Well… well… ill

28Feb12

Erk! The downside of freelancing has to be the increased exposure to bugs. In Dublin I lived on my own and walked to work, a pretty, 20-minute stroll along the canal. When I moved to London I started travelling regularly by tube, train and bus. God, I’d never been so ill so often in all my life. Coughs, colds, chesties, weird glandy things, things that made me shiver and throw up… blimey, it was a lifetime of lurgies telescoped into about 18 months. I’m tougher now.

Last week I was in Posh Technology magazine, and one afternoon we were all sitting busily getting on with the stuff we’re paid to do. Naturally, that couldn’t be allowed to continue, so I addressed the managing ed beside me who was hunched and staring into middle distance over some invoices. Ho, ho, I said, Want me to call out some random numbers? Ho, ho.

He turned his ravaged face to me and I’m sorry to say that I recoiled in shock. The colour of dirty washing-up water, he was. Wild-eyed and sweating, with the kind of look that stills chatter. ‘I feel really, really weird,’ he whispered, and lurched off to the open window. Norovirus, apparently. It had been working its way around the office for the previous week. Nippy little fucker, I’ll give it that. Poor old ManEd went from ‘fine’ to ‘going home’ within 30 minutes.

Having surreptitiously sneaked out to wash my hands (Scrub them! Flay the skin off them!) I waited gloomily for the onslaught. But onslaught came there none. Dunno why, but I thank God for it. Still, yesterday I might have truffled out a likely replacement contamination source: the ATMs on Albemarle Street. Beyond disgusting – and I’m not esp fastidious. Blackened gunk clotted across the keys, similar clagged around the card slot and who can say what unspeakable schmears across the screen. And the whole area shrouded in a cloud of piss fumes so thick you nearly had to chew on the in-breath. Swab’n’sniff…

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Tags: Albemarle Street, ATM, cashpoint, infection, Norovirus, office infection, sick bug

Grave concerns

21Feb12

Last Friday night to Gravesend for a mate’s family birthday party. Nice place, Gravesend, though eerily deserted as I walked through the town, only my footfalls for company etc. It’s really pretty – from what I could see in the darkling streets – but it was very strange. Where is everyone? I thought. Has a horribly virulent virus escaped from a ghost ship moored on the river, causing the burghers of Gravesend to fall off their perches in one mysterious fell swoop?

Ooh, it’s like at the pitchers. First some fisher-folk start looking peaky, then the mayor assures a town meeting there’s nothing to worry about, then the mayor goes a funny colour and keels over. Cut to me, sitting on the almost-empty train, humming, fluffing up hair, applying lipstick, texting the-friend-who-will-never-reply-because-she’s-succumbed-to-the-plague etc. DON’T GET OFF THE TRAIN, MISSY! THIS BE THE TOWN OF THE DAMNED! Etc.

Either that or everyone’s in McDonald’s Gravesend of a Friday.

The party was great – no plague, plenty of guests, hearty buffet, and a man named Chris who was on DJ duties and said things like ‘Something for everyone here tonight, ladies and gents’. Brilliant. And he was as good as his word, which meant that everyone got to shake their jangles at some point. I say shake their jangles when I mean, in my case, windmilling like a loon at varying speeds to the xfm playlist (all that practice in the kitchen, tchah, paid off). I might have had a liddle drinkie by that stage.

You know that annoying motto about dance like no one’s looking? I did and then realised that Mel’s bro was filming on his phone.

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Tags: disaster movie plot, Gravesend, party

Hearty greetings

14Feb12

This week in a magazine staffed by young women of such beauty that unsurprisingly the workday was punctuated by harried-looking deliverymen hefting boxes and bouquets all over the building. I made the mistake of going to M&S on Oxford Street at lunchtime. The food hall is always busy but today it was completely packed with wild-eyed men scooping up Prosecco and horrid little bunches of red roses and baby’s breath. Sorry, that should read ‘lovely bunches’, but only if you’re visiting from 1981.

I took a break this year from making mixtapes and tying ribbons round swans’ necks (I’ve never actually tried it myself, but if you’re ever tempted, give each swan a good poke with a stick first – makes ‘em stretch out their necks something lovely). Instead I hurried home to work on a freelance project: banking in Latin America. I’m only on page 76, but fingers crossed I’ll soon find out how vehicle-financing credit agreements in Costa Rica stack up against the uptake of prepaid credit cards in Venezuela.

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Whittled away

12Feb12

Apologia for the silencio. I wish I had a good reason, beyond feeling that I just didn’t have anything interesting to say. This is not usually motive enough to keep silence – in fact sometimes I just start blethering in the hopes that something will come along, and usually it does. But not this week. Not today.

The only thing to say is blimey, Whitney Houston, eh? At least ITV2 will have a reason on which to hang its hitherto un-reasonable insistence on showing The sodding Bodyguard every five days. It’s on right now. Enjoy. It’s the sister! She’s dead jealous of Whitneypopstar’s success! And Gary Kemp’s a nasty man. And Kevin Costner’s got a veh sharp samurai sword with which he ruins a perfectly nice silk scarf in a really puzzling, out-of-character, bondage-lite, wtf-is-going-on-now? scene. And they don’t get it on, not really, but Shee-hee-eee/ Will awwwlwaays lu-huv hiiiim… The end.

Now turn over to ITV2+1 and watch most of it all over again.

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Troppo bizarro per io

03Feb12

I’ve been asked to translate a feature from Italian to English.

I don’t speak Italian and I don’t know anything about waste management, the topic under discussion. I am, in short, a leftfield sort of candidate for the job. Anyway, the nettle is there to be grasped.

Step one: take your 2,000 words (2,000 words? You’re not serious!), slice it into gobbets and pass it through translation.babylon.com.

Carefully cut and paste the resulting flotsam into a Word document, piece by piece.

Take a moment to review your suitability for the task.

Amid snorts of laughter, notify the relevant authorities that the feature may be smack in the middle of the flamboyant/incomprehensible Venn diagram.

Cross-ref the really outstandingly bizarre passages with Google Translate.

Allow for a certain Italian tendency towards linguistica floribundia (what other captain accused of abandoning his ship would declare ‘My conscience cries loudest of all’ when visited in choky?)

Read with dismay, at half four after a day of it, the following passage: ‘In the end, everything that does not exceed the controls ends on drains that will revolutionise outside, the waterfalls of shards views before; but it does not end in a landfill. Together with dust sucked up by hoods, the difference is not moved in a manufactured them to side with the mechanical shovels, that here are guided mostly by women (“This our particularities”, smiles Meliga, “and we were also mentioned by a magazine of caterpillar”).’

Conclusion: it’s possible to find something very funny, yet still end up with a tension headache strong enough to burst your eyeballs.

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Tags: Google Translate, Italian translation