It’s not been a good first week of 1998, as far as personal liberty in Stalag Luft HSBC goes. First off was the new timesheet regime, which means we now have to account for our time, not on a day-to-day basis, but hour-by -hour. No more majestic sweeping of two days a week into the nebulous bucket labelled “Live System Support”. Instead, it will be not-so-majestic sweeping of one hour per day into “Downtime: miscellaneous” (going to the toilet, getting the coffees in, phone calls, and other, perfectly legitimate ways to avoid work) and “Admin: timesheets” (trying to remember what the hell you spend the rest of the day doing). I suspect that when they realise we’re spending three weeks per year on this bureaucracy, the system might go the way of all the others, and be quietly abandoned on the scrap-heap of office automation.

Second up was the unilateral declaration by the new Chief Executive Operating Vice-Deity (or some such similar, meaningless title) that the Dress Down days which had happened on Friday, were to be finished. So it’s back to shirt and ties for us now: as a protest, a large number of the department have taken to wearing the company tie on Friday (see a previous editorial for bitching about this fatuous waste of money), and finding the most horrific shirt they can to clash with it [in my case, a white shirt covered in huge black stars. It’s brilliantly awful]. The dress down days were great; they broke down barriers and improved working relationships, as well as the obvious point that when you are comfortable, you work better. AND I got to show off my enormous collection of really cool T-shirts. This seems to be less important than the “image” presented to our clients — even though, in the Siberia-like outpost of the company where we work, clients are rarer than hen’s teeth.

Third, and on a more personal level, muggins is looking likely to be lumbered with the delights of the early shift. This means being at your desk at 7am in the morning — which is, as you can imagine, pretty incompatible with life as we know it. Negotiation is currently under way to see what compensation we’ll get for having our social life wrecked one week in four; but whatever it is, it won’t be enough. There is NO amount of money in the world that will make me leap out of bed at 05:30 with a song in my heart, and a spring in my step. Only recreational pharmaceuticals, in life-threatening amounts, would be up to that task.

Between all this, and the imminent prospect of losing my nice, comfy window seat in favour of one next to the boss (which as any student of such things will know, is a passport to menial tasks galore), I am giving serious contemplation to changing my job, after nine years here in once capacity or other. The only thing keeping me here are the share options, and if the Asian stock markets continue to do their impersonation of a brick, even that won’t be much of an inducement. Maybe 1998 will be the year I finally rip loose and head for the Elysian Fields of free-lance computing. On the other hand, that might mean I have to do actual WORK — which most of the time isn’t a serious threat where I am. But if the current climate continues to deteriorate, I might have to reconsider…

So I’m sitting there in front of the news, watching a report on the prime minister’s son who sold some gutter journalist cannabis, with a nice cold tin of Stella in my hand. And I realised the solution to the entire drugs problem.

Legalise the lot of them.

Every one. Dope, E, coke, speed, smack and crack. It is, in fact, NO GODDAMN BUSINESS of the government what we put into our bodies — though our PM would have us think otherwise (thank you, Mr.Blair, for saving me from the approximate one in a billion chance of contracting BSE off a T-bone steak. Now, FUCK OFF). Their role should be limited to merely advising us of the risks that we run.

The problem, as I see is, is not drugs per se. Society doesn’t mind them: it tolerates alcohol, caffeine and (just about) nicotine. What people dislike is drug-related crime. Legalisation would help in two ways. One, no need to spend vast amounts of manpower and effort chasing after people who are, on the whole, no threat to anyone apart from themselves. Secondly, and probably more importantly, if drugs were legalised, the cost would plummet, and there would no longer be any NEED for people to burgle and rob in order to fund their habit. When was the last time you heard of a cigarette smoker mugging someone for the cost of a packet of B&H? This all seems so blatantly goddamn obvious that it should not need pointing out.

In health terms, it would probably also help. Most of the problems with drugs are because you don’t know whether you are getting 99% pure Colombian nose-candy or Vim. The potential for screwing up is obvious, when you don’t know how much to take — what IS the correct dose for drain cleaner anyway? Give it to Glaxo, and they can produce exactly the right amount, in pharmaceutical purity. When THAT hits your skull, there’ll be none of this “are you feeling anything yet?”, I can assure you.

What’s perhaps the most remarkable thing about this stance is that I’ve never even TRIED any illegal drugs. I’ve occasionally wanted to, but the nearest I came was getting some amphetamines for a weekend when I was doing two consecutive all-night film shows. I didn’t need it, so I returned it, unused, to the kind individual who had given it to me. I actively HATE the smell of cannabis, and would willingly concede that anyone smoking it in nostril-shot of me should be hung, drawn and quartered. I just don’t need drugs, and tend to think that the only people who need their minds expanding are those with terribly small minds to start with. Drugs, in any case, don’t expand your mind, they just give your critical faculties a good kicking. Drink six pints and every woman looks like Pamela Anderson. Drop an E, and you can dance to the Greenwich time signal. Smoke dope, and Vic Reeves seems funny. Take LSD, and the meaning of life can be found in the patterns of the clouds.

It can’t, of course. But if you want to look for it there, why not? Me, I’m off for a beer to see me through into 1998. Happy New Year.

‘Tis the season of goodwill — even to Parcelforce, who actually did turn up with my parcel on Saturday morning, after all my problems (see last week. I am thus going to restrain my usual acerbic misanthropy, and offer instead the following piece, which someone sent me, and which captures the true spirit of Christmas perfectly. [And anyone who thinks it’s a cop-out should be aware it took twice as long to convert the freaking thing to HTML, as it would to write a normal editorial!]

Merry Christmas, and all the best for 1998…
Jim

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The X(mas) Files

Mulder: We’re too late. It’s already been here.

Scully: Mulder, I hope you know what you are doing.

Mulder: Look, Scully, just like the other homes: Douglas fir, truncated, mounted, transformed into some sort of shrine; halls decked with boughs of holly; stockings hung by the chimney, with care.

Scully: You really think someone’s been here?

Mulder: Someone or some THING.

Scully: Mulder, over here – it’s fruitcake.

Mulder: Don’t touch it! Those things can be lethal.

Scully: It’s O.K. There’s a note attached: “Gonna find out who’s naughty and nice.”

Mulder: It’s judging them, Scully. It’s making a list.

Scully: Who? What are you talking about?

Mulder: Ancient mythology tells of an obese humanoid entity who could travel at great speed in a craft powered by antlered servants. Once each year, near the winter solstice, this creature is said to descend from the heavens to reward its followers and punish its disbelievers with jagged chunks of anthracite.

Scully: But that’s legend, Mulder – a story told by parents to frighten children. Surely, you don’t believe it?

Mulder: Something was here tonite, Scully. Check out the bite marks on this gingerbread man. Whatever tore through this plate of cookies was massive – and in a hurry.

Scully: It left crumbs everywhere. And look, Mulder, this milk glass has been completely drained.

Mulder: It gorged itself, Scully. It fed without remorse.

Scully: But why would they leave it milk and cookies?

Mulder: Appeasement. Tonight is the Eve, and nothing can stop its wilding.

Scully: But if this thing does exist, how did it get in? The doors and windows were locked. There’s no sign of forced entry.

Mulder: Unless I miss my guess, it came through the fireplace.

Scully: Wait a minute, Mulder. If you are saying some huge creature landed on the roof and came down the chimney, you’re crazy. The flue is barely six inches wide. Nothing could get through there.

Mulder: But what if it could alter its shape, move in all directions.

Scully: You mean, like a bowl full of jelly?

Mulder: Exactly. Scully, I’ve never told anyone this, but when I was a child my home was visited. I saw the creature. It had long white strips of fur surrounding its ruddy, misshapen head. Its bloated torso was red and white. I’ll never forget the horror. I turned away, and when I looked back it had somehow taken on the facial features of my father.

Scully: Impossible.

Mulder: I know what I saw. And that night it read my mind. It brought me a Mr. Potato Head, Scully. IT KNEW I WANTED A MR. POTATO HEAD.

Scully: I’m sorry, Mulder, but you’re asking me to disregard the laws of physics. You want me to believe in some supernatural being who soars across the skies and brings gifts to good little girls and boys. Listen to what you are saying. Do you understand the repercussions? If this gets out, they’ll close the X-files.

Mulder: Scully, listen to me: It knows when you are sleeping. It knows when you’re awake.

Scully: But we have no proof.

Mulder: Last year, on this exact date, S.E.T.I. radio telescopes detected bogeys in the airspace over twenty-seven states. The White House ordered a Condition Red.

Scully: But that was a meteor shower.

Mulder: Officially. Two days ago, eight prized Scandinavian reindeer vanished from the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Nobody – not even the zookeeper – was told about it. The government doesn’t want people to know about Project Kringle. They fear that if this thing is proved to exist, then the public would stop spending half its annual income in a holiday shopping frenzy. Retail markets will collapse. Scully, they cannot let the world believe this creature lives. There’s too much at stake. They’ll do whatever it takes to insure another silent night.

Scully: Mulder, I-

Mulder: Sh-h-h! Do you hear what I hear?

Scully: On the roof. It sounds like . . . a clatter.

Mulder: The truth is up there. Let’s see what’s the matter…

This particular TC editorial comes under the category of ‘cathartic’ — as can probably be told from the fact that, for the first time ever, the heading is exactly as written on the title page. Combine this fact with the significant beer intake this evening, and you know that you are heading for a full-scale JhM rant. But at least the caption should trigger a few misdirected hits from the dumber members of the Internet community, seeking undressed postwomen…

I got a card through the door from Parcelforce the other day. Y’know, one of those “we tried to deliver a parcel but you weren’t in” ones. In this case, with some Ł37 excess to pay on it — which gave me a damn good idea of what it actually was, HK laserdiscs. Though, as yet, I still don’t know. This is because trying to speak to Parcelforce is like contacting the dead, except only less likely. The South London depot of Parcelforce do not answer their phones; thus, when you call them up, you generally get an engaged tone, because some other sucker has got there first, and is waiting on the ringing tone, in the forlorn hope that someone at the other end wil be stupid enough to pick it up. On very rare occasions, however, you get the chance to *be* that sucker, and are left to contemplate how the employees at Parcelforce must have have their auditory functions surgically removed.

Finally, I got through, and was told the computer systems have been down for the past couple of days. Yeah, sure — coming from a work environment where five minutes of computer failure is deemed unacceptable, I was less than sympathetic, but I gave them my details and asked for the parcel to be delivered on Saturday. They took my number and said they’d phone me back. With the benefit of hindsight, I can hear them cackling manically as they put the phone down, “I said I’d phone him back, and he BELIEVED me!”. For no call ever came. At 5:30, I tried to find out what was going on, only to get the engaged/ring till Doomsday approach once more. I even tried to fax them, only to find that their FAX had also had its auditory functions surgically removed, as it wasn’t answering the phone either.

So, as it stands, I have no idea what’s going to happen tomorrow. I know if I go to the depot to try and collect the parcel, it’ll have been put in a van and sent to Perran Road, and I’ll get back to find another poignant little card saying “we tried to deliver a parcel but you weren’t in”. However, if I sit here and wait for it, the package will be stuck resolutely in their warehouse. This should, theoretically, be a 50/50 chance, but few things are less certain than Parcelforce.

Do you care about this? Probably not. Do I? Not really. I’m sure that my parcel and I will be united at some point. But is it just me? Or is there some larger, demonic scheme at work? And at least it did help to pass an otherwise tedious Friday in the office. Oh, fuck it — I’m going to have another beer…

Someone tried to break into the house the other day

This small phrase covers a host of paranoia, starting with the sudden clenching of your stomach into a small, hard knot as you realise that the gouge marks in the door-frame are unlikely to have been caused by a genetically engineered strain of giant woodpecker. That they didn’t get in – we replaced the door last year, and it stood up to the test well – somehow makes it worse: are they going to come back and try again? I like to think not; if they have any sense, they will have gone off to find an easier mark, knowing we’re now on our guard. But these people were dumb enough to target one of the very few houses in the street with a burglar alarm, so who knows how they think?

After such an incident, you start to view everything in a suspicious light. That guy who came round selling double glazing last week — was he legitimate? What about the building site that started constuction at the end of the road? And perhaps most tellingly of all, a housemate bought a video recorder from Curry’s down in Brixton last weekend. It seems MOST suspicious that within days of that (when he gave his name and address — as you must, for TV licencing purposes), we suffer an attempted burglary. Now, I don’t think that this is a Curry’s sanctioned scheme to repossess their stock (though it does make me wonder where ‘Manager’s Specials’ come from!), but it’s not a mistake we’ll make again. The next electronic gadget we get will be bought by Max Renn, of 83 Channel Road.

Further security measures are now in hand for TC Towers, turning it into a fortress worthy of a crack-dealing paedophile with a persecution complex. Mini-nukes will be installed to cover the hallway, while a pack of leopards roam the stairwell. Capsules of nerve gas have been attached to the VCR (God forbid I forget to disarm them, while seeking some post-pub entertainment) and we’re negotiating with the SAS to see if they can spare a regiment for the cellar. I am, of course, just joking. But only JUST. If this is what a mere attempt is like, we do *not* want to go through the real thing. And if that means we have to spend three-quarters of an hour unlocking the deadbolts, so be it.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I feel a strong urge to go and check all the doors and windows.