Dispatches from my old life

For the last two weeks I've been working in Covent Garden, in the same building where I spent six years as a full-time employee. I don't come back that often these days, so on my way to the toilets or the kitchen I peer into the windows of the other offices, looking for anyone I used to know, my pallid face at the glass like a ghost.

Those toilets, I can report, are every bit as revolting as they ever were, with a luxurious carpet of ragged paper towels and toilet paper spread across the cubicle floor by approximately 11.30 in the morning, and mysterious sodden deposits of tissue blocking the basin plug holes. Women's magazine employees, it turns out, are far less fastidious about their toilets than they are about their wardrobes. I take a special interest in the toilets of this building as I spent a lot of time barricading myself in there towards the end of my permanent employment, attempting to fend off extreme anxiety-related nausea.

Some notes from my weeks back in Covent Garden:

a) As a freelance employee, I pass many hours sitting at other people's desks while they are on holiday. Alternative, they may recently have vacated their workstation for good, having moved on to a new job, perhaps with a bigger desk and a proper footrest. You can tell a lot about a person from their desk. When it comes to eating lunch, you can ascertain whether they prefer a sandwich to a couscous salad by the nature of the crumbs trapped in their keyboard. You may be able to glean something of their personal life by the subject matter of their computer's desktop wallpaper. Popular subjects include:

1) Looming face of toddler filling the entire frame with 'adorable' drooling grin.
2) Pet cat.
3) Manchester United posing with trophy.
4) Liverpool posing with trophy.
5) Sunset holiday photo they are particularly proud of (location: usually Thailand), and are considering sending in for publication in a broadsheet newspaper (NB, my mum ACTUALLY HAD ONE OF THESE PUBLISHED in yesterday's Sunday Times, only it's not a sunset or Thailand).

1) to 3) I find offputting. 4) and 5) I can deal with.

I actually know the person whose desk I was sitting at for the last week, so no guesswork was required. She is a sweetheart. Even if I didn't have this prior information, I would still feel a fond affinity with her on account of the way she has worn away the S on her keyboard - which I assume is due to a neurotic and over-cautious tendency to press the apple key + 'S' every few minutes and save her work from the obliterative caprices of computer malfunction.


b) There are two zebra crossings just outside this building, which I have to cross on my way to and from the train station, and to and from somewhere nice to buy my lunch. That's four crossings a day. Over the years, I must have crossed those zebra crossings thousands of times, as well as many others across the length and breadth of England and Scotland (I've never been to Ireland or Wales). But during these two weeks, with their flurry of crossings-and-crossings-back, I've found myself suddenly stricken with doubt about my thank-you-to-stopping-motorists-wave.

Are you a thank-you-waver, zebra crossing-wise?

I like to think I present a veneer of good manners to the world, even if the tutting, scowling cracks beneath are plainly visible to the world. My intentions are towards a course of good manners and consideration. I say thank you to the bus driver as I tap my Oyster card. I'm nice to waitresses. And I give a little wave to motorists who slow down as I hover by a crossing. But this fresh waving anxiety is twofold. Firstly, I have found myself questioning the style of my wave. I imagine this is a long dark night of the soul familiar to Kate Middleton. I seem to favour a 'How!'-style raise of the palm – brisk, businesslike, direct. But now it's starting to feel soulless. I'm considering introducing a jauntier, from-the-wrist action – or even a subtle Mexican wave of the digits. Secondly, and more existentially, I'm starting to wonder if a wave is necessary at all. Is it slightly over-egging things? Now, as I conscientiously salute each motorist, I think I see, in the dead eyes that meet mine, some expression of 'Don't flatter yourself. I'm only stopping because it's the law.' Should I scale down the wave to a nonchalant head-nod or lift of the chin? I don't really do nonchalant though. I mostly do flapping.

c) If you want to get cash out at a lunchtime – or directly after work – in Covent Garden, you have no option but to queue. It's incredibly selfish that everyone else is attempting to withdraw funds in order to eat, shop or enjoy the company of their friends at the same time as you, but that's human nature. I try to fight against this every day, which is why I say thank you to the bus driver as I tap my Oyster card and am nice to waitresses. Queuing is just part of us. And, for me, it's a time to reflect on the unanswered questions in my life, or else ponder the style choices of the persons queuing in front of me. I'm always in search of regular features to introduce on this blog – perhaps misguidedly I see them as an easy-and-quick way to up my feeble post rate. So *jaded drum roll* I present to you the first ever Cashpoint Couture. Or perhaps Cashpoint-Queue Cool. I don't know. I didn't really think it through that well. Anyway, here's the first entry:

I'm calling this first entry 'Home-knit or hipster?' Not that the two are mutually exclusive, of course, but I hope you see the sociological difference in the generalised stereotyping of these two catergories. To illustrate: many years ago, I went to my company's in-house magazine awards, where one category was jointly won by the employees of Your Horse and The Face. Both teams were rocking tweedily geekish ensembles – one team voguishly, the other innately – to the extent where it was difficult to tell which was which.

In other alliterative, potential-new-regular-post news, I'm also thinking of introducing 'Bus Bling' - a salute to the jewellery of my fellow bus passengers. Here, on the 185 from East Dulwich Station, I saw these rocks.


Hmm. Contender for most waffly post ever, I would say.

Niche magazine publishing's cover of the week

Look at Fred's face! Just look! I don't think I would have the fortitude to look so chipper while being hoisted skywards on a rotting plank secured by some unconvincingly knotted ropes. It is this air of cheery denial that made our country great.

Advertising review

I seem to have gone on a lot about magazines recently, and I'm entirely a creature of habit, so this is an extract from the advertisements at the back of Saturday's Guardian magazine.

Let's temporarily bypass Steve Davis and his jauntily hoisted thumb, and consider the advertiser called 'Ever So Sexy'. Ever So Sexy make underwear and there is a woman in their advert wearing it. She looks Ever So Sexy. 'Ever So Sexy' must be one of the most unsexy ways to modify the adjective sexy in the history of sexy. Still, with their extravagant national advertising campaign, they must be raking it in over their passion-halting rivals Jolly Sexy, Sexy Young Filly and I Am Calling You Sexy But I Am Doing So In A Baby Voice.

Anyway, what of Steve and his 'approval' of the Network Veka windows and conservatories? I will confess to being surprised at the site of his palid yet chipper countenance. When Steve Davis was at his professional zenith in the 80s, he was mocked for his consistency and aura of calm. Boring old Steve 'Interesting' Davis. I always found him very droll, and not at all dull. And here he is, thrillingly outside the repertoire of goods I would expect to find him endorsing, which include snooker tables, snooker balls, snooker cues, waistcoats, perhaps insurance.

Why, then, is Steve Davis so very passionate about windows and conservatories? Well, if one is considering becoming a snooker superpower, one needs a practice room. The average household simply cannot accommodate a full-size table. Most barely have a dining room. It's a little-known fact that the No 1 reason people buy conservatories is so they can recreate the conditions of the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield – perfecting their potting, naturally; training their eyes to withstand the glare of the lights by facing off against some fierce, low afternoon sun through the windows; persuading an elderly relative to cough bronchially at crucial moments of concentration or unwrap a Murray Mint at a freakish pitch, until one's nerves become hardened to an iron shield.

As for the windows, well, one of the random facts I have assimilated though a childhood of watching A Question Of Sport and the inferior Sporting Triangles with my dad, is that Steve Davis is fanatical about a certain strand of weird French music. On the cul-de-sac where all retired sportsmen live, Stuart Pearce could barely hear his punk anthems over the Gallic racket emanating from no 6, Casa Davis or, more informally, Steve's. Until, that is, he discovered the joy of double glazing, and everyone could live together in harmony - Roger Black with his James Taylor CDs, Pat Nevin with his mint-condition Joy Division seven-inches.

You got me and, Arnie, I got you…

Occasionally, I go into a shop and look at their wall of magazines with an open mind - that is, I attempt to detach the feelings of antipathy and cynicism that have barnacled their way onto my brain during more than ten years of working on/for/with them. It is basically me trying to inject a frisson of excitement back into our relationship – walking into a newsagent, pretending we are strangers, just like the first time we met...

Even more occasionally, I might buy one but actually hardly ever because they are for the most part a) expensive and b) no good.

Yesterday I was cruising the magazine aisle – past middle youth, through teen, tween, crafts, puzzles, homes, health, food, music, men's porn-lite, and eventually 'Sports & Leisure'. I know that things are changing in the magazine industry, but I was still shocked by the unorthodox titles they had chosen to position front and centre, as having mass-market, buy-this-and-your-life-will-be-better bloke appeal. None of your brightly coloured, bromance-fostering football rags. Instead…

On reflection, I don't know why I'm surprised. After all, men, this is exactly the kind of look that chicks dig – a map of Britain's B-roads in veiny relief across the body, a skintone I'm calling My Nan's Dining Room Table, and the knowledge that if we (females, women, chicks) attempt to assume any kind of dominant physical position, we will simply slide off, back into submission. 

It's a little known fact that during his bodybuilding career in the late 60s and 70s, Arnold Schwarzeneggar was managed by Sonny Bono. You can see them captured in their glory days here on the cover of Muscle & Fitness, Sonny's moustache turning upwards in rapturous excitement at feeling Arnie's Arms Of Oak. The pair would sing along to I Got You Babe in the car on the way to competitions. Sonny would throw his voice around to render both his own part and Cher's, while Arnold would honk out the 'ba-ba, ba-ba's in a flat, heavily-accented monotone.

Schwing!

One of the pictures below is a detail from a fashion story in the latest issue of British Elle. One is a detail from Wayne's World. Can you guess which is which?

Extreme close-up!