1786: That Monday Feeling

It was Jim Davis’ comic creation fat cat Garfield that made me aware of the world’s dislike of Mondays during my formative years, but as time has passed I’ve come to appreciate the chubby orange one’s worldview. Particularly when your Monday goes as badly as mine has.

I thought I was over the bum-AIDS I’d been afflicted with for the last few days of last week and part of the weekend, and indeed most of the day passed without incident. On the way home, however, I was in a fair amount of pain and — again, I’m sorry to be sharing such revolting imagery when you may well be having your dinner or midnight snack — had to rush straight to the toilet when I got home for a fairly explosive session.

Of course, the return of bum-AIDS wasn’t quite enough to make my Monday a misery. Oh no; this morning our toilet decided to stop flushing, so even with full knowledge of the fact that I wouldn’t be able to easily dispose of my… product, I was sat there, disgusting myself, not wanting to contemplate the destruction I had left in my wake nor how I was going to set about making things right again. (Our interim solution until we fix the problem — which looks like a problem with the syphon, for any aspiring plumbers out there — is simply to throw buckets of water down the toilet. Retro.)

Of course, the return of bum-AIDS and our toilet failing to do anything resembling flushing normally wasn’t quite enough to make my Monday a misery. Oh no; my headphones broke, too. To be fair, they were only a cheap £10 JVC pair I picked up from Tesco several years ago, but they were comfortable, sounded good and had served me well for quite some time. Inexplicably, they chose to completely break as I removed them from my head as I arrived at work today, however; not just a simple “something popping out of where it should be, easily fixed” break, either — this was a proper big chunk breaking off and promptly disappearing somewhere on the floor, not that it would have done me much good to retrieve it anyway.

Of course, the return of bum-AIDS, our toilet failing to do anything resembling flushing and my headphones breaking wasn’t quite enough to make my Monday a misery. Oh no; the lanyard that holds my work ID card and keys broke, too. I don’t even know how this happened, but again, a bit just fell off, disappeared and was consequently unfixable. (Fortunately, I happened to have a spare.)

Of course, the return of bum-AIDS… are you getting the picture yet? The rubbishness just kept coming and coming and coming until by the time I got home and had finished my business I was left feeling utterly defeated by the day.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better. But right now, I’m not holding my breath. Except when I walk past the toilet.

1737: Some Days You Just Can’t Get Rid of a Bomb

I had the worst morning today. I say worst; at the time it was happening, it was already apparent to me that the unfortunate combination of mishaps that befell me were the stuff of farce, and looking back now it’s just faintly amusing. But at the time it was spectacularly irritating, and put me in a rather grouchy mood for much of the day.

Things started badly when I woke up at the ungodly hour I need to wake up to go to work and I had a horrible pain in my back that made it difficult to bend over (to put my socks on, pervert) or indeed to operate in a normal manner. After downing a couple of painkillers, the pain subsided a bit, so after a quick breakfast I took to the road, carefully avoiding the bin lorry that had decided the time I was leaving the house was the optimum time to park almost across our driveway.

Five minutes down the road — thankfully no further — I realised that I’d left my work ID badge at home, and I need that to get in and out of the building. Now, I know full well that a little grovelling at the security office would have probably secured me a temporary visitor’s badge to use for the day, but I’m still in that phase where I want to be seen to be doing things “right”, and so back I went to pick up my badge (the lanyard for which also had the key to my desk drawers on it, plus a nice pen). By the time I got out the door again, it was getting on for half an hour later than I’d normally leave for work, and I just knew that this meant I was probably going to hit the pointless, meaningless, seemingly causeless traffic jams that are on the motorway every single day of the working week.

Sure enough, the dear old M27 didn’t disappoint. Much of my journey was capped at about 40mph, often dipping below that, and I wasn’t able to get up any sort of decent speed until the stretch of the motorway where I was almost at work. Time was ticking on by now, however; fortunately, I have fairly flexible hours, so the concept of being “late” is a little more fluid than in many other places, but I was still rather later than I intended to be.

I pulled up at the lorry park where I typically park my car at the start of each working day and prepared to hand over my cash for the week’s parking — though I had noticed several huge containers blocking the small patch of concrete out the front where cars arriving a little later were typically shepherded. I had a sinking feeling.

“We’re full, buddy,” said Lorry Park Man — yes, there are people who really do say “buddy” out loud — and I knew there was no point arguing. Those who pay for weekly tickets were typically given priority over those paying on a daily basis, but I could see from a cursory glance around that there really wasn’t any room to put any more cars — not without putting them at risk from the lorries that the park was actually built for, anyway. I nodded, and Lorry Park Man shrugged apologetically at me, so it was time to go on a small adventure to find somewhere to park.

I eventually found somewhere about a mile up the road from where I work — the lorry park is already about 15 minutes walk, and this was quite a way further — but there was nothing for it; my only other option was to park right in the town centre and have an even longer walk to contend with. No thank you.

I eventually made it to work — still before 9am, pleasingly — and tried to get in my usual door with my ID card. The door was, of course, broken, and I wasn’t even surprised by this by this point, so I simply wandered down to the next one along and went in. Then I sat down at my desk, turned on my computer, fired up Outlook to check my email and was helpfully informed that the server was not responding.

The perfect start to a perfect day, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Thankfully things picked up a little from that point onwards — though I did nearly forget to retrieve my desk keys and had to come back and get them — but man. That was one hell of a lot of bad luck in one go. Hopefully that’ll be it for a little while now; let’s have the rest of the week go a little more smoothly, hmm?

#oneaday, Day 27: To Whom It May Concern

Dear God/Cthulhu/Nyx/Nicola from Girls Aloud/Kefka/Des/Mr Denton/GLaDOS/G-Man/Bhaal/Fate/whoever is actually in charge of everything,

I’m not a praying man. You know that. I’m not even a religious man. But I’m asking for a favour. One little favour. That surely won’t be much for someone of Your calibre of magnificence/horror/weirdness/hotness/badassness/system specifications.

Said favour will only take up one day. One day. 24 hours on this Earth. You can spare a day, right? I don’t mind what You do on the day after. You can rain down locusts, devour the planet, send forth Your spawn into the wilds, ruin the world, remake it in Your own image or hire a guy with a crowbar to kick some ass. I don’t care.

All I ask is that for one solitary day, all of the Nice People get to have a Good Day. A Good Day together that they can all enjoy at the same time. Maybe down the pub. Because inevitably, what happens right now is that Person A has a Bad Day, Person B has a Fucking Terrible Day, Person C has a Great Day and Person D is “meh” about the whole thing. Person B is thrust into the very depths of depression. Person A moans about their day, but then feels guilty as soon as they come across Person B’s problems, which are clearly worse than their own. Person C wants to celebrate their Great Day but doesn’t want to make Person A and B feel bad or envious, while Person D gets all the shit from the other three lumped on them as they all vent their frustrations on the one truly neutral party in the whole debacle. And then no-one wants to go down the pub.

This is clearly a Very Silly Situation. Now, Your own personal ideology may not be particularly compatible with the concept of a Good Day. But look at it this way: if You’re the type to go devouring worlds, covering them with fire and/or making things “fall into shadow” (whatever that means—surely you can just turn on a light) then surely won’t it hurt more if You fuck shit up immediately after everyone has had a Good Day? Yeah. Now we’re talking, right?

If, on the other hand, You’re the benevolent type, then think how much good spiritual-currency-of-your-choice You’ll acquire from the provision of a universally Good Day. People will be happy and they’ll be inclined to thank You for said provision. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? I played Populous. I remember how it works. More mana means MOAR VOLCANOES. You know You want to.

Now, there are, of course, some flaws in this plan: namely, that one person’s Good Day may well cause someone else to have a Bad or even a Fucking Terrible Day. But I trust that You, in your infinite wisdom, will be able to sort something out. If it helps, You can limit the Universally Good Day to people that are “nice”, haven’t pissed me off recently and aren’t likely to. Or just my friends. I’m cool with that.

Basically, what I’m saying is: sucky things keep happening to Good People. Please, for one day, stop it and let people just enjoy life for once. I know that I’d be very grateful. And I know there are plenty of others out there who would too.

So at least think about it, huh?

Amen/Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!/May you always draw the right cards/You are well sexy/Synthesised laughs are the best/You’re a twat but I like you despite yourself/I like your sunglasses/This was a triumph/May you always be a Free-Man/FACE ME FACE THE NEW LORD OF MURDER/Korah matah korah rahtahmah/Yours faithfully,

Pete

#oneaday, Day 309: One Of Those Days

Nearly everyone I’ve spoken to has had an absolutely terrible day today. If you are one of those people who has had a terrible day, I offer my sympathies, condolences, fistbumps, high fives, whattups, hugs, manly nipple tweaks or cock-punches (take your pick) and understand entirely if you’re currently feeling a bit less-than-optimum.

Me, I’m right there with you. I too have had a pretty rubbish day. For starters, I had a job interview. That in itself is not, in fact, rubbish. It’s something which should be celebrated and applauded, given the length of time I’ve been jobhunting without success. However, the fact that I drove 120 miles for said interview only to discover at the interview that the job in question was only likely to be for four or five hours a week? That was rather more irritating. Particularly as the interview itself was lengthy, stressful and presided over by one quite attractive and pleasant woman and one rather rude lady. I spent the whole day with bubbling bowels, and for what? Naff all, it seems.

I then had to drive 120 miles back home. Fortunately, I’d done the driving there last night, as I didn’t fancy going there and back in one day. But, as luck would have it, tonight was National Traffic And Roadworks Appreciation Day, with everyone driving extra-slowly to admire the one set of roadworks on the M25, then the next set of roadworks on the M25, then the roadworks in the Hatfield Tunnel on the A1(M), then the roadworks about two miles further up on the A1(M). All told, it took somewhere in the region of A Very Long Time to get home, during which I was feeling very tired and a bit embittered at the fact I’d pretty much wasted a day I could have spent doing far better and/or more productive things.

Sadly, the surprises the day had to offer didn’t end there, either. I knew that today I’d be hearing from another job—one that I was particularly enthusiastic about and very much looking forward to the possibility of doing—so I was prepared, but feeling reasonably confident after my interview and my contact with the employers in question. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Apparently I was near the top of the list, just not top of the list. Perhaps it was one of those situations where they just had to pick one person or the other. And, as luck would have it, it wasn’t me.

In some senses, it’s a bit of a lottery, applying for a job you really want. Because all the preparation in the world, all the confidence you exude in the interview, all the important buzzwords you try and drop into conversation, all the thought-provoking questions you provide; sometimes it just comes down to a simple choice. And sometimes that choice isn’t going to favour you.

I just kind of think it’s about time one of those choices did favour me, hmm?