The Magic Time Angel

Right, let’s get this off my chest once and for all. This’ll be the final time I mention the subject. I promise not to keep banging on about it afterwards. Honest I won’t. Probably.

Today we’re going to talk about a BBC programme which should have been called The Magic Time Angel, but which for reasons which increasingly elude me, they continue to refer to as Doctor Who.

By Timothy it winds me up.

Look, I don’t want you to get the impression that I‘m about to go off on a long, rambling, apoplectic rant without any attempt at a balanced and fair assessment of the show, oh no. I’m going to be completely fair about this and list everything I like about the latest series as well.

So here goes – everything I like about Doctor Who, series 5:


Rory



So that’s that done with, now let’s get on to all the bits that bug me. Make yourselves comfortable – I’m about to start cutting…

Bambi McPoutface or whatever the toss the redheaded helper girl is called. Does she actually have more than the one facial expression? Does she though? You know the one: big brown round eyes, startled eyebrows, fat kissy lips puckered up like she’s going to plant a restylane-swollen smacker on the cameraman at the first opportunity. I just don’t get it - I’ve seen Karen Gillan in Doctor Who Confidential – she has at least three whole facial expressions at her disposal in real life, so why on earth is her on-screen character only capable of looking like a timid woodland animal about to bolt from a big bad wolf?

And then there’s her costume. Honestly, the leg-baring – how feckin’ cold-bloodedly calculated to please the dads is that? Utterly ridiculous. I’d much prefer it if they got rid of her and kept her seven-year old counterpart knocking around the TARDIS instead. At least she’s closer to the target audience’s age. And it would be rather good to have an actual child in peril every week, rather than a succession of sexualised young women who continually turn out to be Cosmically Significant (apart from Martha, who was just there to be a bit black for a while).

They should’ve kept old Wilf as the companion – an 80-year old granddad hobbling around time and space was a great change from the girlies, but hey.

What else? Oh yes, of course. Him. The Doctor - goonish, rubber-faced bowtie-wearing, girly skipping embarrassment that he is. And that horrible, horrible, ugly, grey costume. I thought we were getting somewhere with the fez in The Big Bang, but it was not to be, alas. And really, what is his character all about? Nothing but a disjointed series of motormouthed non-sequiturs and second-hand David Tennant impressions. They still keep giving him the odd “Brilliant!”, like they’ve got some old Tennant dialogue lying around at the back of the fridge that has to get used up before it goes off.

And what’s with those increasingly annoying Shouty Speeches to the bad guys, wherein the doctor gives a manically breathless monologue about how he going to defeat the monsters, rescue the girl and save the day, despite (and here’s the bit that really bugs me) being outnumbered, outgunned and completely unarmed? This goes all the way back to Eccleston’s speech to the Daleks in Bad Wolf – I’m sure he even rounds it off with something like “And doesn’t that scare you to death?” To the Daleks. And his successors have got exactly the same treatment – just look at Doctor Rubberface at Stonehenge shouting up at the assembled Space Legion Of Evil: “No plan, no back up, no weapons worth a damn” – he even bloody tells them he’s got nothing. Dude, that is not a cunning poker bluff, that’s telling the bad guys you’re in fact a total pussy. Which you are. Not clever psychology, just rubbish writing.

Then there’s the aliens, those bloody hunchbacked Daleks for a start. I notice that they didn’t inflict the entire multi-coloured line-up on us in The Pandorica Opens episode. Maybe Mr Blue and Mr Orange were on another job, being Strategic or Scientific or what have you. Which is a pity for the Daleks coz that means they couldn’t all merge into a giant Megazord without The Power Of Five. Probably. I also note that we didn’t seem to get any side or rear views of the ‘new paradigm’ Daleks in the last episodes – maybe the creators of the show realised that pronounced kyphosis of the spine is not a strong look for the most ruthless beings in the universe.

The Sontarans. Remember when they didn’t used to be dwarfs? I do. Linx or Styre, or whatever one he was, bloody terrified me with his humpty head and fully-grown stature. That’s a proper Sontaran, pal. I just can’t see Mike from the Young Ones as a credible threat, sorry. The only little guy in the history of Doctor Who to have been legitimately scary was Mr Sin, the Peking Homunculus. Sontarans should be man-size, not 12-year old size. And lose the Vogon noses – I keep expecting them to start spouting dreadful poetry.

Scary:

Grumpy, or possibly Sneezy:

Then there’s the Silurians, or as I like to think of them, the Repticons from the Silurian Quadrant. Apparently we have a choice of looks for the modern Silurian – the budget-friendly but unthreatening big blank-eyed mask (why oh why can’t they have spooky vertical pupils? They’d be proper freaky then) or the Star Trekky lumpy-headed human look reserved for one or two actors with speaking parts (see also Sontarans and those rhino guys).

The magic, oh lordy the magic. Remember when the Doctor was just a smart guy in a time machine who had a device that could open some doors? Remember how he didn’t actually hop around in time mid-story, and couldn’t "cross his own time-stream"? Remember when he didn’t have telepathy whenever the plot required it? Remember when the TARDIS just went to places without coating its passengers in magical time-dust? Remember when it didn’t reroute phone calls from Historically Significant Figures to River bloody Song and her stupid hypno-lipstick? Yeah, the old Doctor called the TARDIS “old girl” and said it “almost had a mind of its own”, but I swear we’re just one series away from the blue box manifesting a frigging sexy hologram image of itself called Tara. Before you know it she’ll have a remote holo-emitter and start running around, getting captured and learning more about human emotions.

Remember when the sonic screwdriver was referred to by its full name, and not the adjective? Calling it ‘the sonic’ is like calling it ‘the electric’ or ‘the green’ or the ‘fairly useful’ It’s ungrammatical, goldarnit! And it sounds like a blue hedgehog. Remember when the sonic screwdriver wasn’t an all-powerful magic wand? It does not repair devices and heal wounds and it certainly doesn’t reprogram mobile phones so that they work anywhere in time and space for Rassilon’s sake. It’s a constant surprise to me that Dr Goonface doesn’t yell “Expelliarmus!” when he whips it out. Oh wait, I think he did (“Good old J.K.!” – arg.)

And the bloody music. I know I’m a little hard of hearing and I sometimes need to ask people to repeat themselves, but do you know which are the only two television programmes that I need subtitles for? The Wire and Doctor Who. The former because it legitimately uses fast-paced, strongly accented street slang and police jargon, the latter because Murray Gold’s perfectly decent orchestral efforts have been inexplicably turned up to 11 and so drown out the dialogue. Could it be that the producers don’t want anyone to listen to the script too hard? Perhaps they’re afraid that people might start to notice that the frenzied plot exposition that Matt Smith and his forebears have been compelled to spout often makes no arsing sense whatsoever? Honestly, I’ve lost count of the number of times he’s chattered some old toot out about "conflugalising the chronion particles within the space-time rift", but unless you resort to subtitles or lip-reading you wouldn’t know that because they’re pumping out “The Doctor’s Theme” at 110 decibels. And don’t get me started on the actual theme tune. Look, I get that they felt they wanted to update it a bit when they brought the show back in 2005, but did they have to bugger about with it completely in 2010? It barely has any whiddly-woo in it at all now. The sainted if peculiar Delia Darbyshire must be spinning in her grave, or more likely, being struck by stupid lightning bolts as her coffin foolishly bounces around the time stream. Yes, I hate the new opening visual sequence too. At least we don’t get a cosmic image of Sylvester McCoy winking at us.

Finally, let’s not forget the poor old TARDIS which has gone through some radical makeovers through the years. I remember the bendy girders in a candlelit warehouse design from the McGann movie, and of course the start it with a bicycle pump version from the Eccleston/Tennant era. They were OK, even if I did have to blank the bicycle pump from my mind. But now what have we got? A console with an old typewriter? Gramophone speakers? A TARDIS that looks like it’s been rebuilt from the set of Steptoe And Son by the look of it. And don’t try fobbing me off some old “It’s from Totters Lane” excuse – I’m just not buying it. The whole thing smacks of a concerted decision by Steven Moffatt and /or BBC Wales to emphasise the silliest aspects of the show and handwave it all away with the increasingly lame excuse: “Look, this is a family show.” That’s not going to wash with me, buddy. I do not accept a TARDIS made out of cack leftovers from a Sunday car boot sale. You are making Doctor Who silly, with its typewriters and its bowties and its swimming pools sloshing about. Silly! Damn you, damn you all to Hell!


So here’s my proposal for the next series of Magic Time Angel: Rory, in a sensible TARDIS with a screwdriver that open doors. Sonically.

In Memory Of Barry

I’m adopting a sombre tone for this edition of the pouch, as I remember Barry, my dear friend for many years, who left us this month.

I first met Barry in 1999, in Bishops Stortford. My father arranged it all, as was often the way in those days. Barry and I were complete strangers of course, but Dad assured me that we would come to come to like and understand each other as time passed, as sure enough we did.

Of course I was nervous at first: Barry was younger and far larger than my ex, and I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to handle him, especially when he really got going. But my fears were groundless as it turned out – the two of us were soon getting on like a house on fire, and before you could say contrived-car-as-boyfriend-metaphor, we were planning our first holiday together.

That trip nearly finished our relationship off in its first month, and left Barry a physical wreck, for in my eagerness to get going on our long journey, I had foolishly neglected to replace his oil cap after a routine inspection. I think we were somewhere on the M6 when I first noticed the strange, bitter smell Barry was giving off, but I just put it down to something funny in his heater. I didn’t put two and two together until we’d reached Portmeirion, some five hours into the journey: hot engine oil had by now sprayed all over Barry’s innards and was dripping off every piston, pipe and plug.

Worse than that, Barry had started making a bit of a funny noise, on account of his engine now being the only part of him not covered in oil. It was a miracle he was still moving at all. Amazingly though, the oil cap had managed to stay balanced on top of the engine for the entire length of the journey, so even though I had to replace Barry’s engine a mere month into our partnership, at least I was spared the additional expense of a new oil cap.

And so it went on. Barry, I think, forgave me for that initial fumble on my part and we went from strength to strength. Oh, the places we went, things we saw. Admittedly most of the places we went were the M1, the M6, the M11 and the good old M25, and the things we saw were predominantly traffic jams, the back ends of other cars and the mocking flash of a speed camera, but there were a few gems in there too: a French campsite during a solar eclipse, the lamb-strewn coastal paths of Islay, the precipitously narrow approach to Roslyn castle. Yes, our time together was rich and full. And oh, the miles. So many, many miles. I swear Barry could have driven the well-sworn route to Croydon and back on his own, and probably did on more than one late night. Ahem.

But the years pass so much more quickly for Barry and his kind than they do for us, and the miles hang heavily on the chassis. I tried to ignore the signs at first: the nicks and scratches, the increasingly faded bonnet, the steadily rising cost of the yearly service. Barry and I were happy together and that’s all that mattered. So his exhaust was corroded, his rocker cover leaking and his bush adrift on the wishbone - so what? They could all be fixed or replaced. He had years left on him. Didn’t he?

It wasn’t one single thing that decided it in the end, though. It was all of them. The bills, oh how they started to mount up. Never too much in a single go, but taken all together, Barry’s repairs were starting to cost me, and deep inside I began to resent the expense.

Treacherously I started looking at other, younger cars. Shiny ones with unmarked paintwork and pristine body parts. Cars that wouldn’t fail their MOT or embarrass me with their rusty patches for all to see. I tried telling myself it was just a flirtation, a flight of fancy. There was no harm in looking – it wasn’t like I was going to do anything about. It was still just me and Barry all the way. Then I noticed a knocking noise when he went over 50 mph, and we both knew the end was near.

I- I don’t think he realised where we were going that last day, three weeks ago. He may have been suspicious when I cleared out the old flapjacks and CDs from his cubby hole, the You And Your Car maintenance manual (‘Introduction by James Hunt’) from his seat pouch, the picture of Flat Eric blu-tacced to the dashboard, but I tried to distract him with one final, lovely wash ‘n’ wax at the local garage, before setting off for the part-exchange dealership. I’m not even sure he knew what was going on when I parked him on the street in front of all those new cars that bright, sunny June day in Basildon and walked over to the office to exchange papers and keys. He just sat there patiently waiting for me to finish whatever I was up to, good as gold like ever.

By the time I’d climbed in to my new car and pulled out of the dealer’s forecourt, I’d lost sight of Barry. Somebody must have already driven him round the back, out of sight. I’d forgotten to give him a final pat, and now it was too late. I hoped he’d be going to a good owner, maybe a kid who could only afford a faded old red Mondeo with a funny yellow bobble thing on his aerial and back seats you could sleep on when you couldn’t find a bed for the night. Hopefully.

RIP Barry
1998 - 2010

This is what I’m like with a bloody car. Don’t ever ask me about taking the dog to the vets that time.

When I’m In Charge

It is a sociological inevitability that the nation, indeed the world, will soon turn to me for guidance in these trying times. And as an individual of rare vision and adamantine will, I shall respond to the people with courage, responsibility and above all dignity. How this Novel Global Regime will come to pass, I am not yet at liberty to reveal, save to say that certain schemes of my own devising have been put in motion, schemes that I expect to bear fruit in due course…

The following decrees are just some of the sweeping changes I shall enact upon my ascension to power. Do not mistake them for a manifesto requiring your approval, nor some sort of populist grass-roots Facebookery that needs the herd to ‘join’. These are my laws and they are for your own good. Trust in me.


People with one funny eye will be forced to draw a ring round 'the proper one' with an eyebrow pencil, so we all know which one to look at.

The phrase fair do’s will carry a statutory £5 fine.

The use of the lazy Marmite either/or metaphor will be replaced with the more adventurous dogging, serving the same purpose.

Passengers who disembark from mainline trains at Liverpool Street will be required to step at least one metre from the train before walking the length of the train's exterior past all the open doors to the ticket barriers, thus preventing them from catching me in a perilous flanking attack as I disembark myself.

Anyone dragging one of them little trolley-suitcases along will be required to wear a flashing amber light strapped to their head, much in the manner of a breakdown truck on the motorway, thus preventing them from taking me out at shin-level as they weave through a crowded train station.

All mainline trains will contain one child-free coach, the definition of child being set at 'under 25'.

All supermarkets will have one child-free evening per week. Hell, one child-free hour would do me.

All mobility scooters will be repossessed and handed over to golf courses, Bond villains and the Banana Splits. Doddery old people will once more be confined to cold lonely flats as nature intended, and shall no longer menace me by hurtling along the pavement like Sir Killalot with a Tesco's Bag For Life.

All proposed superhero sequel films will be forced to submit the script to me for approval before shooting commences. Any plot found to have more than one villain without a damn good reason will be summarily rejected.

The New Zealander who sits four rows down from me will be given voice coaching to eliminate the irritating asthmatic braying sound she emits when laughing.

British actors will be banned from playing villains until such time as we have achieved equilibrium with American actors performing the same function. With the recent death of Dennis Hopper but the continued rude health of Sir Ben Kingsley, the need to redress this imbalance has never been greater.

Vampires will be compulsorily portrayed as evil, predatory, demonic fiends who will kill you as soon as you open your bedroom window. This situation will continue until children and teenagers are properly scared of them once more. Salem's Lot will be mandatory viewing once a term in all schools, just before hometime.

The owner of any dog which has a neck thicker than the rest of its body and a lead resembling a ship's anchor chain, will be castrated and/or destroyed.

Any parent naming its child Connor, Tyler or some other name better suited to a Devil Dog or an American, will be required to rename it to Alistair, regardless of gender.

The piercing of babies' ears will be a flogging offence.

The much-lauded phenomenon of the pirate will be gradually phased out and allowed to lie fallow for a period of no less than five years, to prevent it from becoming exhausted. In its place, the highwayman craze will be resurrected from the early 80's, as well as the less popular 'masked rapist' fad from the mid 70's.

Bernard Cribbins Day will become a national holiday.

Anyone found to be talking about their football team's performance as if they themselves were a player will be referred for psychiatric treatment. You did not play well last night; that was the team you have chosen to support. There is a difference.

There will be a strict limit on the amount of pink clothing mothers can dress their daughters in. Anyone found breaking the 'two pinks or less' threshold will be required to dress their girl-child in nothing but black for a period of one month.

Traffic wardens will be retasked to identify and fine any parked cars found to be displaying a Princess On Board sticker on a car window.

Citizens of the United States will be re-educated to use terms like people and human beings instead of the overused and insular word Americans, as used in official statements such as 'Americans are in danger of losing their jobs', or 'Many Americans are concerned by the state of the economy'. See also The American People.

The reason for the RAF apparently being located in the Middle East in the film Independence Day will be properly explained by a Christmas broadcast of the 1996 radio play Independence Day: UK, starring Nicky Campbell and Patrick Moore.

Anyone found to be making lazy jokes at the expense of innocent children's animation Captain Pugwash will be given a smack.

The test card will be reinstated on BBC One and Two between the hours of 9am and 3pm, until such time as alternative programmes can be found to replace Bargain Vets Down Under, Dom's Filthiest Antiques, and Cowboy Doctors In The Attic.

Car adverts will simply show you a picture of the vehicle in question, with a Top Trumps-style fact sheet displayed to one side. The use of coastal roads, gravelly quarries and sun-kissed Mediterranean fishing villages will be forbidden.

The unacceptable diminutive Corrie will be outlawed.

The ill-advised film Constantine will be retitled Hamilton, and redubbed so that its protagonist, played by the American Keanu Reeves, will be known as John Hamilton. Should this fail to distance the storyline from the British comic character John Constantine, all negatives of the film will be incinerated, and a virus introduced onto the internet to eventually destroy all known copies. A similar approach will be taken with the films henceforth known as The Victorian Monster Squad and Immortal Scotsman…In Space.

The fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square will be permanently given over to a massive bronze triceratops, his noble head raised defiantly to the skies.

The entire current season of Dr Who will be revealed to be one big timey-wimey chrono-flange, climaxing with the retroactive erasure from history of a certain goonish bowtie-wearing, rubber-faced, girly-skipping substitute teacher, to be replaced by the far superior actor Paterson Joseph, who will proceed to devour the scenery in great Tombakery mouthfuls, such as Matt Smith could only dream of in his most sweaty Tennant-slash-Troughton fantasies. And the timeline will be as it should always have been.

The post of Royal Gorilla will be instituted.

Capriphobia

Yeah, that’s probably a made-up word, on account of how I just made it up, and yeah it’s probably bad practice to mix Latin and Greek word bits, but hey, it’s good enough for television. Before you ask, no, it’s not a fear of the island of Capri, the Ford Capri car, or the Capri Sun fruit-based drink. It’s not even a fear of the films of Frank Capra, though I swear if one more person tells me how great It’s A Wonderful Life is…

Capriphobia means a fear of goats, OK? Coz I say it does.

Apologies right now if I get distracted halfway through this (like you could tell), but I’m currently sat at one of the office hot-desks, right in the middle of the floor, which are kind of like the stocks in the village green, or the flogging post in the centre of the parade ground. This means that I’m not only isolated and spiritually drained, but also within hearing distance of a woman with a voice that I can only describe as Sybil Fawlty meets Custard from Roobarb And. Grating? Nasal? Monotonous? Very much so. Like a mosquito buzzing around your bedroom at night, except this mosquito has chosen to drone on about their bleedin’ holiday in Cuba ad infinitum. In many ways it’s a rare talent to be able to make a Havana travelogue both dull and irritating, but she’s managed it. Well done to her.

Back to the matter at hand, or hoof as the case may be.

Last Sunday, my brother and I drove over to the ancestral seat to help clear out twenty years’ worth of books and toys from the appropriately named toy-cupboard – a small cell-like affair in the eves of the roof, furnished with wooden shelves, a bare lightbulb worthy of Callan, dust, cobwebs, dead wasps, unidentifiable tree seeds, and the corpse of a small bird I once found while secreting certain personal documents under the floorboards. And toys. And lots of books:

• Mr Men books (the originals – none of your Little Miss Bulimic or Mr Nosey Goes To The Zoo spin-off nonsense here),
• Rupert books (from the era when sinister bear-napping gipsy types regularly cropped up, clad in Ottoman Turk vestments and foreignised by the judicious application of diagonal lines across the face),
• Dr Who Annuals (including the splendid ‘Rogue Planet’ comic strip from Dalek Annual 1978, and yes, I do realise the story was originally printed in TV Century 21, tch),
• How And Why Wonder Books (but really only the ones about dinosaurs, reptiles and prehistoric mammals – ah, the megatherium and his big licky tongue…),
• and Ladybird books.

Stay with me, we’re getting to the goaty bit now.

As soon as my brother waved the Ladybird book of The Three Billy Goats Gruff at me, I was splished by a ripple of nostalgia. Have a look at the cover:


No, not that modern revisionist pap – this one:



I had nightmares about three goat-things for years after we got that book. Almost every night. Three hairy horny creatures with evil slotty eyes, coming from where the garages were and up the back garden path. Single file they came, slipping up to the kitchen door like Lo-Pan sliding across his throne room, or more likely given my age, the simplistic animation of Mary, Mungo And Midge:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjVwCrjlbE0&feature=related
(skip to 4:00 for some classic Mungomation)

I mean, Christ on a freaking bike, will you look at those horny satanic mothers on the cover? I think it’s the middle one that’s the worst – look at the malevolent, capering grin on that ginger devil. Ladybird books bring you Baphomet Knows Where You Live. No wonder I was terrified. I blame (after a few minutes’ adroit Googling) the illustrator Robert Lumley. He’s also responsible for the picture on the last page of The Little Red Hen And The Grains Of Wheat, where, as my brother pointed out, an eerily realistic chicken is depicted menacingly waving a breadknife in one scraggy claw – no wonder the pig, the cat and the rat leave her to it:



If you’re wondering what the vandalism on the text page is all about, that’s the result of a very young me rewriting the end of the story. For some reason, I took great offence at the little red hen hoarding the bread to herself, so I cunningly edited that last page of text, subtly matching the typeface and literary style of the original ending. I think what had upset me was that the pig at least had a legitimate reason for not being able to help the hen with her wheaty quest earlier on in the story, as she was clearly depicted busily feeding her piglets (unlike the rat and the cat, who really were just feckless gadabouts). Even at that early age, I recognised the plight of the single working mother.

And that wasn’t the end of the revelations last week. I also came across a an old cereal packet full of Letraset transfers, which for those of you not of the original Pipkins / Tomorrow People generation, were the PS3’s of their day, oh yes. The one that jumped out at me, over and above the many dinosaur, Spider-Man and Star Wars masterpieces that we had lovingly rubbed onto poorly painted card backgrounds, was one featuring a sperm whale attacking a longboat on the high seas. It was bloody savage, I can tell you, that black bulgy headed monster surging up out of the waves, with the little harpoon guys about to be squished (or worse yet, eaten) mere feet away. Surely this, combined with the terror of being dragged into that room in the Natural History Museum, and a certain novelty aquarium at Blackgang Chine, is the source of my great and abiding fear of whales? And no wonder – I wish I could post up a shot of the picture in question to show you, but I don’t have it with me to scan in, and try as I might, Googling Letraset Whale Attack is getting me nowhere. Maybe If I try Sperm Attack…

Maybe Not.

We will move swiftly past the unpleasant character of Raggety from the Rupert annuals, save to mention that he too was a source of some disquiet in my childhood:



Can’t imagine why.

Well, I’ve just looked for capriphobia on Google. It doesn’t exist. Nor does caprinaphobia or anything similar. I may have got in there first. Result.

There is a cypriphobia, but as you will see, that’s a fear of something quite different. Or perhaps not, if you’re the sort who associates goats with prostitution. Hey, I’m not going to judge you…

A Mixed Bag Of Monsters

A random run-down of things currently occupying prime slices of the ol’ brain pie:

The corner of Middlesex Street and Harrow Place, London E1 7DB
This expansive stretch of pavement is blessed with capacious hot air extractors running from head height down to the ground. Always warm and dry, even in a light rain, this is where I intend to sleep rough when I am eventually made redundant and become a homeless drifter. Obviously I shan’t be drifting very far from my chosen nest. Maybe just far enough for a different adventure every day, within easy walking distance of Aldgate East tube. A bit like The Littlest Hobo but with less barking on my part. Hope I get a good theme tune.

Compare The Merkin, Dot Com
An alternative advertising campaign I have dreamt up, featuring Tatjana, a charming Ukrainian fanny wig in a silk nightgown. I’ve already sent it in to the men who do adverts and am just awaiting my first pay cheque.

He’s A F*cking Vampire For Christ’s Sake
My proposal for a new dark fantasy television series. It features female lead character Cassie, a feisty young police detective-cum-doctor, and Brendan Lefevre, a pale and mysterious French-Irishman, newly arrived in the city. Cassie soon suspects that Brendan is more than he appears, on account of his pale mysteriousness and the fact that he continually appears at her shoulder off-camera, accompanied by a whooshing sound effect, not to mention how he starts to slightly combust in broad daylight.

Haunted by erotic dreams of this pallid mystery man with his perfect floppy hair and Darcy-esque shirts, our heroine begins to hope for a new chapter in her otherwise mundane life. Her secret prayers are answered when she stupidly lets the guy into her apartment, whereupon he tears her bloody throat out and drinks her dry. Of course. He’s a f*cking vampire for Christ’s sake. I think it would make a refreshing antidote to the current glut of girl-meets-nice-vamp tat out there. Though to be honest, I haven’t yet figured out how to extend my concept past the first episode. Maybe a different feisty young woman each week.

The Loneliness Of The Open Plan Office
Imagine a vast, endless plain, upon which are arrayed infinite rows of office desks, sculpted in ergonomically pleasing curves. Each desk is identical to the others in shape and appearance, as all personalising touches are forbidden by the great powers above. No posters, no fluffy toys, no cloying photos of grinning children to be used as PC desktop backgrounds. Now picture yourself sat at one of these desks, slack-mouthed and slumpy, only dimly aware that 5:30pm is still so very far away. Let us call your desk 06-BK13, for such it is.

This is our mise-en-scene, for which piece of poncy jargon I can thank the six-week Appreciation Of Cinema course I took earlier in the year. I’m pretty sure I must have learnt some other things on the course, but to be honest, mise-en-scene is all that’s coming to mind right now. Apart from that Mildred Pierce is pretty dull.

At any rate, this is our setting – the vast, impersonal open plan office wherein the Chocolate Ocelot is currently resident. The thing about office seating plans, and seating plans in general, is that you only tend to interact with the people you’re directly adjacent to – either side of and facing. Even the guys just behind me seem a hundred yards away in terms of conversational catchment area (Me? Turn round a whole 180 degrees to speak? I think not).

It’s the same at dinner parties, wedding receptions and Christmas meals – anywhere when, even though you’re nominally sat in a group of say twelve or more people, in reality you’re only sat with the three or four within easy talking distance. Though this doesn’t apply if you are loud, drunk, not English or any combination of the three.

This loneliness of the open plan office is never more apparent and mildly painful than when a conversation takes place within earshot but just beyond your own personal Acceptable Interaction Range. For example, a couple of men are sat two rows away, in a different team. You see them every day, but don’t know their names. Thoughtlessly, they have chosen to discuss Blake’s Seven just loudly enough for you to hear, but because they are a) unknown to you and b) outside your personal A.I.R, you are forbidden by laws More Ancient Than Man from joining in. Thus you must sit in agonised silence as they feebly try to remember the two actors who played Travis(1), and the episode where Cally died off-screen(2). Torture, pure torture.

1 – Stephen Greif and Brian Croucher
2 – Rescue, series D

Tall Tales

Before we kick off, an apology. I should have started writing this an hour ago, but Certain People deliberately distracted me by bringing Bejewelled Blitz up on Facebook. If you’re one of the fortunate few for whom the portentous words ‘One… Minute.” mean nothing, then be thankful you still have a semblance of a life.

On with the show. Today we are remembering the tall girl from the other end of the office, who left us some weeks ago. I don’t mean she’s dead, although she may well be by now – I never saw her leave the building that last day, just spotted the big leaving card and the balloons on her desk, which was cleared that afternoon. For all I know, she’d put herself forward for some sort of voluntary euthanasia as part of the company’s draconian cut-backs, a bit like the Renewal ceremony in Logan’s Run but without the opal fruit-coloured gowns and exploding people.

Hurrah – a geek movie reference by the second paragraph. Certain People will be pleased.

For now, let us assume that the tall girl left in good health and is currently pursuing a rewarding career elsewhere in the highly successful high street banking sector. Ahem.

I feel a bit bad just calling her the tall girl. Let’s give her a name. Vertegra. Vertegra Prescott.

So, Vertegra Prescott left. I only ever spoke to her the once, to buy a charity butterfly cake for fifty whole pence, but still her departure has affected me keenly. When I say she was tall, I mean she was hovering somewhere around the six foot mark, so she wasn’t some kind of hulking ogress, but definitely above average in a pleasantly slim, non-hunched over sort of way. She may even have worn heels, Gawd bless her.

Why is this a particular blow to me? Coz with Vertegra Prescott’s departure, I’m left in the unenviable position of tallest woman in the office, by a good few inches. There’s one young lady who almost comes up to my level, if I wear my sensible flat pumps and take a pumice stone to the rough skin on my feet, but the rumour is she’s moving to the Netherlands, doubtless a land of wide-shouldered giantesses guaranteed to make her look petite by comparison. I imagine it’s the cheese.

This leaves me towering above my fellow she-workers by a head, a fact which is never more apparent then when I use the ladies’ loo and find myself at the sink, bracketed on either side by titchy five foot fourers, brushing their lovely hair in the shadow of my bulk. I feel like a wallopy teacher surrounded by her kids.

I blame the company’s recruitment policy – we employ a sizeable number of people from India, for whom, if the evidence of my eyes is to be believed, there is a strict ‘only employ women who have to stretch up for the lift buttons’ policy. Ever seen that Hole In The Wall programme on BBC One? I suspect our HR people use a similar approach during the interview process, except that the shape of the gap the prospective employee has to pass through is that of a doll-like homunculus.

The problem here is that I do not need to stand out any more than I already do, thank you very much. Being the tallest female in the office is just one more telltale giveaway I could well do without, in addition to already being the only woman who can carry her Tupperware box of stationery (another rant for another time) in one ape-like paw, and the only one who can do a passable rendition of Lee Marvin’s I Was Born Under A Wandering Star. I knew that inter-departmental karaoke contest was a mistake.

I’ve tried to disguise the obvious size differential with a number of cunning stratagems. First, jacking the adjustable seat at my desk down as far as it will go, even though this leaves my legs sprawling under the dividing partition beneath to play footsie with a frankly perilous Sargasso of power cables. Second, trying to only work with exceptionally tall men, this to be achieved by subtly measuring them as I stand by them in the lift. Third, and this is the trickiest bit so far, always going down to lunch at the same time as the statuesque Naomi Campbell-alike from the second floor. Thus far I’ve narrowed her luncheon timetable down to 12:20 – 12:27 and am zeroing in on perfect mealtime synchronisation. It’s working pretty well, except now I’m starting to feel fat and dumpy behind her in the queue for the till.

It’s a nightmare. My only choice, as far as I can tell, is to seek alternative employment in some arena that’s positively packed with looming six-foot plus muntresses. That or work exclusively with the blind. Blind and deaf.

Bloody Shoes, Stupid Bags

What follows is a somewhat random list of clothing-related issues that I currently harbour. You may well find the items discussed utterly trivial, but I can assure you that they occupy a disproportionate slice of my brain pie, displacing to a large degree my former encyclopaedic knowledge of Sgt Fury And His Howling Commandos. For example, as a result of learning the word pashmina, I can no longer recall the name of the Bavarian strongman from Baron Strucker’s Blitzkrieg Squad. Tch. If you take anything away from this, it will probably be that I am a rubbish girl. Anyways…

The blood price of shoes

In the old days, I lived mainly in trainers, or comfy lace-up shoes of the Clark’s variety. My time spent in heels was sporadic and fleeting, usually the odd evening party, so I had little experience of long term lady-shoe wearage. That has changed.

I am now the proud owner of two deformed little toes (currently assuming the form of tiny root vegetables shyly hiding under the bigger toes), and a heavily blistered right heel, courtesy of two year’s of solid pointy-shoe abuse. Never before has my wide-footedness been so painfully apparent as when I try to get through a day of wearing new work shoes without ending up limping the half-mile walk home from the train like that bit in Die Hard when John McClean has to walk across the broken glass.

My current chaussures de choix are a pair of dull-but-acceptable black pumps, of the flat and flimsy genus. Specially chosen from the mutant-flipper section of a SimplyBe catalogue, they look nice, go with anything, and have managed to rub my heel to a bloody mess within two days. My own fault really – I’d failed to adhere rigidly to this important rule- never wear new shoes two days running. In fact I’m going to modify that to only wear new shoes one day in five. That allows just enough time for my beleaguered footsie to regenerate before subjecting it to the cruellest of shoes all over again.

The problem is this – my right foot is substantially larger than my left, so any pair of matching shoes is bound to result in pain for the right or unacceptable looseness on the left. Something I never noticed with trainers, or socks. I’m not saying my right foot’s monstrously swollen, like the Elephant Man or one of those poor, vast women you occasionally see waddling down the street with a curiously lateral rocking motion. But it is bigger – probably just enough to doom me to walk around in circles should I ever find myself downed in a trackless desert, à la The Flight Of The Phoenix.

But I digress. What I’m driving at here is that, unlike any other item of clothing, the acquiring of new shoes carries with it for me an inevitable period of suffering. I certainly can’t remember the last time a new top cut into my ribs, or a pair of gloves induced spontaneous stigmata in my palms. But shoes, bloody shoes… the inside of my right pump is literally stained red from my ill-advised overwearing incident, a grim reminder of the blood-price I pay for pretty plates.

The irony is that they now fit very nicely thank you, so the pumps can now function as my primary comfy shoes while I slowly and painfully initiate a particularly stiff pair of new heels (like a brace of size seven faux-snakeskin vampires, they hunger insatiably for my footblood). What really galls me is that I know from experience that this golden summer of love between me and my pumps is fated to last but a short while, before they a) continue to stretch to the point that I actually walk out of them, probably while crossing a busy road, and b) start to fall to bits like the crummy pieces of sweatshoppery that they are. Oh for a pair of helpful elves to stitch me a proper pair of shoes overnight.

The rubbishness of handbags

Here’s the thing about handbags – they promise more than they can deliver.

Unsurprisingly, they’re definitely a case of form over substance, unlike say, the trusty but unfashionable rucksack. To wit – I’ve gone through three bags in two years for the simple reason that none of them are up to the task of carrying the number of items I deem absolutely necessary to my daily operations. Not a one has lasted more than six months before developing a serious rent in one compartment or another, usually whichever section I’ve chosen to contain my house-keys, which appear to have the cutting capacity of a small hacksaw.

I ask you, is it too much to find a decent bag with the following specifications?

• Shoulder strap – essential for hands-free bag supportage when rooting around for house-keys outside front door in driving rain.
• External stretchy pouch for brolly, so as not to make rest of bag contents damp.
• Matching external stretchy pouch for hairbrush – required at a moment’s notice.
• External sealable pocket for regularly-used items like train ticket, oyster card and ID badge (material to be thin enough that oyster card and ID badge can be waved against electronic readers without removing from pocket).
• Separate area for medical supplies – inhaler, Rennies, anti-histamines, plaster for wounded heel.
• Area for bare essential make-up – inevitably doomed to become saturated with loose powder, so must be kept separate. Accept that at some point the caps will come off eyeliner pencils and daub the interior with deep chocolaty smudges.
• Area for ever-growing collection of business cards – salons, drycleaners, garage, dentist, home-made cakes, maker of replica Judge Dredd badges. Can be combined with area for post-its, ever-blunt pencil, crappy pen stolen from Waldorf-Astoria, notebook depressingly empty of preparatory notes on Great Work.
• Large central section for general objects – tissues (minimum three to get through a sniffy train journey), current reading-on-train book, over-stuffed purse, personalised Swiss-army knife, sunglasses for concealing nazi-blue eyes from the sun.
• Mobile-phone-shaped mobile phone area – deep and snug enough so that bloody phone doesn’t immediately slip out and disappear under tissues.
• Secure zipped up bit for vital things – keys, memory sticks, portable screwdriver kit, six-sided dice, more keys.

Is that too much to ask? Is it? Apparently it is. Or rather it’s too much to ask for such a bag to last more than six months without falling to bits. My last but one bag saw out its final days held together on the inside by gaffer tape, but shhh – don’t tell anyone.


OK, that’s enough for now, but just to whet your appetite, here’s a run-down of future appearance-based issues I really need to address:

• What I don’t know about hair
• Clothes and what they’re called
• My one long arm
• One-day tights and the three-use rule
• Why I miss the 80’s
• My friend the waistcoat
• Fat-necked scarf girl
• Lovely stupid nails
• Evil shop dummies
• Trinny and Susannah
• The infinity jeans
• Smelly boots
• Why I can never wear a jacket again
• That make-up on the train thing