You know the occupational hazard that most readers face at some point? You get the idea you can do it. No, really you can. After all, some fairy dust must have spilled off the pages. You know about plots and characters and story arcs. And your business letters always get a reaction. So you have a go.

This is a very early "go" of mine.

First jobs are like first kisses, moments that are crystallised forever. I read that once in a lifestyle magazine in a dentist’s waiting room and it has never left me; the notion that a job is as memorable as a kiss. Should n’t it depend though on who, or even how you’re kissing? Look at it like this: a kiss could be the innocent excitement of lips brushing timidly for the first time, or it could be the roiling and flailing of tongues. Then there is the sink of incisors deep into the jugular, which is a kiss too in some eyes. That’s the one I got from my first job. It reared behind me, I stumbled and it pounced. That image always came to me in the moments of my truest despair, still does even now when the blue mist swirls around.

I had blown down from the North, as soft and guileless as a rosebud, into the big City, burning with the belief that I wanted to write and that I would, whatever the conditions. The harder the circumstances then surely the better for a wannabe author like me. My letters were always entertaining and amusing, everyone said that, and I had been conducting a ribald, energetic correspondence with an American for several years. Thus in my estimation, the groundwork was already there; foundations, robust and solid. All I needed was time….and money. Grub Street is not Easy street; it costs, however frugal you may think yourself.

In the early years of the eighties before it went all go-go and even bricklayers decided it was not worthwhile to get out of bed for less than a grand, jobs were difficult to get. So I felt elated and I suppose oddly proud to get past all the hurdles and race past everyone else to land a position as a management trainee. It sounded glorious, certainly to a prestige hungry young man like me. In the wider scheme of things, however, being a fast-track management trainee with a minor fast food chain did not score highly then, nor, I imagine does it now. A job, though is a job. And would it matter anyway, since I was other directed, wanting to write, and did n’t every writer at some point in his or her life scrape bottom for a time. Paying your dues, that’s how I looked at it.
Wearing the blue trousers that I had been told to buy as part of my uniform, I walked through the side door of the head office restaurant to start four weeks in fast food boot camp. I was not alone; there were three others who had survived the culling process that passed as an interview. At the time it felt curiously heartening to know that only so few of us had made it this far. Did I need any clearer sign than we were the best of the best? Of course it only occurred years later to me that there was absolutely nothing even vaguely commendable whatsoever about this. The Will to Power would never be sublimated through a bacon cheeseburger?

The four weeks were intended to fit the four of us out to be competent and effective aspirant restaurant managers. To get us there, we went through the grinder. Up at the crack of dawn and back home with the night owls, day after day. Each day guided by a tutor, who felt himself to be indebted to the Marine school of instruction, we explored a different aspect of burger restaurant fundamentals. Some days we would be stuck in restaurant basement slicing onions or feeding thirty pound bags of steak mince into machines that would spit out four ounce hamburger patties. Other days were "theory days" when we would all pore over the aesthetics of the perfectly dressed hamburger: mayonnaise on the on the bottom of the bun to seal it, followed by ketchup, tomatoes, onion rings and a fine lettuce leaf to hold it all down. Or chew pencils in rapt contemplation over the notion of the Ideal Fry; should we always strive towards it? For all purpose use or just special occasions? Did it even exist?

All of this in preparation for the moment when we would be summoned upstairs to receive the thumbs up or down on our prowess as fast food restaurant managers. You had to be very bad, very, very bad, to get the latter hand signal. No one failed. The company could not allow it. Fast food eats people. Anyone who falls through the front door and can stay upright for eight hours is fodder for this machine. But, of course, we did not know this, and so the days before selection saw us reduced to teeth-grinding wrecks, more so than the physical demands of the job could ever drive us to. Each of us believed that no resits were possible if we did not pass muster. The goal, the Holy Grail in fact, for each one of us was to be sent to a central London restaurant. The West End, just the sound of it alone was intoxicating, was where we all wanted to be. The West End hummed, it buzzed, it sang. The focus too, for London’s stranger, odder, weirder inhabitants. It was also where the longest, hardest hours were put in. Still, if there is one way to find things out, then for so many of us it might as well be the hard way.

I was a writer. That was the delusion that I dined on daily and fed others whenever they asked what I was hoping from life. So I approached my job in the manner that I expected every other writer would, trying to become the all Seeing Eye. Everything and anything would be grist to my writing mill. A good and noble intention, which stayed in place for all of a month before I bowed and then broke, shattered by long hours. I did try, though, at least for a time to keep a diary going. It reads like something written by one of those fictitious Soviet worker heroes, boastful and indomitable, before rapidly sliding into the tone of the diary of the damned. I can excuse my blushing these days, after all I was only a kid, but did I really write: "I have anger in my soul. Something like Ahab’s fury. Only I have replaced anger with the will to succeed" Did someone hit me over the head with the grill spatula before I wrote that? They have to have done, if I was able to write this titbit: "I have fire and brimstone in my blood. I want to do well. I’m proud of my grillwork." Dear God, a child

I don't the know fine detail about Chaos theory,. but I do know this: when you tug hard at one thing, you soon find it's connected to another, and another, and another...

A good chunk of my working day - and it can be all of it on occasions - is spent on conference calls. Sometimes I lead them, other times, I just chip in comments here and there, but usually, I simply listen. And if I said I did that with even with half an ear, I'd be way off the mark, because I don't. A conference call is a distributed, scattered way of working, usually done in isolation, no one around, and if there is, inevitably it's not someone you're working with, meaning no peer pressure to look "engaged". Face to face meetings demand you look at least awake. That's one thing. Then, since there's so many, they've become routine. The calendar's full of them. So, like brushing teeth, you do them without thinking. Mind numbing in a way. You're there, but you're not there.

Nature, always, abhors a vacuum. Something has to fill that attention gap during those third state conference calls - when all I'm doing is listening...inactively. I don't doodle. No, I while away the time thinking up imaginary business games. Like, Jumping to Conclusions for instance, or how about Kneejerking, or my personal favourite, The Crawl. I'm trying to come up with enough events for a decathlon. But I'm not including Back-stabbing, that's more Ancient Rome and the Gladiators.

From time to time, I might turn my hand to dreaming up new management jargon. I am convinced that anyone who uses business jargon really has no idea what it means, yet feels compelled to use whatever it is they've picked up at any opportunity. For some people, it's like the arms race, you've simply got to have more jargon to hand than the next person. I can do my job, I can't understand the jargon we use, though. I've given up. But not wanting to feel left behind, I've come up with my own - Keyhole Thinking is one, High Concept Thinking, the other. Don't ask me what's behind either because I've no idea. Who knows, however, there could be the One Minute Manager's guide to Keyhole Thinking eventually.

See what happens when the bulk of your working day is listening to disembodied voices hour after hour.

Football, I'm ok with it. I've watched some of the World Cup. Bit of this game, bit of that, some highlights. That's about it. Enough to keep a conversation going if someone buttonholes me.

Everyone tells me I should take more risks. Be on the edge more. Push some boundaries. So I did. I watched the England game. Never again. This is not managed risk, this is a health risk. How high can blood pressure go before irreversible damage?

I think I'd feel more at ease swimming with sharks.


.

Everything is a case of pros and cons, always got to be some give and take. For instance, I love the part of London where I live - it's bohemian, cosmopolitan, sleek and smooth in places, rafffish and edgy in others. Fundamentally, I look at it as culturally motivating. That's the side of the stone that faces the sun; if I flip it over, then I have to look at exactly where I live. My flat.

Small? Depends, really. For a Hobbit, ideal. A Middle Earth masterpiece. For a human, more challenging. It's trying to find furniture and appliances to fit the spaces I've got that's the problem.

Everything I've got is a couple centimetres less in some dimension than the standard factory product. For instance, the average cooker size is, say 80 centrimetres wide; mine is 79 centrimetres, since that's all the space I've got.

Try finding a cooker that size, or for that matter, a sofa, which is what I'm searching for right now. It's got to be a certain size, and no more. Naturally that certain size is less than industry standard.

After a while, sitting on the floor does n't mean anything any more; it's the norm. I don't want to get habituated to this, though. Sitting on the office floor, trying to master mind a conference call, is n't a career progressor.

I've never yearned for kids. It's not because I'm an only child; after all, innumerable only children have troops of kids. I don't know why. The longing has never been there. Perhaps I'm simply missing the parenting gene. Looks like the father marker got left out of the design specs in my case.

But that does n't mean I lack sympathy for anyone who is a parent. Those of my friends who are parents, whether it's in the first flush of parenting, or with those approaching the Scylla and Charybdis of kids in adolescence, they all get my utter admiration, my total respect. Watching their children change and grow over time, I see a concomitant transformation in them too. In the beginning it's abrupt, overnight, where they shed ego completely, with no thought of themselves any longer. It's a beautiful selflessness. Perfect. Whereas before birth, they might well have been utterly self-absorbed and led by ego, now it's resposnsibility and care, great care.

There are many who want to be in the same position, who themselves ache to be mothers or fathers, who want to take on the same burden of joy. When is it going to happen, and will it ever for some. Only a heart of stone could n't be moved. No ache can be shared, they can be discussed certainly, but one where it's an instinct that seems beyond fulfillment, must be almost unendurable. Explain how that must feel. I can't. There's no vocabulary to catch it.

This is an effect with, to me at least, a lot of causes. Three broad groupings though. Women let down by men. Simple. We've promised, never delivered. Second, biology, male and female. Finally, pernicious scare mongering, by the press mainly, on the lines of, as soon as a woman gets to X years, her fertility has dropped by Y %; or that it is not just damaging, but actually outrageous, for a woman to want motherhood and a career. That's such an intimidating assertion. It's completely unfair. It's monolithic belief.

Things are always more complex than the press want us to know. Bear in mind this, in complexity, there's actually hope. Take inspiration from this article by Annalisa Barbieri in today's Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1804814,00.html

I like chocolate and it likes me. We were made for each other. We talk. All day, every day. All that temptress has to do is lie back on the newspaper shop shelves, give me that beseeching look, and start to whisper: "Buy me, go on you know you want to. You've had a tough day".

Whether it's good day or a bad day, we flirt: they implore, flashing and pouting their wrappers at me; I demur, play hard to get. Nevertheless, it's an age old story with the inevitable conclusion. I give in. Always. They win.

But, it's always a casual relationship. Never lasts that long. I buy it. I unwrap it. I eat it. And If I can do that after I've left the shop, then it's considered long term. We never make it home together.

The only commited relationship I've had to date is with organic chocolate. I think it's the price.

Somewhere, someplace, someone is running a a project: that will run to schedule; that will hit every milestone; where everything will slot firmly and effortlessly into place; and, of course, it'll be one where people go to bed at sensible hours, where these good folks never think of working weekends. I yearn to be part of one of these dream teams. C'mon somebody, pick me, pick me! Please!

By the way, can it be one of those projects where there are more people doing things than actually supervising this time? It's de rigeur to have one guy digging the hole and umpteen others all telling him what to do.

I know from long, hard, uphill experience, that there's only two ways a project can go: bad, or very bad. "Yours was bad? but that's great! Mine was very bad. So bad, in fact, that not even the open air sacrifice of a goat could save it. Wish mine had been bad. God, you're so lucky"

When it comes to projects, stick the gant charts as deep as you can in the shedder, stick the MS project disc on a piece of string and use it as a biurd scarer in the garden. Better still, just chuck it away. There's only two types of projects anyone in business needs to know about: Stable Door and Tourette's.

Stable Door - project has gone live before it should have...long before. Nothing's in place. And it's not working to plan....even remotely. There's soul-searching, there's shouting, there's the sound of heads hitting keyboards, then out of the fog, a phrase appears, it's the one to freeze all hearts - "We need a quick fix". No, please, shoot me.

Quick fixes are the WMDs of all projects: they do not exist. No they don't, in spite of the enormous amounts of energy and industry spent looking. They don't exist. They never have, they never will. I have more faith in being present at a UFO landing in Hyde Park, than of a quick fix fixing, and not tying the, already difficult to unpick, knot even tighter

Tourette's - you know in advance the project is going down the pan "It's beyond the clifff edge. We're in mid-air with this one". A Tourette's project is a fervent belief that only a prolonged stream of consciousness rants can save it. Nothing else can. So season the now comatose project with imprecations, flash fry with copious amounts of swear words, add a strong splash of whine, finally serve with sour grapes and misery guts. Blame everyone else, of course.

God, I know all about spam. My e-mail address must be on every spammers list. I'm swamped every day. And what's so frightening is that they are just so clairvoyant: how do they know that I have poor credit that only they can repair; that my current mortgage rate really is too high; that I'm crying out for non prescription medication to put an end to all my sexual problems. And those very nice Nigerians, who keep begging me to keep hold of zillions in my account just for a few weeks.

By the way, if you thought spam was bad, wait till you start getting spim. Its spam for mobiles. Never going to end.

Sometimes there's a book, that at the very the moment you finish it, you know exactly what you have to do, it's simple: put the sandwich board on and walk around town, imploring people to get their paws on that book, pretty damn quickly.

I had one of those "moments" recently after finishing "Christopher" by Allison Burnett. I'll let my words below do the work.

Today's fiction offers such a lean diet; there's nothing naughty, indulgent or rich. It's not toothsome. Not here, this novel is a banquet, full of flavour, which is what I liked so much. I am done with angsty, whiny, eviscerated characters, who limp from page to page of just about every other novel that drops of the presses these days. BK could almost be an endangered species: eccentric, wilful, disingenuous, corrupting, and so mischievious. He is the Queen Mother of the Eastside; plotting harder than a poor man's Macchiaveli, eyes twinkling like Captain Hook, heady with the vapours of a Schoolgirl's crush and a heart pumping with the gusto of a barrel organ.

The two main characters, BK and the eponymous Christopher are "outcasts from life's feast", which is what I felt made them so memorable. They don't know that much about life: BK wafts a smug charm or so he thinks that never, ever, entrances anyone, whilst Christopher is as equally deluded in his idealism. Neither stays that way, though. Each changes as the year changes with them. I thought the move from ignorance to enlightenment was quite skilfully done. As the year progresses,a few more scales drop off and a little more self realsiation shines in on them. Especially so in the case of Christopher where he is observed through BK's rose coloured and cracked specatcles. There are some great comic ironies in there

Christopher is a wonderful, beautifully written, comedy of manners; and just like all great ones provides a little extra in top notch characters, cracking dialogue and enviable imagery. BK Troop is a stand-out character.

http://www.allisonburnett.com/

Can football save the World? No, really I'm serious. Think about it. In what other international forum could you get people from just about every faith, and certainly every continent, most political stripes, to completely focus their minds and energies on the vagaries of a ball bouncing across a field chased by twenty two men, at the same time shutting out every other distraction?

Thought so. None

I can't think of a better opportunity for men and women to bond or at least get to understand their peers from other countries than around something as issue free as football. It's social engagement on a massive scale. Thank God, too, that football is increasingly gender neutral.

Ok, so there'll be controversies, but are they going to result in long term doctrinal schisms that'll persist over the centuries? Maybe it's different if you're English, where 1966 is still the great unhealed wound.

Class free (more or less); appeals to all ages, races, creeds and colours; once endemic gender bias fast fading away. No religion comes to mind that's got all of those ready to hand. Should FIFA replace the United Nation?

I think it's fair to say that every City has a soul. Something that catches and embodies the aspirations of the populace, their dreams, their shared myths and tales. It's how they want to be seen in some cases. And very clearly expressed in particular instances. It would take a heart of stone not to borne along in the ceaseless roar of brashness and sheer, eye-popping excitement that translates into New York City. Oh, the Big Apple is forbidden fruit, alright, but does n't that always taste better?

Some are more elusive and take time to nose out. Fugitive senses almost, darting out for a moment, then back into the once more into the shadows. These are the Istanbuls of this World; complicated, transitional, uncertain states of mind. Ghostly. Things are never exactly what they seem. Always a shade out. It's these places where the soul detective has to work long and hard; first to find the thread back that will take them back to the heart of this tantalising labyrinth.

Others seem beset by magic. Whose names alone suggest alchemy, enchantment, otherness, even before the inhabitants present themselves in their glorious motley. Bombay, Delhi, Tangiers. Sensuous and subtle. Milk and honey falling off the tongue. Conjuring spells, confusing all our senses. Is up, really up, or is actually down? To turn right, should I turn left? As they charm, though, they equally madden. Why are people doing that? Why won't they do this instead? If there's that pairing, then there's always this: beauty and rank squalor. A combination so vividly brought to life by Mother India.

One city might insinuate itself, slowly, irresistably, into your bloodstream; another will storm the barricades, it's shock troops assembled out of it's passionate, generous citizenry overwhelming all resistance. Let's think of Havanna: coffee-hued, from cafe noir to a delicate cafe creme. Sizzling, bold, open-hearted. Truly voluptuous. The city where just everyone walks to an inner beat, impossible to properly grasp for the outsider, but impossible not to want to try. How easy it is to be swept into their world of sensuality, Santeria, saints and sinners. It's a Spider's web.

Even the raindrops are larger than life here: fat, luxurious drops borne thousands of miles, hammering on roofs, pounding on doors, bursting like over ripe fruits. Bright green lizards shoot up walls, colour saturated butterflies waft elegantly on mysterious breezes. Cats and dogs idle along overheated streets, chiding and fussing, alone, in pairs or groups. Almost human. In fact, it would n't be so much outside the bounds of reason, if one did n't sidle alongside, offer a manicured paw and start to chat.

Another city might carry the spirit of decadance. Think of Nice. The Playground of the South of France. Rogue-ish and flattering. A sense of knowingness. You might think you can shock, but, really, we've seen it all before. As Nice pulverises, Monaco, it's neighbour, exudes utter contentment. A steady heartbeat of affluence, throbbing through this sliver of a country. In design, surely as in intention, perfectly proportioned, indulged to the right degree. It could be the inner sanctum of a fabulously wealthy Merchant Bank (could be? It is).

If you're British, then the national symbol might as well be an umberella. We're driven by the weather. But not the only people. Think of Buenos Aires. Heat-drenched during the summer. Sun soaking into buildings, into the pavements and certainly into it's inhabitants. Life simply has to be lived outside, the weather does not permit anything else. A life lived outside does n't mean an unquestioned life. Perhaps it's the consequence of living life in the blaze of the sun, where everyone lives cheek by jowl out of necessity, that actually makes people so clearly aware of each other, and in the example of this swaggering, life lived at full intensity, drum-banging city, to ask the deep, probing questions, of just how do they get along. No city has more psychologists than Buenos Aires (not even New York). Few cities have as many cosmetic surgeons either. That's it: nip, tuck, and tango.

If Buenos Aires can be compared to a matador dropping on one knee with carefree arrogance with careless respect for whatever he's facing, and always ready to bounceback. Montevideo, it's neighbour on the opposite bank of the River Plate, is the matador on hard times, bruised, a little unsteady on his feet, and perhaps happier to live on memories. Or is that just healthy realism?

Is that in itself the true essence of the soul of a city: realism dosed with a little romance. After all, don't we all need that in life?

Everyone, hie thee to the floatation chamber! I mean it. I feel like I've had my spine painlessly excised since this lunchtimes session. Sleep like a blessed baby tonight. It either improves my life, or I'll salt better than a herring. One of the two is going to happen.

Maybe this all owes it's existence to the day I spent listening to a Bhagwan in an industrial estate in the Valley , but I've taken several steps since on the holistic, spiritual life. Yoga every week. An hour a month in a floatation tank, that's all it takes. Very gentle, calming. Absolutely no sense of claustrophobia, or any terrors for that matter. I had been warned I'd probably end up psychotic or zombified. Just a strong aroma of epsom salts wherever I go for a few days after. Nothing more troubling.

Hey, I'm a parent...well, kind of. Depends of course on how you view cat-sitting, which is what I'm doing right now. Looking after two cats: boy and girl. The boy, by the way, is perched slap next to the keyboard. I'm wanting to rattle away on the keyboard like a concert pianist at full stretch - he, on the other hand, just wants to stretch straight across the keyboard. Wonder how Proust would have handled this? Another madeline perhaps? Henry James? Now he'd made ten pages of dense, turgid prose out of this and thrown in an insight into Old World / New World relations. Shakespeare would have a long deliberate ponder, then set about writing some haunting couplet. Or what about Hemingway ....let's not go there. Big Game huner, Bullfight lover, can't say he was one of wildlife's greatest friends. Somehow, I don't see him voted on the board of the RSPCA.

They're good companions. I've no cat-sitting gene in me, like I've no parenting gene either. So I was apprehensive when I took this gig on originally. Now, I'm a vet, been doing it for two years or more. Got to admit, I do like it when they sidle up to me, makes me feel like Mowgli out of the Jungle Book. Yep, I can talk to the animals. Sensible conversations, mind you. I'm an intelligent guy. I read the Guardian. No one dumbs down while I'm in charge

Of the two, the girl cat was the more inscrutable, to begin with anyway. You know the way women can look at you? That look. I'm not accessorising properly? When in town, don't wear brown? I should shave more? What is it, tell me, I'm a man!

But I think I'm there now. I think she likes me. Don't let me tempt fate by saying that. The boy cat, now we're watching football together. Don't pick up my bad habits though. Please no shouting at the referee. I'll go through the offside rule one more time and then that's it.

There's one constant when you're in loco parentis. You gotta feed 'em. And it's chow time now.

I got blasted with salvos of colour last night at the Kandinsky preview. Drenched in pigments. Palette exploded, colour spectrum melted. Not pretty