Govstooge's New Job

Well, gentle readers, it's been a while, so I'd better offer an excuse as to my extended absence.

I've finally gone and landed on my feet. I've managed to get the coveted transfer I've been hankering after for months and am now a noob EO in the Department of Pedantry where the arses are just as fat, the coffee is equally foul, and the toilets are pongy to an identical extent. So, why did I want the job? The answer is simple.

Fewer PMDS forms. I now have approximately 0.66 of a CO to supervise rather than the double digits I had recently. And it's nice that it's the bottom 0.66 of the CO, as they have no head and are therefore very quiet and leave me alone most of the time. Couple that with a few other eccentric EOs and a sweary HEO, things are very nice indeed right now.

Oh, and the actual WORK was a draw too. Nothing to do with passports or dole forms or any of that stuff where angry queues are involved. Or squeaky doors, which, frankly, were driving me fucking insane.

Lack of malaise is, however, a cause of writer's block for me, so I'll have to find something to get pissed off about fast. Emm...

... Mary Cockup still in Government? Fuuuu...watch this space...

No, Minister (subtitled the Strife of Brian)

What a to-do eh? First Willie O'DamhasO'Dea quits and now Trevor Sargent.

I'm giving up watching Desperate Housewives for Lent. The news at 6pm is more entertainment than my brain can handle. Fianna Fail and the Greens at each others' throats is more than an adequate substitute for the trials of Gaby, Susan, Bree, Lynette, et al.

Mind you, if the "Govern"ment should collapse in the not-too-distant future, I'd be at a loose end at the ballot box. I'm sorry, Enda, but no.

If enough people wrote "Michael O'Leary" across the ballot papers, would that mean he could be elected? OK, he's a tough one, and would make cuts left right and centre. He could also make his remaining civil servants wear rotten blue polyester uniforms, sit at yellow plastic desks, pipe awful music at us all day, abolish the canteen in favour of a lady with a trolley selling overpriced paninis and replica forms, sell advertising space in the Dail, make us pay for the loo and so on ad infinitum, but he'd make a fucking brilliant Taoiseach or Finance minister. He'd have the country's finances sorted while Brian Clowen would still be trying to make sculptures out of his bellybutton fluff and earwax.

A scheduled Ryanair 737 could replace the Government jet, making instant savings. Junkets to Brussels would become less popular as going via Charleroi would be too painful for our cossetted ministers. Mary Harney would have to do the work of two TDs as she would take up two seats in the Dail. Mary Cockup (sorry, Coughlan) could be garrotted and those 300 aircraft maintenance jobs could be reinstated in Dublin.

I would be more than happy to serve as Michael O'Leary's speechwriter, as I share with him a love of the vernacular. Fuck it, get him in!

Saint Pancreas

I’m so glad Valentine’s Day fell on a weekend this year. Just so I haven’t had to endure the gushing, faux-surprise exclamations of those colleagues whose partners deliver fucking ginormous bouquets of flowers to the office.

Not even a mention of it! Huzzah! (There has been a whiff of it, however – I would think, one colleague spent much of the morning ostentatiously spraying something with a Tommy Hilfiger logo on the bottle on herself, in the hope that someone would compliment her on the scent and where she got it from! Nobody did!)

As for me, I had dinner cooked for me, a nice walk and a couple of pints in the local. Not a Hallmark logo, overpriced restaurant or pink heart in sight. Not even in the local, which is one of those spit-and-sawdust and greyhounds-in-the-corner type of places where the average age of the clientele is 70.

Anyhow, all that sickly-sweet stuff probably wouldn’t do me any good at this juncture, now that I’m gulping 1,000 milligrams of Glucophage a day to help with insulin resistance which is a complication of polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). PCOS is a rotten condition with irregular periods being the main symptom but also hirsutism, obesity, and acne among others. Being lucky where cosmetic symptoms are concerned, I’m neither spotty nor hairy, but keeping my weight down can be difficult, even if I can still get into a size 12-14!

I had been taking Aldactone for years but the results of a recent liver function test prompted the doc to change the script. Bloody triglycerides!

I still haven’t managed to shift the half stone I put on over Christmas thanks to Bailey’s, Quality Street and all the other goodies that accumulate in my parents’ house in Kilshite over the festive season. And now, it seems, a more concentrated effort is required on my part to shift the extra weight and also lower cholesterol without resorting to statins.

I’ve been lucky with Glucophage so far, the side effects of squits and nausea haven’t affected me. I fucked up last weekend and forgot I was not supposed to drink bucketloads of beer while taking it and ended up having to jump out of the car the following afternoon and violently throw up on the side of the road, after a mere four pints the night before! Not to mention the honking and cheering from passing cars. Bastards!

So, I now have to reduce my alcohol intake as well as moderate my thought-it-was-already-pretty-healthy diet (i.e. lots of veggies, no fry ups, no processed stuff). Bollocks. Most of my socialising involves lots of beer so I’m still at a loss for something to replace it with once the two pints I’m allowed have gone down the hatch. And I hate being the only sober one in a group of drunks! FUUUUUCK! Anyway, I’ll just have to grin and bear it, because it’s for the best. It’ll pay off in the end. Volunteering as designated driver will save us loads in taxis.

And I’ve got ten months to go before Christmas and the torrent of chocolate, so I hope to have made progress by then!

In the Thick of It

Last week wasn't an easy one for me.

I discovered 1920s style personal hygiene due to the total absence of water in my house, decided it was crap and went round to an unaffected friend's house to borrow their shower in exchange for some beer. I may have a filthy tongue, but smelly I am not. Anyway, the H2O's back now, pouring from my taps as well as drenching me from on high when I go outside, so all that's over.

A HEO descended on me with a printout of an email from Personnel. "Please conduct PMDS annual reviews asap," it said. "Bugger." I replied. And then, "You could just have forwarded that to me... save the trees and all that." The HEO responded that I smelt too nice to be a tree hugger and told me to just do it. Arse.

The second working week of the new year flung me into the shit with a new project that demanded intense concentration and participation of me. Neither of which I really wanted to supply at the time but I think I muddled through OK only to burn out just as the weekend was upon me.

In spite of this, I was happy to have the Bearded One (aka "Himself") turn up on my doorstep with some beers and a bottle of Buckfast. The resultant hangover rendered me useless for most of Saturday, which was an utter pain in the arse as there was stuff to be done that had to be put on hold as I lay upstairs trying to shut out the waves of alcohol-induced pain surging through my cranium.

This week feels far more calm. So far. Mind you, I haven't gotten round to those PMDS forms yet so who knows what delights they have in store for me.

Fed up with Brick!

Ok, I've had it. Now that the snow's finally melting, I'm officially bored of this weather.

I'm sick of walking around like one of those clockwork dolls to avoid falling on my arse. No I don't have a key in my back. But I can put my foot up the backside of the next person who pisses me off.

I'm sick of slush being sprayed at me by passing cars whose drivers are irritated that I haven't fallen on my arse and given them a cheap laugh just because I didn't fall over like that bloke on the news the other night.

I'm sick of driving at 15 miles per hour and arriving into work late.

I'm sick of the fucking teenage c***s who decide that 1.30 in the morning is a perfect time for a drunken snowball fight in Ballyfuck Main Street.

I'm sick of not having any running water (but at least I got plenty of bottled stuff without a fight).

When it was white it was lovely. How fickle am I?

When icicles hang by the wall, and Dick the shepherd blows his nail

Or, more colloquially, this weather would freeze the balls off a brass monkey. (Mind you, I have never seen a brass monkey, with or without balls.)

Anyway, I love this weather. There is nothing quite like a gentle stroll in a wooded area on days like these, with the white ground crunching underfoot, returning home to a warm house and a steaming mug of coffee.

It's not all fun and games though. It's taking about twenty minutes to de-ice the car every morning to render it safe for purpose. My commute this morning was almost twice its normal duration due to the state of the roads. At certain points, a speed greater than 5mph would result in movements that could be considered the automotive equivalent of Torvill and Dean. And still the knobjockeys in the Transit vans continued to overtake.

Given the road conditions, I've decided to take the rest of the week off with some annual leave I'd reserved specially for this purpose.

Add my traditional New Year grouchiness into the mix and there you have it, a happy ending for both EO and the poor misfortunate COs who must put up with the irascibility and general sweariness of the said EO.

I'm also between projects at the moment and therefore things are quiet. I do not ask the HEOs for more work lest they jump at the opportunity to dump everything on me and go back to playing Spider Solitaire or updating Facebook while the EO on 20-grand-a-year-less does all the hard work. Seriously. It has happened. It is happening. Just to prove a point, I wrote a report recently that had a HEO's name on it. I sent the report as a read-only file to the HEO for approval, without granting the HEO editorial privileges. I doubt the HEO even read the report, they merely nodded and said "that's grand". Really? Even though I "accidentally" misspelt your name on it? Isn't it great, being a HEO and having a report written for you with your name at the bottom, a report whose sole authorship and editorial privileges are assigned to a lowly EO? That, gentle reader, is the life.

So, to just return to having to deal with the quiet period, I've been dreaming up things for myself to do, like give the desk a clean to remove the Olympic symbols I've been making with coffee cups. Or draft a "how-to" for my successor should I run away screaming. I have internet access, but there's a restriction on most of the good stuff, like some blogs and b3ta.com.

Time off is a very good idea right now.

Winter walks a-plenty for Govstooge. Happy days.

New Year, Same Old Bollocks

Argh, facing into a new year is generally fraught with optimism and hope for change for the better. But once the Prosecco hangover wore off on New Year's Day, those alien emotions wore off pretty damned quickly.

I'm back at work tomorrow, and to get myself in the mood, I dug out my DVD of Falling Down. I felt better straight away.

Sometimes, when faced with pay cuts, PMDS Annual Reviews, training courses and being sucked onto new project teams, one needs to find some way of detaching from it all. I choose a Michael Douglas film about a bloke who goes mental one day. Hmm.

Anyway, much of tomorrow's going to be catching up with everyone else at work. I expect to hear all of the following (I should really devise a bingo card for this stuff):

"I got soooo twisted on New Year's Eve."

"Timmy didn't like the choo-choo Santy brought him. I was gutted."

"My mother-in-law's turkey was so dry it was like eating wood shavings."

"Whose turn is it to take down the office Christmas decorations?"

"Are there any sweets left?"

"Govstooge, my PC won't start. There's melted chocolate all over my keyboard."

"Govstooge, can I have the afternoon off?"

Argh, fuck off.

For the record, my contributions to the whole affair will be along the lines of:

"Who wants to do their Annual Review? And where's my knuckle duster?"

"If there's any Galaxy truffles left, they're MINE!"

"Christmas? Oh yes, it was fine. You know I'm a Hassidic Jew, though, right?"

"Ah, just piss off."



Here's to 2010, folks. Have a good one. Because I know I won't.