Breaking

Feb 15 2010

I nearly reached breaking point today.

This isn't another miserable blog, I promise. But I am struggling to work out why anyone would want to put the air-conditioning on full blast in February other than out of pure sadism.

Had a training course today. I have a complex relationship with training courses, but I can be quite fond of them. This one was a bit painful to start off with because I was massively hung over, and also because the first half of it involved being talked at for about two hours. But mostly because one of the two tutors had decided that February just isn't cold enough all by itself, and was determined to enlist the help of technology in freezing my nuts off.

I suppose it didn't help that one of my colleagues was sitting right under the air-con and was happily wearing a t-shirt for the whole two hours without turning even slightly blue. This may have led the tutor to decide that my increasing histrionics – as I sat huddled, shivering and rocking like Arthur Fowler - were nothing but attention seeking. I had to return from a coffee break wearing a full overcoat, gloves and a pair of borrowed earmuff shapes like the ears of squirrels before she got the hint, and turned the thing up by about two degrees.

Finally escaping this course, I returned to the office to find the man who sits behind me has opened the windows. I know today's 6 degrees was comparatively balmy, but what kind of constitution do you need to have to want a 6 degree breeze blowing up your trouser legs? What does he do in January? Poor ice cubes down his pants? The only rational explanation is that he is a white wine runner, carrying secret stashes of sauvignon blanc around London to nefarious but rich wine connoisseurs. Their enemies patrol London armed to the teeth with bottles of Tesco's own-brand rioja, so the only safe way to keep the wine safe is to keep in in his socks. BUT! He has to deliver it ready to drink, so he must carefully maintain a body temperature of only 5 degrees at all times, which unfortunately means sitting for most of the day in a specially imported bath full of snow, and opening the FUCKING WINDOW and freezing my spleen solid. Bastard.

I've probably offended someone there. And I think I've just driven someone off facebook chat. I might be being over-sensitive, especially since I was being nice. I'd just been pointing out that a friend of mine popped on to chat to say “hello”, and then immediately left, saying that CSI was starting.

Now, I realise that I can't compete until someone starts making spin off versions of me named after major cities. Speedy Miami, perhaps. Or, more likely, Speedy Basingstoke. Now gratifyingly, her response to this was “ha ha ha”

She doesn't say LOL. Now this is a fundamentally brilliant thing, since I'm sorry to say that there is nothing in the entire universe (even saying “in actual fact”) that is more annoying than saying LOL. If I was saved from a certain blazing death by a gorgeous female firefighter who carried me through the licking flames and set me on my feet outside the building as it collapsed in on itself like a woman in a wedding dress sitting on a beanbag., my gratitude would know no bounds until a man from St John's Ambulance said something witty and she answered “LOL”. At which point I would throw myself back into the flames.

So I might have written - as a compliment to her unLOLness - “I find it amazing that otherwise pleasant, intelligent people say LOL, not realising that they might as well just wearing T-shirt saying “I raped your cat””.

I'd hit enter before I remembered how much of a cat lover my friend was. Seconds later the green dot had turned grey.

I will keep breaking things.