Minutiae v1.0

The fol­low­ing is almost cer­tain to prove a dis­astrous exper­i­ment in ‘blog­ging’ (whatever that is) the inane details of my every­day life, but appar­ently it’s what we are sup­posed to do under the rules of inter­na­tional law. This exer­cise in tedium will con­tinue through­out today. Or until I get utterly bored. Or until I lose the will to live. Maybe you can enter­tain your­self by guess­ing which out­come will be the most likely?

9.14am: The fin­ger­nail of my right index fin­ger tastes most unap­pet­ising. This does not bode well for Thursday.
9.15am: I have no one to poke on Face­book. I am bereft. This bodes even worse. Or ill. Or some­thing.
9.16am: Lurch’s knee is click­ing most sat­is­fy­ingly into place this morn­ing. Maybe all is not lost.
9.28am: The minicab driver is two minutes early, cheer­ful, reli­able and, most pleas­ingly of all, vir­tu­ally mono­syl­labic. This annoys me, because it gives me noth­ing to com­plain about.
9.30am: I try to update this entry by mobile phone. I fail abysmally, but this reas­sures me that at least I am not lost forever to geekery. I shall have to con­tinue via the far more sat­is­fy­ing medium of Mole­skine note­book, whilst pre­tend­ing that I am Ern­est Hem­ing­way.
9.32am: Why do all cab drivers listen to Heart FM? Why must I be forced to endure the ‘guess the year’ slot that reminds me, via over­blown ‘80s pop hits, of how dis­gust­ingly old I am?
9.38am: Look! A woman walk­ing across Bat­ter­sea Bridge clutch­ing the sides of her head! I hope she is not plan­ning to leap into the Thames and try to end it all, as it will make me late. Yes, I am one of those con­sid­er­ate Lon­don­ers you hear so much about.
9.41am: “Grace Kelly, Har­low Jean / On the cover of a magazine.” I have always loathed that par­tic­u­lar rhyme. It was cringe­worthy back in … oh God, Heart FM has sucked me in! I am guess­ing the year! Quick, driver — back to Bat­ter­sea Bridge so I can jump to my watery death along with head-clutching woman!
9.48am: It was 1990. What a relief. Now I can spend the rest of my jour­ney to work remem­ber­ing what I was doing when I was 19 years old.
9.49am: I have remembered. It was woe­fully dull, since there was no inter­net. How did I ever cope?
9.53am: I dare you all to dial 023 8047 1155 and say that you were told to do so by An Unre­li­able Wit­ness.
9.56am: Every jerky R’n’B song sounds like every other jerky R’n’B song. Fact.
9.57am: The cab driver is so bored by this morning’s traffic jams that he finally gives in to his curi­os­ity and asks me why I keep look­ing at my watch and then writ­ing in my note­book. In doing so, he silently breaks wind. That’s it, I do believe I have lost the will to live even before arriv­ing at work.
10.01am: Why do com­mer­cial or ‘yoof’ radio sta­tions play music behind their news bul­let­ins? I do not want to know that the world is head­ing towards cer­tain envir­on­mental dis­aster whilst nod­ding my head in time to a four to the floor dance rhythm.
10.07am: Amy Wine­house? Or frog garg­ling with Lis­ter­ine? You decide.
10.11am: Pon­der­ing how dif­fi­cult it would be for a driver of a car with a per­son­al­ised num­ber plate to walk nor­mally if I were to shove said ridicu­lous item up their rear end.
10.13am: Call 020 7805 3555 and tell them that an anonym­ous source on the inter­net recom­men­ded that you fol­low a career as a Lon­don bus driver. Go on.
10.21am: Finally, at last, I have arrived in the office. The con­tents of my inbox is excep­tion­ally though reas­sur­ingly dull. The blinds are drawn against the not par­tic­u­larly over­power­ing sun­light, so I shall just wait for the Sea­sonal Affect­ive Dis­order to seize hold of me and drag me into its dulled embrace.
10.22am: First hol­low laugh of the day. I think that’s almost like a start­ing pis­tol indic­at­ing that I have to do some work now. Some radio silence will now ensue, you’ll be pleased to hear.
11.20am: I am about to go to a meet­ing. It is going to be a long meet­ing. It is going to be a long meet­ing about tech­nical things, with tech­nical lan­guage, atten­ded by tech­nical people. If you’re bored (and I know I am), why don’t you spend the next 90 minutes or so guess­ing my likely thoughts dur­ing this meet­ing? Res­ults after the break.
11.56am: Gosh, I never knew that quite so many three or four-letter acronyms even exis­ted.
11.58am: Today’s inter­est­ing but pat­ently ridicu­lous busi­ness jar­gon is ‘releas­ing a new whistle’. Whatever that means.
12.01pm: I’ve always wondered about the phrase ‘accept­ance test­ing’. Why should you need to test that some­body can accept? Is there a cor­res­pond­ing ‘refusal test­ing’?
12.03pm: An fascinatingly-shaped cloud drifts across the small piece of sky that I am per­mit­ted to see from this anonym­ous meet­ing room. I am utterly cap­tiv­ated. Sorry, what were you say­ing?
12.15pm: ‘Blob num­ber’. Blob what? Right, they are mess­ing with my brain now. I have clearly entered an altern­ate Alice in Won­der­land real­ity.
12.17pm: I am envy­ing the red, white and black striped socks of the man sit­ting oppos­ite. Why, then, did he have to ruin the whole aes­thetic pic­ture with a jumper dec­or­ated with lurid blue and tur­quoise rect­angles?
12.25pm: Fifty-five minutes in to the meet­ing, I con­sider mak­ing my first and no doubt only pro­found and insight­ful state­ment to the assembled gath­er­ing. Someone inter­rupts before I get my chance. I imme­di­ately give up on the idea. It’s prob­ably for the best.
12.47pm: “We will need to san­ity check that.” You will need to san­ity check me too, at this rate.
12.59pm: Meet­ing over, I slide my ima­gin­ary machine gun back under my desk in the know­ledge of a job well done. I would take lunch now, but being a high octane-fuelled new media busi­ness type, I know that lunch is for wimps. Oh, and I feel sick, which helps one to avoid such food-related frivolit­ies.
2.08pm: I have just real­ised that I have had abso­lutely no cof­fee today. None. No won­der I feel naus­eous.
2.59pm: Phone calls are not good for my men­tal health. Or my nervous dis­pos­i­tion. Or my lack of caf­feine intake. Or any­thing.
5.07pm: The after­noon dis­ap­peared in a blurred frenzy of typ­ing. I am now drink­ing one-third of a paper cup of very fizzy cham­pagne — and feel­ing almost tipsy as a con­sequence. This is fur­ther proof that I am get­ting dis­astrously old.
5.32pm: Oh, the exhil­ar­a­tion of moment­ar­ily breath­ing in non-conditioned air. And at least my luck is in again on the way home from work, as I have the same driver from this morn­ing. Still reli­able, cheer­ful and almost mono­syl­labic, but this time without the accom­pa­ny­ing ano­dyne back­ground of Heart FM. Prob­ably just as well, as I would have ended up put­ting my foot (the stiff rub­ber one) through his radio if he had insisted on play­ing it. Thank­fully, he has no sus­pi­cious odour of meth­ane about him this time, either.
5.52pm: I hope the driver doesn’t think I am odd for lying right back in my seat to stare at the bare roof, and fol­low­ing the swirl­ing lights of the passing traffic dance across it. Some­times I long for the day when I can travel by Under­ground again.
5.54pm: The cars waits in a traffic queue beside a bus dis­play­ing an advert­ise­ment for the NHS site Alco­hol: Know Your Lim­its. Thought-provoking, since it occurs to me that my limit is the earlier imbibed third of a paper cup of cheap cham­pagne.
5.55pm: Speed­ing over Bat­ter­sea Bridge, hope­fully not the scene of someone’s sui­cidal final plunge (or des­per­ate plea for atten­tion) this morn­ing. I would care more, but I just want to get home and stop this head­ache now.
6.13pm: Dwell­ing unit, sweet dwell­ing unit. Peace, warmth, tran­quil­ity, a flash­ing light on my tele­phone which I ignore, and the internal debate on whether to eat a proper even­ing meal or just have toast.
6.15pm: The rest of this even­ing has been can­celled due to lack of interest.

10.22pm: Con­clu­sion & Res­ults
Read­ers, I’m sorry. It appears that I bored myself to sleep. And you too, very prob­ably. I’m sure you will agree, how­ever, that this post of inter­mit­tent drudgery and mind-numbing minu­tiae has proved one thing, which is that I am unequi­voc­ally no longer cut out for day-to-day blog­ging (cough, spit, retch). Not like in the old days when I was young, inno­cent and fresh-faced and found some­thing to write about even in an activ­ity as mundane as doing the washing-up. It is simply not me any more.

I am very temp­ted to remove all the above evid­ence to the grave of best-forgotten embar­rass­ments, but instead I will try and bury it as quickly as pos­sible via another route, by try­ing to move it fur­ther down the page with examples of what I do best: eye­lids, poetic purple prose, thesaurus-swotting and short stor­ies with no dis­cern­ible begin­ning, middle or end. Know your lim­it­a­tions, Unre­li­able. Know your limitations.

I’m off to try and loc­ate my miss­ing brain cell, wander the vir­tual aisles of my favour­ite online super­store to pur­chase more caffeine-based products than I know what do with, and fin­ish the even­ing by indul­ging in a bout of fren­zied Face­book pok­ing of any­one that appears to be even half alive.