The virus, the toilet bowl and the bottle of whisky

I was off work ill on Monday this week. In fact I've generally been ill to varying degrees most of the rest of the week as well, but Monday was the real killer in terms of being unable to function.

Without wishing to boast, being ill isn't something that generally happens that often to me anymore. It wasn't always the case though - as a child I was pretty sickly really, and especially vulnerable to man's worst friend; the common cold (I think I averaged about one a month or something like that).

But over the past 5 years I can genuinely say I can count the number of times I've had to lie in bed ill on one hand. So to wake up on Friday night feeling a distinct need to plunge my head down the toilet bowl for a few minutes was pretty disconcerting. To then wake up on Monday morning feeling as though two rookie sumo wrestlers had held a training session on top of my stomach was equally distressing.

As people who know me well will testify, my general answer to even a hint of illness (particularly of the aforementioned 'cold' variety) is to 'get the whisky in' - truly it's brilliant for a sore throat no matter the hour.

Hence my very real problem with this particular bout of illness - alcohol was completely off the menu as a solution. In fact tonight's the first time I've had a drink for a week (I know, miracles and all that) and it does taste rather good I have to admit.

I'm still not completely right to be honest, and the general feeling is that I've had some sort of foody bug - the general feeling about the culprit is similarly unanimous, namely the unwise choice of kebab vendor at about 11:45 last Friday evening.

Given all this, I can offer roughly three lessons from the last week, at least one of which I hope might prove useful:

1. Having only one bona fide solution to the 'getting ill' problem isn't very smart. When whisky was ruled out of the equation, life became very tricky indeed.

2. Everyone should make an immediate policy of measuring the distance (and time needed) from their bedroom to the bathroom as this information may become critical to the cleanliness of your flat/house if ever you make a similar error in kebab cuisine that I did.

3. Generally speaking, illness is temporary, good health permanent (at least for 70 years or so). And for that, we really should all be thankful each and every day.

Money Men

I don't have the figures to prove it, but I'd hazard a guess that more has been written over the past two years about bankers, bonuses and CDOs than God, David Beckham and Cheryl Cole combined (not that I'm suggesting in any way that the latter three are related!).

Some of what's been written has attempted to defend, justify or at least rationalise the City - the continual efforts of the Daily Telegraph's Damien Reece for one, and the more subtle defences employed by the FT for another. Most of what's been written has been on the opposite end of the scale though - the Mirror and its tabloid colleagues having had the most fun in taking aim at the big red target painted on the Square Mile.

The trouble with much of the negative stuff though has been that it's latched onto an argument that doesn't always have raional, sustainable legs - the fact is, the City makes a hell of money for the Treasury, and therefore the country. Yes they're grossly overpaid and that looks particularly bad at the moment, but up until a couple of years ago, there were very few voices calling for bankers heads - in fact, bonus season was always reported with a degree of mystique by the papers.

As I said though, much of what has been written on the negative side comes across as whining and moaning, rather than a constructive, rational argument - it's too easy to go for the over-the-top, Daily Mail-style reaction, but the majority of reporting has headed in that direction anyway.

That's why it was a pleasant suprise to read this article by Chris Blackhurst, the Evening Standard's City Editor, in yesterday's edition.

For me, he hit the real nail right on the head - it isn't the size of the bonus, it isn't the attitude of some in the City towards risk and wealth, and it isn't even the Government's failure to tackle it. What it is, is the simple fact that many in the City have lost perspective on normal society outside of their bubble.

As Blackhurst put it, "The banker's face was a picture to behold — one of astonishing blankness" when asked why bankers were paid bonuses for doing their normal, standard, everyday job as described on their contracts. This was swiftly followed up with "When I told my companion I couldn't recall ever having received a bonus as a journalist he looked baffled".

That for me should be the real crux of the argument about what needs to change - the City can be, and should be a good thing for the UK, but by operating in its own little world it has utterly forgotten the rules of the game in normal society.

Figures of eight

I spent Wednesday evening in the company of three twenty-something ladies discussing one of the subjects most feared (and most avoided) by men - the menstrual cycle. (Any men reading this, be brave and keep going - it's hopefully worth it!)

More specifically, I spent the evening hearing about how a simple lack of painkillers led to what I can only imagine was an intensely painful couple of hours in a Costa Coffee.

One of the beautiful, but ultimately frustrating things about humanity is that having two sexes means you can never compare certain things. This is one example of it - I'll never know what it feels like to have that sort of pain, and similarly, women will never know the exact, sick, sort-of hollow feeling that men experience when they get one in the 'gentlemen's area'.

In a similar way, the majority of women will never know what it feels like during those agonising 5 minutes where you're waiting at the altar praying she hasn't come to her senses and done a runner - and men will never know the stress of being a bride before and on your wedding day.

Nevertheless, in an attempt to help me understand her pain, I was informed that it would feel like someone grabbed 'down there', twisted it into a figure of eight, and then kept on twisting - in a simple word, ouch!

I did learn a few useful things through all this though:

1. Despite my reservations, champagne bars are actually quite nice, relaxed places to enjoy a drink - provided they're not in the Square Mile or Canary Wharf.

2. Shaftesbury Avenue is absolutely the worst place to have some sort of medical ailment - because there isn't usually an English speaking person in sight amongst the sea of tourists.

3. I never, ever, ever want to attempt to recreate the feeling of pain that was described to me, and especially not if it involves figures of eight of any kind.

4. Women have been, remain, and forever will be, the ultimate resource and learning hub for all male-kind - Wikipedia just can't compete on vital knowledge which can help men navigate the tricky, knife-edge world that is womenhood.

Other Blogs

I've got a confession to make. With the exception of writing my own, I don't really read all that many blogs by other people - in fact the only ones I really read are this excellent one by a friend, my brother's hilarious but all too infrequent effort, and Tim Danaher's fantastic insight into the world of retail.

This is pretty shocking really, especially given that online and social media are supposed to be an ever increasing part of my job description. It's not that I don't enjoy reading them, because I genuinely do and indeed regularly return to the ones I do read to see what's been written next. It's more that I find them a) quite hard to find in the first place and b) quite difficult to remember what they were called if I don't read them regularly.

Apparently, Blogger has a system for monitoring certain blogs that you wish to read, and it shows you recent posts by these authors. I've just signed up to this, and hopefully it'll make a certifiable difference to my consumption. But there must be a better way to remind me to read them than this - I'm exceptionally stubborn and stuck in my ways, which means if there is a social networking-type thingy that will alert me to them, I haven't found it yet.

It also doesn't solve the problem of how you find them either - outside of the ones written by politicians and the media, they're mostly hidden in some dark corner of cyberspace lieing dormant and desperate for someone to discover them and spread the good word.

For now then, it'll pretty much remain the neanderthal way of using one's memory to remember to read them and hoping that I stumble across a couple more by chance whilst surfing the net (which is a phrase that I haven't heard anyone in about 2 years incidentally).

Then again, given I only follow three of the blighters, maybe that won't be so difficult to remember after all.

Leaving

I wrote a few months back about how two exceptionally talented people & good friends of mine had left H&K to further their careers. Well tonight it happened again & this time it was someone even closer to me. 

Employment is a funny thing really. Statistically speaking you spend more time with people at work than anyone else. And you're also constantly talking the same language as them as you navigate the professional world together. 

But at the same time, work, just like any other activity, has a habit of throwing up wonderful friendships. And so it has been for the last two years for me in my current job. Today, I lose a very very special one of those to go with several other good work friendships that I've lost in the last year. 

That's life really, but it never gets any easier sadly. 

Christmas Telly

I'm not old enough to have watched the Morecambe & Wise Christmas shows of the 70's, but they always seem to have been set as something of a high-water or benchmark for Christmas TV ever since. That was back in the days when drawing 20m viewers around the little black box in the living room was expected for such things, unlike today when reaching double figures is a celebrated rarity.

For me, The Office Christmas Specials have had the same effect on subsequent years of Christmas telly - nothing before or since has ever come close to replicating the drama, comedy, tension or quite brilliant ending that those 2 hours of TV put together back in 2003. I watched the whole series, including the specials again last month, and even now it still blows me away.

The only thing I wish now is that there was some way you could erase your memory each time after you'd seen it, just so you could enjoy the shock and sheer joy when everything suddenly, finally goes right for Brent, Tim and Dawn after 13 and a half episodes of their lives being utterly miserable.

This year's Christmas telly wasn't vintage to be honest - a hell of a lot of repeats and far too many crap films for my liking. However it did witness the end of Gavin & Stacey, and also the current incarnation of Doctor Who, both of which have been fantastic to watch over the past three years. With one of these, everyone knew what would happen, with the other most people had a feeling what should happen, but there was still uncertainty. In both cases, I didn't have a clue how the writers were going to get there, but was definitely excited to find out.

In the end, Gavin & Stacey finished exactly the right way - Smithey and Nessa were never going to get married, but then neither were Nessa and Dave Coaches. What you got instead was a very accurate interpretation of the modern family unit - far from perfect, far from traditional, but still very loving. Keeping the final scene down to just the four central characters was a very smart move too, avoiding the temptation to include the whole ensemble, and Uncle Bryn in particular.

Doctor Who on the other hand was heartbreaking I thought. I'd spent most of the time between the first part on Christmas Day and the second on New Year's Day trying to figure out just who was going to kill David Tennant off, and when the 'four knocks' were going to happen.

When it finally did occur, with four quiet taps on an innocent looking piece of glass, it was simply a brilliant, cruel, bitterly believable piece of writing. Not to mention a fabulous piece of acting by the two men involved.

So maybe not a vintage Christmas in front of the box, but between them, those two programmes pretty much rescued it. Rescued it yes, but surpassed Gervais and Merchant in 2003? Not in my opinion no. That really is going to take something a little bit special