A Working Life: Part III

I am bored, so I have decided to 'pimp up' my LinkedIn profile. Above is my first attempt.

I also found the below list of my Top Five 'Cascaded-down-from-high' Management Speak Terms 2008-2018:

1) Downsizing resource for bounceback growth
2) Deadwooding for organic recovery

3) Opportunising multi-tasking efficiencies
4) Restructuring to liberate staff potential
5) Optimising our workforce resource

The Other Woman also told me that some advertising wankstain at her place used the term 'Solutionising'. With no shred or irony. Or shame. I offered her my pity. 

I am old enough to remember when 'monetising brand identities' was a thing said by real adults. To other real adults. 

Lockdown News: XXIV...

I officially became an old man today. I now have specs stuck together with bits of sticky tape. I am Jack Duckworth.

In other news, I am also getting interested in astronomy. So I could also be another Coronation Street character in Curly Watts. 

This is a blast from the past as it was one of several nicknames, alongside 'John Lennon', I had at school because I wore glasses. And because the people who gave me nicknames largely weren't very fucking imaginative. 

Although, to be fair, I always had a great deal of affection for being called 'Gandhi'. That showed a little more class and thought. 

Lockdown News: Part XXIII...

I utterly adore the Missus. I would shun the advances of all five women on my 'allowed list' to spare hurting her. Even though we have an agreement that we can sleep with other people – as long as it's only these other people.

But recently she's gone too fucking far. What has she done? Put the spices in the kitchen out of alphabetical order? No. Exposed an embarrassing secret? No. 'Accidentally' broken one of my precious Riley tombstone badge snooker cues? No. Cheated on me with a younger, better-looking fella? No. That would involve too much effort and it would also break lockdown rules, and she won't do that for anything. 

She's talking through Attenborough. To be fair, it's something she's always done, but I've managed to ignore it. During a Perfect Planet, however, it just got too much. 

So we are in bed one Saturday morning and she is teasing me about something I've failed to do or messed up. Apparently, there is a lengthy list. And I suddenly vent.

"At least I don't talk through fucking Attenborough! You wouldn't get an OBE from the Queen and try to shit in her mouth at the ceremony. Same rules. You don't have Attenborough on the telly and talk through it."

A few seconds of silence followed. Then she asked:

"And how long has that been bubbling away?"

It was when I admitted that it was for more than two decades that she started laughing. On the plus side, she managed to keep quiet for the next three episodes. She did make witticisms in episode five, though. But I firmly and decisively reminded her of the rules. 

I didn't. I just ignored her.

PS. The five on my 'allowed list' are writer Mary Shelley (dead), actress Teri Hall (dead), tennis player Venus Williams (unlikely to ever meet her) and actress Isabel Adjani (now 65). The fifth is former Corrie star Shobna Gulati, who I met at a press do. She was utterly charming, funny and smart and everything I hoped somebody I fancied would be. I was so awe-struck I could barely speak.