An awesome lack of anything interesting to impart

Ah, dining al desko once again after a week in the highly unlikely Devon sun. I am in trouble with the powers that be for submitting timesheets late, spending more than 15% of my time on unauthorised administrative activities, failing to submit my CPD declaration and still not completing my SMART objectives for the coming year within the 12 box framework. What better reason to knock off for 10 minutes and blog awhile.

After weeks of paper shuffling, it seems that the purchase of the new chimp enclosure in Tooting may be going ahead. The question is – have we managed to get a bargain as house prices shoot up, or are we the last poor fools to close a deal at a ludicrously inflated price seconds before house prices begin to fall?

I think I’m the last person on earth to have heard about the guy skiing down the escalators at Angel, but it’s not a bad way of spending 1minute and 10 seconds of your afternoon.

I was unfortunate enough to go to a sixth birthday party on Saturday afternoon, which is unlike anything I’ve seen for a very very long time. Imagine the ninth circle of hell, and you’re not far off. The combination of a middle-aged fatso dressed as Scooby Doo (and running round clutching an inflatable Spiderman in what can only be described as a suggestive position) and a roomful of pumped-up six year olds was deeply disturbing.

Given the amount of time and effort that the government and educational establishment puts into moulding our future citizens into non-competitive soft-left tree huggers, the event was surprisingly Neanderthal, the key themes being:

• Extremely loud throwaway pop music (including the unutterably awful ‘Fast Food Song’, which has surprisingly survived the post-Turkey Twizzler meltdown), which almost certainly fell within the definition of “excessive noise” under which an ASBO can be issued
• Massively competitive dancing contests (the resulting jubilant winners and despondent losers running directly counter to the Department for Education and Skills’ requirement for “fairness and social justice.”
• The contests also involved the cynical rigging of prize giving, wherein the juvenile judge of each contest gave the prize to their best friend, then shared the spoils, something the Competition Commission would be interested in.
• Consumption of large quantities of unnaturally coloured sweets, something the Food Standards Agency would be particularly unhappy about – I particularly love the advice given to “avoid Shark, swordfish and marlin” – an everyday component of many British inner city toddlers’ diets
• Lots and lots of shouting (see ASBO, above)

So once the combined might of bureaucrats belonging to the local magistrates, DfES, CC and FSA had shut the party down, what might a government-mandated alternative look like? My guess would be a Mozart piano recital presided over by a Community Support Officer, in which carrot batons and houmous are distributed equally (and above all quietly) between all of the subdued invitees. Thank heavens for political incorrectness.

Whilst the junior chimps were unsuccessfully pursuing a cockerel through the Devon farmyard last week, I took the opportunity to flick through the FT (not my own copy you understand, we were on hols with a proper businessman, not a parasitical hired-help such as myself), and found an article about business bloggers.

Today’s paradigm shifting question is: do I “write discreetly and bore readers witless”, or do I “reveal secrets and get fired”? Neither I hope, but you’re the judge of that (other than the firing bit, unless my boss is reading this).

Could anything on these endless dull pages aspire to be called “a rare flash of talent in the over-hyped and overcrowded field of blogging”? or is it truer to say that I have “an awesome lack of anything interesting to impart”?

Who cares. Enjoy the rest of your day.