Cranky Robin. Very cranky Robin! First of all, Alan Pardew got the sack yesterday. It was sort of inevitable considering how completely and utterly shite West Ham have been playing this season, even with their shiny new Argentinean trick ponies, but come on. Give him another chance! He did great last season! And he’s just so nice! Perhaps this is why I’m not making millions in the cutthroat world of football management.
Also contributing to my crankiness is the fact that I had to get up early to do my Christmas wrapping in order to get everything posted off to Canada in time. I am possibly the world’s worst gift-wrapper, especially at seven o’clock in the morning: it’s not so much a Christmas ritual as a gladiatorial event featuring Sellotape in which I usually come out the loser. Anyway, after I mashed some wrapping paper over the gifts and stuffed the mess into a box I had to bring the beastly heavy thing to work with me, which is guaranteed to make me cranky because I dislike carrying things. A bag over the shoulder is OK, but having to physically transport things from place to place irritates me, especially on the Metropolitan Line, which I swear is getting smellier and slower every day.
On top of everything, I hadn’t eaten a proper meal since lunchtime yesterday, eschewing dinner in favour of two glasses of wine and a pint of lager. I did order a snack in the pub, but it wasn’t very well cooked so I didn’t eat it. I refuse to encourage mediocre chefs by giving them the idea that their food is edible. Perhaps I’m cutting off my nose to spite my face here.
And finally the big one: my job. My fucking, fucking job. I’ve been here nearly two months and I still cry at least once a week at the prospect of having to face it every day. I haven’t been properly trained, or trained at all, really – which is fair enough when you consider that nobody actually has any idea what I’m supposed to be doing. They just hired a document controller because they figured they needed one. At the moment I’m supposed to be creating document control systems for two projects. I’m not sure why they think I can do this, since a complete lack of document control system development experience features very prominently on my CV.
So what exactly am I supposed to do? I’ve been considering various options:
Quit and make millions in the cutthroat world of football management. Possibly not feasible. See above.
Quit and live out my lifelong dream of forming a Jewish punk band called ‘Mazel Tov Cocktail’. Damn! I’m not Jewish.
Quit and go back to secretarial work. Feasible, but poses a definite risk of inducing suicide.
Commit suicide. Always an option, but I think I might want to save this one for a real tragedy, like if Supertramp did a reunion tour or something.
Peddle sexual favours. I might have scuppered myself here by giving away too many free samples in the past (“Why buy the cow”, etc). Also I doubt whether SiC has the time, stamina and disposable income to keep me fully employed.
Suck it up, quit moaning and get on with it. Obviously you people don’t know me at all.
Run away and become a gypsy. Worth looking into.
Truly I am in a quandary. On the plus side, as I said, nobody knows what I’m supposed to be doing, so as long as I show up and shuffle papers all day (“Look! I’m controlling documents!”) I can probably make it at least to Christmas without anyone realising that I’m not actually doing anything at all; and then there’s always the hope that I’ll be gored to death by a bull in Barcelona.
The moral of this story is: don’t place all your hopes on an ugly Argentinean footballer. The End.