How to please my readers

All the hits on my blog these days are from people searching on the problem of falling asleep at their desk at work. I know this because I have a statistic counter that tells me. For instance, this week I was found by people googling ‘How to avoid sleeping in office’, ‘avoid sleeping in office’, ‘avoid sleeping at the desk’ and ‘responses if your (sic) found sleeping at your desk’.

There is obviously a gap in the market here that someone, who is not me, would find profitable to exploit. I felt particularly warm towards the last person, who I think has either just been caught or feels it might be imminent. Well I know how it feels, though I took it once step further and used to lie on floor in a patch of sunshine and snooze away without a care in the world. I never got caught. Anyway, it was caused by ’stress at work’ as I am sure is the case with all those people who are searching for a solution. After all, if you were happy in your work and weren’t trying to block it all out you wouldn’t feel sleepy probably. I certainly never did when my environment was packed with exciting and unpredictable happenings.

So, I am going to try an experiment. I will create a few posts with catchy titles to see if I can attract a more diverse set of readers. I once tried putting football and stockings in a title and it worked wonders. Then, once I have caught their attention maybe I can persuade them to stay for a while. It’s worth a try.

Of course, if you are a publisher and you think I should be creating a masterpiece off line rather than casting my seed on stony ground do let me know.

Random Hugs

Every day in Harrogate a set of people clutching clipboards lurk in the main shopping street. They are collecting for charities; a different one each day. Harrogate residents became tired of this years ago so the poor collectors have to work very hard to persuade anyone to stop and talk to them.

I am one who does stop but explain from the outset that I am unable to commit to direct debits (which is what they have been sent to obtain) due to the enormous debts I managed to create not so long ago. It’s always jolly to have a chat though and I do love talking to people who have come from ’somewhere else’.

One day I had the unexpected bonus of two delicious hugs from a lad from Manchester who should have been signing me up for a DD donation to something. I just wish he would come back and give me another one. I didn’t deserve it but I certainly enjoyed it.

As I emerged from Bank Station (City of London) on Friday, having shaken off my male companion, I was greeted by two lads who looked as if they were getting the best out of their evening. One had anticipated the fun by wearing a diabolical pink cashmere sweater. The other grabbed me in a generous hug and kissed me on the lips with the joie de vivre that comes from beer. A stag do I presume. I do enjoy stranger hugs. I mean, hugs from strangers… though of course strange hugs can be pleasurable too.

You may deduce from these two snippets that I am dressed as a whore. I am sure I am not. Anyway, it happens on the phone too. Also on the internet but we had better not talk about that. I think it has come with age. I have reached the stage where I am perceived as ‘a mature wise woman who knows secret sexual tricks that can be taught to young men’ and perhaps ‘a rich older woman who owns a house so would be able to afford a gigolo’. Needless to say, only one of these statements is accurate.

Kingsbury Nights

The seating fabric was harshly spiking my legs through my velvet strides which were gently steaming as the under seat heater of the tube train warmed them. My hair was also wetly dribbling down my neck. It was a freezing London evening as I headed towards a sweltering den of sweating bodies with long hair lashing and imaginary guitars thrashed.

I had only been able to eat a biscuit that day. Food repulsed me. I knew I needed it for fuel but I would have preferred to take it in pill form or as a constant intravenous supply.

It was several stops from Finchley Road to Kingsbury and the train was empty. I had left it rather late as usual. It had been a busy day. There had just been time to wash my velvets and myself before dashing once more from my parents flat to my suburban hall of bliss. I was filled with anticipation as the train slowly moved forward, stopping and starting at empty stations, nobody on and nobody off but me. So I ran up and down the central aisle of the carriage and swung on the monkey bars by the doors. It didn’t make the train go any faster but it kept me occupied.

At home, my parents and my younger brother were still sitting around the dinner table talking and no doubt agreeing with each other how much of an idiot I was to be rushing out at this time of night wearing wet trousers and not having eaten. I would of course catch my death of cold and regret it in the morning.

I couldn’t help it though. Even if I had decided not to go for one night, I would suddenly leap up and declare that I couldn’t stand it and rush out of the house. I had to be there in that dark and dirty room with the incongruous decor of a wild western film. The bar was on one side and the other was like a building with a veranda made of wood. I imagined that I would arrive and tie my horse up on he wooden railings. Then I would drape myself there for a while as I surveyed the room. Neil Kay was the DJ and he was the Man. It was the Soundhouse. We were all family. Heavy metal music was out of fashion outside these walls. Inside was a complete world. I had bottles of Guiness at strategic points around the room and I spent my time sticking my head in the speakers till my ribs throbbed, headbanging with my hair swishing about and my naked back being lashed by someone doing the same and hugging sticky bikers who smelt delectibly of sweat, dirt and beer.

If you hang around long enough your life starts back at the beginning.

OK, so I haven’t written anything for a while. According to my statistics counter my audience is entirely made up of readers looking for information on ‘How not to fall asleep at your desk’ so I suppose I needn’t have written any of the others. Not to worry, I am quite happy to talk to myself.

I’ve just got back from a trip to London which was centered around a book launch for Pete Silverton’s wonderful new book ‘Filthy English’ which you can find on Amazon Books. I haven’t seen Pete since I worked at Spotlight Publications (in 1976 I think) which published ‘Sounds’ music paper where Pete Silverton was a writer. I wasn’t a writer, I was just sitting stupidly in reception. Letting all sorts of dodgy characters through the door who were very often coming to see Pete. I took a friend from Iran whom I haven’t seen since around the same time.

I tried opening up a conversation on the train with some plasterers who I had joined in sitting on the floor (it was a busy train, I wasn’t just being strange) by announcing that I was reading a book about swearing but they just looked at me and said ‘And…?” which shut me up.

When I got back to Harrogate I went straight to ASDA to buy fresh greens for the 70 guinea pigs in case my feeder servant hadn’t been generous enough with the rations. I had just sat on a bench in order to organise my purchases and stuff them into my purple lizard print suitcase on wheels, when I received an offer of marriage. I would say ‘an unexpected offer of marriage’ but this seems to be happening on an almost daily basis lately. There are variants of this phenomena but this was obviously one of the ‘I want to fuck you and I am not even going to bother to take you out to dinner’ type. My suitor didn’t get very far though because he rather ill advisedly told me his name. I said ‘I know who you are’. He said ‘Ah well, you will have heard of me, most people have’. ‘No’ I said, hoping that I would sound mysterious, compassionate, forgiving and menacing.’What I mean is, unfortunately you have already ‘had’ me. You locked me in a cellar in 1975′. He, somewhat predictably, said ‘No I didn’t’. I countered with ‘You have a tattoo of a dagger on your arm’ and rolled up his sleeve to show him, in case he had forgotten. I gave the poor old chap a hug to make him feel better and then I went home to feed the guinea pigs.

All my animals were quite happy although 8 of the guinea pigs had been partially digested by their compatriots so I think I had better be a little more specific about their dietary requirements next time I put someone in charge whilst I go gallivanting off down south. Incidentally, and a typical Harrogate occurrence, so hardly worth comment, the dagger tattoo man turned out to be friends with my animal feeder servant (who is also a tattooist though not responsible for the dagger).

So, in the past month I have met up with three people I once knew around 1975 – 1977. I am curious to know who else may be lurking round the corner.

Postscript:  Someone in Miami Beach just posted a pic of a guy who filled me with drugs circa 1973 and did pretty much the same as the cellar bloke only I was practically comatose. There is definitely a theme going on here.

Where is Milly?

If you are wondering where MillyToast is (as she hasn’t written in here since September 2009) please send her an email to MillyToast@mac.com and complain.

I passed my Test, ‘Where’s my ASDA voucher?’

Today I popped in to Learn Direct’s office in town to sit my English Proficiency Level 2 test.

Having completed the suggested ‘Brush up on English’ online course I felt ready to sit the test and claim the advertised ASDA £25 voucher about which I had learned from a piece of paper stuck on the door a few weeks ago. However, having passed my test with a score of 97% and sticking out my hand for the voucher I was told ‘Oh that finished at the end of August.’  Today you may note, is the 1st of September. Do you think I feel cheated?

I said nothing at all but my facial expression must have been effective as the Learn Direct tutor said he would ’speak to his boss’ when she gets back from her holidays. I should jolly well think so too!

What shall I do next?

OK, here’e the problem, let’s see if anyone else has any good ideas on what I ought to do next.

I live in a house that i like in a town that I don’t like. I have too much stuff to fit into a smaller space. I would like to go back home to London but properties there cost more than here so I wouldn’t have enough space for my stuff. Plus… I have a cat who has a job at the local hairdressers and I don’t want to mess up his life.

My mother needs to move out of her ginormous flat with ginormous amounts of stuff. She wants to spend about twice what my house is worth which is about half the price of the one she is selling. She has too much stuff to put into a place that is half the size of the one she has. She wants to live in a teeny weeny place but she doesn’t want to get rid of anything. She can’t decide whether to come up here to the town that I hate but my sister loves or stay in London or go to the seaside. She reckons she has five years left of life to go and although she is independent now she does not look forward to having a bed-bath offered by any of us.

Everyone else in the family has told her that on no account must she live with me.

Answers on a postcard please.

I anticipate that I have about three months left before I go completely mad.

UPDATE: My mother is now living up here in Harrogate. She quite likes her house, though it’s not a patch on the old flat, but hates Harrogate (no surprise there). She isn’t here much though anyway. At the moment she is in Malaysia. She threw quite a lot of stuff out; some on purpose and some by accident (helpers can never see the significance of important pieces of stick). The entire contents of my 18′ room and other stuff that had migrated into various other corners of the vast mansion flat have now all migrated to my own house and currently take up an entire room in the form of boxes up to the ceiling. No, I am not going to throw any of it away. Old bus tickets can be important you know.

Bookbinder Man found in King’s Cross

I popped down to London for a few days for a meeting. I stayed with my mother for the first part, in her upside down world of lunches at 9 in the evening and I got into trouble for sending an email to work colleaues at 1.30 in tbe morning but it was only teatime for me. They were worried about my work/life balance I suppose but if they really cared they would give me more freedom wouldn’t they.

This post is to tell you a little story about my meeting with Bookbinder Man which took place on my last evening in London. I was staying in a hotel in King’s Cross red light district. If I go down for a meeting I do stay with my mother but always insist on at least one hotel night. I like the adventure of it. I always choose a cheap room. Usually I stay in Pembridge Square, Notting Hill Gate but my favourite hotel didn’t have a vacancy for me this time so I thought I would give King’s Cross a go, not having stayed there since a night at the Violet Hotel in the 1970s under circumstances I will tell you about another day.

It was raining in a tropical way when I arrived at the European hotel in Argyle square. For a change, I was not too laden with luggage having jettisoned my wheeled monstrosity at my mother’s on the way to my meeting in Wokingham. It was in such a state that I couldn’t possibly produce it at the laboratory where the meeting was to take place. It smelt dreadful, having been targeted by the nether part of Bert the cat before I left. Please don’t blame Bert as he is the result of some well intended but misguided upbringing by his original family who subsequently gave up on him and let me take him on.

My reception at the hotel desk was not exactly delightful so they lose marks on that but the room itself was pleasant enough for the price and the view from the window (which opened very easily but disturbingly had no lock on it) was superb. I was looking out on a beautiful London square complete with very large plane trees in full leaf. The surrounding houses, albeit mostly converted into cheap hotels, were all georgian with little wrought iron balconies. It was a perfect London view.

I went for a walk about as the rain had cleared up. This area is crowned by the magnificent sight of St Pancras Railway Station. I cannot think of a building more beautiful than this although admittedly I have not yet visited the Giza pyramids. I went inside to see how it has been converted as an international terminal. I was a little disappointed in the main platform area but cheered up the following day when I eventually found out how to get to the shopping level which had lots of organic type fooderies and an exciting area of disembarkation where I was able to watch reunions in a variety of languages. I was moved by the sight of all the hugging and kissing and genuine warmth of people meeting friends.

Upstairs, is a huge sculpture of a couple greeting each other. It’s very dramatic and it reminded me of a 1930s style rather than a couple of this era. I didn’t like though that the glass canopy wrought iron had been painted in a bright white or possibly it was pale blue. It looked much cleaner and brighter than before but for me had lost it’s gothic impact. I once spent an entire day with my art school class at this station. I drew the same canopy and brooding archways in thick black chalk and created something quite menacing. It doesn’t look anything like it now. Outside of course is untouched and as always.

After that I wanted to eat something using my expenses allocation of £20. I discovered an Ethiopian restaurant that I wanted to try but it was full to the brim and the waitress said No. I will try there another time. Thoughts entered my head which challenged me regarding my preconceptions. For instance ‘Ethiopians eat?’ and ‘Ethiopians have recipes?’. I am not alone in this as when I mentioned it yesterday to a boy collecting for Africa in a raining Harrogate street, he looked equally shocked and said ‘They wouldn’t be eating in Ethiopia’.

Opposite the restaurant I was approached by a King’s Cross girl who asked me to ‘help her out’ in her bid to reach a £5 goal. Which I did of course. I who have no money of my own that doesn’t truly belong to creditors, have a policy that if I have a bean in my pocket I will give it to a person who asks for it but this can only happen once per day and not if I am on my way to the supermarket to buy food for my animals. I know she was probably going to spend it on something dodgy but that’s not for me to worry about and for me it is the personal contact that counts. Eye contact and half a hug is usually what I offer as long as they don’t look like that would be something they would rather reject. I read an article once where someone said that the worst thing was to be ignored by all the hundreds of people who walk by when you are sitting on the street just asking for a bit of help. Oh yes, I have just been reading a lot of stuff about sufism and apparently the worst thing you can do is mention that you have helped someone so by rights I should delete this whole paragraph but I won’t because it is part of my description of my trip so you will need to forgive me for that and anyway, who said I was a sufi?

I then found an Italian restaurant to spend my allocation. How guilty could I feel sitting in there with all those people outside who could do with that £20? Business as it is though, it’s eat it or lose it so I managed to eat £17.99 worth of food and left the rest as a tip. Sitting next to me on either side were single gentlemen eating alone. Business men travelling like myself. After I had eaten I got talking to the one on my right hand side. He worked for the bookbinding business and hailed from Dundee I think he said. It was good to talk so we went for a drink in his favourite local pub. The pub was of an Eastenders the TV soap type and was pleasant enough. I promised my new friend I would put him in my blog as a gift for reading it. Hello Dave, thanks for reading my blog.

Sleeping at your desk / in a meeting / whilst talking to your boss…

Top searches to reach my blog have changed from ‘Dragon Poo’ to permutations on ‘How to avoid sleeping at your desk’. What does this mean? I am not sure what the social life/work balance gurus would have to say on the matter but I do think I need to give these readers something a bit more helpful than telling them that I have been known to slump at my desk.

I would like to say that I have found a remedy for the problem which is obviously shared by so many. I am not able to follow my own advice since I have sunk so low that I do not have enough motivational power to accellerate such a shift but my senses detect the primary cause to be lack of stimulation. In other words, it is caused by unfulfilling occupation. So, the remedy would therefore be to get out of the job and get yourself somewhere else.

The difficulty is that once it gets to the point of slumping, it is nearly impossible to find the motivation to escape. One needs help. I need help. Somebody help me please.

How about… we all get together and form a buddy help scheme to keep each other motivated enough to execute our escape plans effectively? If you have found my post by searching with words like ‘how to avoid sleeping at my desk’ why not let me know and we can all keep each other going going going until we are gone?

The book that travelled to be with me

Yesterday, I went to my favourite secondhand bookshop here in Harrogate, North Yorkshire. I was looking for a copy of any book by Idries Shah. I had been led to this through reading two books by his son, Tahir Shah. In the course of reading these books I learnt that his father was Idries, of whom I had heard previously, and I learnt something about sufism and storytelling.

The bookship is small but crammed full of books and is the kind of place you can expect to find treasures. One feels sure that the bookseller doesn’t know they are lurking there. I usually settle down on the floor to peruse the lower shelves. In the wintertime it is extremely cold and I have to be very careful not to stay too long or I can get asthmatic. Yesterday was a hot day though so I was free to enjoy my visit to the full.

I searched for the books in the esoteric section and the theology section. No luck. Not a single one of the thirty books written by Idries Shah was to be found on that visit. It was time for me to go back to the office, my lunch break almost finished, when I spied an old book entitled ‘The Philosophies and Religions of India’. I picked it up as I thought it might have a section on Sufis. It looked interesting so I checked at the front to see how much it would be, usually pencilled in on the flyleaf. It was only 2.50 which I thought was very reasonable for an interesting hard back book printed in 1908 and smelling delicious. I then noticed that the previous owner had written her name and address. In copperplate handwriting using a blue ink fountain pen, she had written:

Miss S. Lambourn, 15 Kingsley Road, South Harrow, Middx.

I froze.

This is where I lived for the first eleven years of my life. It is a small house in a suburb of London. The opposite end of the country. Here was a book that belonged to someone who lived in our family’s house before we did. My mother moved there in 1947 with her first baby, my sister. My family lived there until 1967. I loved the house and always felt a special affinity with it.

Now I have to read the book from cover to cover. There must be some reason it came here to find me mustn’t there?