grumpyf1

After last Friday’s analysis of some of the types of person you find hanging out in meeting rooms, here’s the rest (Warning: contains Groaners). TUNNELER: Doesn’t want to be there. Disinterested, sighs a lot, and gives the impression that their time is being wasted. Only makes eye contact if they can use the opportunity to roll them, shrug over-dramatically and pull a silly grin. Looks at their watch a lot. In real life: That friend you always have to call first. DOORMAT: Often a startled underling, who didn’t pretend to be on the phone fast enough when the boss was looking for a substitute. They don’t understand what’s going on, and leave the meeting with a to-do list which, if attempted on their own, will see them past retirement age. In real life: That lovely, optimistic, person from school, who you just know will be on the front pages one day after attempting to kill someone with a sharpened cucumber. TETCH: Can’t believe how long it’s taking everyone to sort something simp...

Careful analysis at work has given me a fascinating insight into the fragile ecosystem of the office meeting, and all it’s strange and varied types of participant. Once, I could look at my computer-based calendar, and know that the next crucial appointment I absolutely had to adhere to was a Bank Holiday at some distant point in the future. Or occasionally be reminded it was someone’s birthday. Since a major overhaul of my job recently, my screen now looks like party-animal appointments wandered in, decided they liked the look of the place, invited all their mates, then proceeded to have lots of unprotected schedule-based fun, resulting in hundreds of the little blighters packing each date, and my computer making a worrying groaning noise when I log into the diary. It has become so bad, that I’ve actually been reduced to attending pre-meeting meetings, and booking meetings for myself to prepare for them. One positive outcome has been the opportunity to observe my fellow atten...

Two very rare, but equally frightening and dangerous, events occurred last week: Coastal flooding in my village, and me contracting ManFlu. Being of a robust constitution, I usually laugh in the virus-covered faces of those with colds and flu, and continue, manfully, to make it into work whilst those around me succumb to the snuffles. Unfortunately, it appears that my immune system just stores all the lurgies somewhere (is that what your appendix is for, really?) and then lets a year’s supply of angry, stir-crazy, unpleasantness out to roam my system on the same day. Or “Germageddon” as I’ve scientifically named it. Whilst my cocktail of lethal nastiness was getting to work, mother nature was busy doing her worst around the country too, and had decided to save up a once-in-a-decade high tide vs strong winds experience for my entertainment, with the added thrill of an extreme low pressure system chucked in, just in case it wasn’t already exciting enough. Being a bit of a tide...

I may be the wrong side of a decade behind the rest of the country, but the time has come for me to make a painfully difficult decision. Should I retire my record collection? In case there are any young personages reading an actual newspaper (which is pretty unlikely, when you think about it), firstly: Yo! Wassup? Fo’ shizzle! Innit. Secondly: A ‘record’ is a hard copy of an mp3, made out of fragile, easily damageable, black plasticky stuff, called ‘vinyl’. Considering they usually held a maximum of around 12 songs, they were ridiculously large, and needed a small diamond placed on their surface, whilst being rotated, to get the sound out. I know. Incredible, isn’t it? My record collection takes up the space of a fridge, but still contains less than 1500 songs. It’s also quite hard to take ELO’s epic ‘Out Of The Blue’ out with me when I go walking, not least because I don’t have an extension lead that long for the record player. Since the invention of the Compact Disc (itself...