guns. Either the paramilitaries are very good at staying under the security forces radar, which admittedly they have had years of practice at, or the Muslim extremists need to stop publishing their plans on Face Book. Maybe the British government should have expended some of the massive amount of time and effort they’ve thrown into doing American’s bidding on tidying up their own back yard before running off to mess up other countries.
All criticism of British policy aside, I believe, as do the majority of the people and politicians of Northern Ireland, that this weekends shootings were the work of a few shot sighted fools and I have little doubt that if the security forces don’t catch up with them then elements of their fellow republicans will.
I don’t know what’s going on with my letting agency, but I’m almost convinced they’re part of a psychological experiment designed to drive me mad.
It’s now over a fortnight since I told them my busted old washing machine had shuffled off the mortal coil, and they’ve still not done hee-haw about it. I’ve about reached the end of my tether with them as it seems clear they’re doing one of two things:
The various offices and their maintenance contractor are not actually talking to each other and information is being lost somewhere between them.
Or
They’re waging a Machiavellian war of nerves against me in the hopes that I get frustrated enough to get in my own repairman or even buy a whole new machine on my own.
The whole saga is getting more and more frustrating as time goes on.
Thursday 22nd January – The washing machine produces an odd burning smell and stops spinning while loaded with two pairs of jeans. I crack the door open as I’m worried the whole thing will burst into flames. The jeans are soaking wet.
Friday 23rd January – I phone the letting agents first thing in the morning and tell them the details. They tell me that a contactor will be out ASAP to take a look at it but that it will probably be Monday before they can make it.
Monday 26th January – Arrive home after work and inspected the scene. No sign that anything has happened with the machine. It hasn’t been disturbed as far as I can tell, and there’s definitely no sign that anyone has had it out to look at it. Maybe they’re busy, I thought, I’ll give them to the end of tomorrow to do something about it.
Wednesday 28th January – I figured that I had given them enough time and phoned up to find out what the hell was going on. The repair team at the agents told me that the job was with the contractor, but they would phone and check what was happening and give me a call back.
Thursday 29th January – I’ve had no call back and so I decided to try the machine and see if they’ve maybe fixed it and not let me know. I load in a couple of tea towels and set it on the lightest setting. It fills up with water and sits there whirring away. The drum doesn’t move, and there’s an odd smell of burning rubber.
Friday 30th January – I phone up the letting agent again, and they assure me that the instructions have been sent to the contractor, but they also admit that there’s no information on their system about the work being done. I ask them to check it out and give me a call back as it’s been over a week since the thing broke down and things are starting to smell in the flat. I take a break down in Ayrshire and my ever efficient Mum offers to do the washing for me to help out. I’m reluctant, but eventually agree and thank her for her assistance.
Monday 2nd February – I check every minute detail of the machine to see if it’s been disturbed, but nothing’s happened at all that I can see.
Tuesday 3rd February – I phone up and ask the letting agency what the hell is going on? They’re very apologetic of course and they check their system carefully. Seemingly the contractor has been out to look at the machine, last week, and found that it’s fine and working normally. No chance I say, and I tell them I’m going to try it that night and check. They say it might be the age of the machine that’s a problem, and the repair team say that they will consult with my property manager about the possibility of replacing the machine. I ask them to give me a phone back and make a point of giving them my mobile number, work number and home number so that they can get me. I try a couple of polo shirts in the machine when I get in from work, and it refuses to spin. The shirts are choked with washing powder and utterly sodden. I have to hang them over the bath to avoid flooding the kitchen with the runoff.
Wednesday 4th February – Phone up again to complain about their utter lack of action. They tell me that my property manager is off sick that day and is the only one that can sign off on the replacement of appliances etc. I say I’ll phone back tomorrow, and again ask them to give me a call and let me know what the hell is going on.
Friday 6th February – Still heard nothing from the letting agents. I phone up to try and get the property manager, but he or she is out at a property viewing. The person on the phone assures me that a message will be left and that the property manager will phone me back. When I don’t get a phone call I ask if I can leave work early and head down to their office in an effort to put the boot in. This is instantly scuppered by a comedy of errors on the part of my boss means that I don’t get there until after it closes.
Monday 9th February – I phone up again and demand to know what the hell is going on, but I as much as get told I’ve phoned the wrong office. I ask the person on the end of the phone to get my property manager. They’re unavailable at present of course. I demand that something be done ASAP about the washing machine and they assure me that they’ll get right on it and phone me back. I give them my mobile number yet again and a promise that I’ll be phoning every day until the thing is fixed or replaced.
It’s lunchtime already, and three hours since I phoned the bastards. They better pull something fairly spectacular out of their ass before finishing time.
