The Revolution will be Widgetised

I don't quite know what the title means, but it was the subject line of one of the trillion of porn spam emails I received this week and I think it's probably the most awesome subject line for a porn spam email *ever*. I also got one about foot sex, which was entertaining, but not quite so surreal.

The last two months have been a little trying in various ways (despite the Easter weekend - hurrah for no work!) and I'm only just starting to feel a bit better. Or at least like I'm coping, which is something. The sunshine and the bank holiday fest that is next month are getting me through. Yesterday, between meetings, I sat outside a cafe in Paternoster Square, enjoying the sun and eating pineapple. It felt good. If only that was my entire job. Sadly, this is not the case - my *actual* job involves travelling for two hours to get to the office for 7.30am, only to discover on arrival that the meeting is cancelled and then still having to be fucking perky for the rest of the day in case someone decides to fire me. The gloom is only punctuated by small acts of pineapple-eating rebellion.

I am also getting sadistic pleasure out of the new, 50p tax rise on the miniscule 1% of the population who earn over £150k. Several members of my company are having the biggest hissy fits over this - why should they have to pay this tax? Why don't they tax the lumpen proles? What if they have to sack one of the nannies because they can't afford 3 *and* two homes and millions of foreign holidays - OH TEH HORRORS!!1!11! This griping has caused unrest among some colleagues who have suddenly figured out that a few of their peers are obviously earning one hell of a lot more than they are. Next pay day should be interesting, at least...

Perhaps Darling is in fact a G20 protester at heart - the budget has inconvenienced and terrorised the City far more effectively and potently than the G20 protests did. I just wish Labour had introduced it sooner, really.

Otherwise, all is quiet. Apart from the sodding Morris Dancers that invaded the City on St. George's day, no doubt all part of the Mayor of London's plan to make us all feel like we're English. It certainly made us all feel embarrassed and awkward, so maybe it worked. It was surreal and terrifying, like wandering through a James Herbert novel that had gone horribly wrong.

...But the pockets are too small to be useful

Why is it that trousers designed for women have such impractical pockets? Men can carry around a whole host of useful items including (but not limited to) phones, wallets, ipods, loose change, keys in their voluminous pockets without looking like they've sprouted giant tumours. Women, on the otherhand, are lucky if they can fit in some clean tissues and 20p for the machine in the toilet. It's made quite clear that pockets are there for show and are shrinking over time - rather like the little toe. Perhaps it is part of the conspiracy to encourage us to buy vastly overpriced handbags.

Unreasonable Optimism

I am inexplicably cheerful about the coming few months at work, despite nothing having changed in the slightest and the likelihood of me ever getting promoted (or at least to a job that doesn't make me want to eat my own limbs and howl like a wolf) is still zilch. Yet, I still have this unnerving sense that *good things* are going to happen - perhaps the work ethic I mysteriously developed in the closing months of last year was not just zombified, mindless obedience but an actual moment of maturity/growth.

(Shakes head in horror at the thought I might always feel like doing random extra work *at the weekend*)

It could be that this good mood is just a leftover of Christmas cheer or some side effect of the recent illness. Either way, it should be gone soon enough: it's bonus and pay meetings at the beginning of next month. Meh.

Seasonal Malaise

So Norovirus has struck again this year, worse than ever if the media is to be believed. The back-to-work season was sandwiched between dire warnings of projectile vomiting and uncontrollable pooing. Commuters on packed, sweaty trains looked at each other furtively in case their seatmate was suddenly struck down - after all, the papers warned us, these germs were everywhere and could hit at any time. Anyone who looked vaguely ill was to be avoided or sent evil glares: were they the fiends who were ignoring NHS advice to stay at home? In offices, there were competitive renditions of whose-family-was-worst-hit-at-christmas-dinner and slightly sadistic shudders at the terrible pains absent colleagues must be going through.

I am almost disappointed I didn't get it - I feel I managed to miss out on an experience bigger than myself (I am of course being sarcastic here).

There obviously was/is a nasty bug going around - attendance at my work post-xmas party was decimated by ill-health (or perhaps people using a mild cold as an excuse not to go) and the Heloise-stronghold has been brought low by disease of the mucus/miserable/exhaustion type. Apart from the feeling ill part, it's all been rather jolly and an excuse to sleep for 16 hours a day and not change out of pyjamas. Due to the rigid following of the "feed a cold" rule, I've failed to lose weight - although colds should probably not be fed by left over xmas chocolate but by healthy things that we were too ill to go out and buy.

The trouble with illness-related media paranoia is that it tends to override my usual scepticism and awaken any latent compulsive tendencies floating around my head. I have a slight weakness for hygeine paranoia anyway - if I think too hard I can find myself avoiding touching door handles, taps, light switches or the flush on toilets (to name just a few) - but with something as thrillingly disgusting as Norovirus, it can spiral well out of control. Those germs could be everywhere - buttons on cash machines, chip+pin machines at the supermarket, train seats, tables, computer keyboards, restaurants, the kitchens where my pret sandwich was made - and if I'm not careful the logical next step would be to lock myself in my own bathroom, gently rocking backwards and forwards. Luckily, getting a genuine illness put a stop to this dangerous behaviour, if only because I was confined to house arrest.

On the plus side, Tesco was gloriously empty last weekend (although they were so short-staffed they could only open half the tills and the shelves were pretty empty) which gave a bizarre snapshot of what the world would be like during a flu epidemic but without the death and actual terror.