Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough!

A long day yesterday, as I rose at 4.15am and left the house a little more than half-an-hour later to make the drive to Slough. When I think back to the time - not that long gone - when I used to regularly do this twice (and on rare occasions, three times) a week it gives me shivers.

I've been fortunate this year. The last time I made the trek South, back in April and with a different destination (Bracknell), was the only other time I've had to drive anywhere. A welcome change from the financial year 2003/4 when I did 22,000 business miles. If I had to do that now I don't think I'd ever be awake outside of the working day!

Anyway, enough waffle. The point of this post is the number of surprises that pop up when you haven't taken a once-familiar journey for more than six months. For a start, Cherwell Valley services - where I habitually take my breakfast - has disappeared. Well, not disappeared exactly, but when you enter the car park in the darkness of a late autumn morning before 7am, and the building is not where it once was, the first impression is definitely one of it having been spirited away.

Its replacement, on the other side of the car park, has a prefabricated temporary feel to it, which was explained when I returned to the car. Dawn having broken a bit, I could see the beginnings of a new steel skeleton where the old building used to be, along with a couple of cranes, so the owners clearly intend eventually to put it back where it was. Bit of a drastic and expensive solution to a leaking roof (the only problem  I recall being visible with the old place), but it shows there's still lots of money in the motorway services game.

Slough too held some surprises. The company is vacating the building but it's a slow process, made even slower when they realised how hard it was going to be to move the test rigs. Finding space for them in the new building, levering them out of their current position (where they've been for at least ten years to my knowledge), moving them without "dropping" any, discovering there's a percentage of them that won't turn on again when they arrive at their new home (always a risk when moving equipment of any age) and all this at a time when we're in the middle of a critical test phase. It didn't take long for the buttock clenching to kick in and delay the move.

But the building is half decommissioned. So the first thing to greet me was a sign on the door saying reception was no longer manned and I should telephone whoever I was visiting to gain access. Only he was late. Thankfully a passing pedestrian happened to know the door code so I made it inside and headed up to the floor I used to hot desk on. Stepping out of the lift I noticed the door of the gents had been adorned with a sign saying "this facility is no longer in use" and on entering the office I discovered serried ranks of empty desks devoid of phones, power, or LAN.

I headed down the stairs (which weren't lit) towards a friendly, but dim light below. It was coming from the 4th floor. The top half of the building is effectively moth balled, and that includes the restaurant. So no hot food, no decent coffee, no snack bar, half as many toilets as there should be, and desk spaces at an all time low. Betjeman was right all along!

Canteen Christmas

My third traditional Christmas lunch took place, after the extraordinary success of last year's visit, in the staff restaurant, where the catering ladies and gents had laid the tables with Christmassy cloths, crackers, holly-bedecked napkins, and set some traditional Christmas music playing over the restaurant PA.

Compared with last Friday's effort, this was top value for money. Six quid buys you a starter (I opted for the prawn marie rose), a main course (turkey - four slices of succulent breast meat - sprouts, carrots, roast parsnips, roast and mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing and cranberry sauce) and a dessert (in my case traditional Christmas pud with brandy sauce), followed by a mince pie, coffee and a mint. Fantastic. Great company too, even though we missed Steve, who had eaten with us last year.

The jokes out of the crackers left a lot to be desired, as usual. In fact someone told me the set of jokes has suffered a complete overhaul this year. If anything they're worse than before. And I'm not entirely sure what the small blue plastic house in my cracker was supposed to be for.

Crackers apart though, it was a cracking meal, and left me with cracks developing in my belly, it was so stretched. Only trouble is, being in the office, I couldn't sneak an afternoon nap.

Another Christmas tradition

I may have commented before on the importance, for any group of friends, colleagues or acquaintances, of having an anchor. That person who takes responsibility for keeping the group together. You can have more than one, but one is the magic number, below which the group will cease to be a group.

It's been a good few years since I worked at the office known as "the airport" (mainly because it was fairly close... to... the airport), but the times we had there were relatively good. Frontier times. Breaking new ground. Or so we thought. Good or not, they were sufficiently memorable for us to want to meet up once a year for a Christmas lunch, and the group has the aforementioned anchor - a lady who at the time was PA to the main man in that office - who is happy, each year, to pull the event together. In the main these annual reunions have been memorable. Until now.

Whether it was the fact that we returned to a restaurant we'd visited a few years ago and the food wasn't as good as that first time, or the seating arrangements were less than ideal, or some of the group couldn't make it so we didn't achieve some sort of critical mass, or because I knew from the off that I had to leave early and stayed on soft drinks the whole time I don't know. Something didn't work for me.

I won't name the restaurant because I honestly believe they don't deserve a bad press for it. Last time we went - about three years ago if I remember right - the food was excellent. This time, it looked and tasted like a million other mass-produced Christmas lunches. Too much dark meat for my liking, light on the cranberry sauce (anyone would think it was the most expensive component of the meal the way they dole it out by the teaspoonful!), the vegetables barely cooked and the piggy in its blanket having a distinct taste of old grease.

For the first time in several years my seat at table was some distance from the members of the group I know best. Worse, I sat directly opposite a woman with whom I had a long-standing disagreement (she drove into me in the office car park and refused to take responsibility) that was never properly resolved, and to the left of a woman I've never seen before - not one of the original group - who was clearly a good friend of my 'nemesis'. Surrounded!

I couldn't even take refuge from these harridans in drink. I had important driving to do which meant leaving at 3.30. It's an enlightening experience to sit, perfectly sober, and watch how quickly a group of people can dissolve into a socially relaxed state when they put their minds to it.

Finally, adding insult to injury, the mediocre meal turned out to be the most expensive of all the Christmas meals I'm planning to attend this year, I was suckered into contributing a tenner to the "drinks kitty" for which I received a single pint of fresh orange and soda, and the city centre car park robbed me of another £8.60.

Just sometimes, maybe, keeping a group together is not such a good thing!

That kid

He would have been the nerdy kid at school. The one with the National Health specs held together with Elastoplast and the clothes that didn't quite fit him, spending playtime with his head buried in one of the Ladybird books from the top class, even though he was still a first-year. Walking around with his hands stuffed deep into his pockets and his mind stuffed just as deep into his thoughts, which were of problems so esoteric for an eight-year-old that none of his contemporaries would have made it past the first sentence, even if he could have put them into words.

In years to come he would gravitate to a group of like-minded individuals, occupying the corner table in the library and sharing no more than a few words of conversation. Preferring to point at passages from hefty pictureless tomes with a knowing grin that passed around his contemporaries faster than a headcold in the PE classes he was always trying to duck. But at age eight, in a small suburban junior school, there were no like-minded peers. The jousting they dreamed of wasn't mental. It might be contemporary - five a side in the playground when he'd be the last one chosen - or historical - an ad-hoc re-enactment of King Arthur's clash with the Green Knight, when he'd be cast as the wizard and condemned to stand alone in the bike sheds pretending to assemble potions from left-over school milk, playground moss and berries from the tree that hung over from Mrs Washowska's garden - but it was totally physical and hence by definition excluded him.

And today, when you see him walking along the balcony and heading down the stairs to lunch, the deep-rooted echoes of the nerdy kid remain. The intervening years have covered him with the shell of an adult - taller, greyer, wearier. But his hands are still stuffed into his pockets. He still gazes unseeing at the floor as his mind grapples with a thorny, high-concept design problem, the latest in a lifetime of arcane solutions that still leave his contemporaries floundering. His gait is the shuffling near-skip of the man who, having always played the wizard or the goalie, never quite gained total control over his physical self. His clothes still don't fit properly. If you knew him back then, you would recognise him now. And knowing him now, you can still see him as he was then.

Shifters, shifters, there were never such devoted shifters

It was all hands to the pumps today to help the shifters... shift. The idea being that if each person took responsibility for their own stuff the job would go a lot smoother. Many hands and all that. 'Course the theory falls down when some of them can't make it owing to prior engagements, so we ended up wedging two lots of desktop kit and three people's boxes into the back of the car for the short journey to Cheadle.

Ironically, this was my first sight of Nikki's old offices. Having parked outside them virtually every working day for almost three years when picking her up, I'd never ventured inside. As you might expect from a small office in an old building, they looked very tired. The general demeanour was not helped by the empty desks, piles of boxes, and small heaps of detritus left behind when desks had been moved from positions they'd occupied for 30 years. But even looking beyond that it was clear that the offices would have been quite poky and dark to work in. Narrow corridors, old furniture, and very reminiscent of the kind of working environment I "enjoyed" for at least the first ten years of my career.

We dodged around the professional removals men who were taking the old desks away to a charity auction, and soon had the car loaded up and ready to roll.

The new place is a complete contrast. In fact I get the impression the amount of space has taken everyone by surprise. The phrase I heard most often after arriving there was "it didn't look this big on the plans." Which, you know, is nice for them all. Plenty of light, airy space. Brand new furniture. A newly-fitted kitchen (not yet complete when we were there, but with fitter beavering away), new phones, new network and, for those who had not had flat panel monitors before, all new monitors.

All this newness inspired Nikki to want some new desk accoutrements, so we headed off round the ring road to IKEA and wandered through the store enjoying the fact that we didn't have to rush for once. She found exactly what she was looking for: a set of two stand-up magazine holders and an in-tray (both called, confusingly, DOKUMENT), and we picked up a few things for our place too, including a pair of KASSETT boxes for the study. No amusing ikease names jumped out at us today, sadly.

A quick hop back to the business park, narrowly avoiding the Canada geese that have settled in by the lake, and an even more rapid assembly of Nikki's new in-tray and we were ready to come home and enjoy a midday cuppa. Our leaving was delayed slightly by the arrival of her new IP phone. We had a play with it before we left but disappointingly I was unable to find a CTU ring tone. An admittedly small drawback in the face of all the smart newness.

Team work and The Wire

BBC Two recently (beginning of last week) began showing HBO's The Wire in its entirety, starting at season one, in a graveyard slot on weekday nights. 11.20pm to be precise.

Having heard a lot about this show in one way or another (from colleagues on TV Scoop, various Internet forums and reviews, and fanboy family members *vbg*) I was keen to see what all the fuss was about, but 11.20?? Old farts like me have usually been in bed an hour by then. So we did the only thing possible: set a weekday schedule on the PVR and sat back while the episodes were sucked in.

I tried to approach the show with no preconceptions, despite my natural inclination to dislike anything that "everyone else" likes. This is not to disrespect anyone's opinion, it's just that in my experience entertainment surrounded by steaming piles of hype usually resembles steaming piles of something else when you eventually get to see it. I should have detected a subtle difference in the hype associated with The Wire: it's generated by the people who actually watched the show, rather than the people who made it and WANT you to watch it so they can make more money.

Anyway, we caught the first five episodes back-to-back last weekend, and the first two of this week's last night. Seven hours in and we're enjoying it immensely. So far I wouldn't be as fulsome as many have been with my praise - I wouldn't say I'm 'hooked' or that it's 'the best TV show ever, bar none' etc - but hey, it's still only the first season, and still only the first seven eps. It's certainly different, credible, realistic, interesting, involving and dramatic.

But this isn't strictly a post about The Wire (although so far it's doing a good impersonation of one, lol). It's about something that occurred to me while I was watching the show last night. There's a character in the cops' team called Prez. Roland Pryzbylewski, actually, which explains why they call him Prez. He's well known in the police department for being totally incompetent and inept. Despite being bounced around several units he never fits in anywhere, and he only ends up on the "wire" team because the Deputy Commissioner tells all his people to dump their useless jerks there.

But slowly, working in the team's basement office, something happens. Prez finds his niche and turns into the team's code-breaker, first with the gang's pager codes and later with other complex number and letter combinations. He makes a major contribution to the case.

This is classic team work. A team - a good team that is - comprises a group of people whose skills are complementary. A leader. An ideas man. Someone who pays attention to the details and doesn't miss the finer points. Someone who energises the whole team with enthusiasm. A problem solver. And so on. Occasionally, people perform more than one role, but all roles are essential and the team flies best when they're all done well.

But here's the thing. Each one, on their own, can't cut it. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And that's why Prez is such a good example. Outside of the team he's a jerk. A square wheel. But he's like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle left out of the box. Once you slot him into place, the whole thing looks right.

And it came to me, finally, that this is why I used to love my job, and why I hate it now. I used to be part of - and ENJOY being part of - a team. We could fly. We could do anything. And we did. But now there are no teams; there are only individuals. Everyone is expected to do their own thing. To be able to pick up any piece of work and do it just as effectively as any other piece of work. I mean, it's all technical stuff, right? That's how the managers look at it. We're technical people, doing technical work, so we're all just as good at any of it as anyone else. Which, as I hope you can appreciate, is a crock of shit.

There is no teamwork any more, and it sucks.

Office euphemisms

I don't know how many of you work in an office, but those that do must be familiar with that ubiquitous character common the world over: the Holder of Loud Telephone Conversations.

They come in two varieties. Those that sit at their desk and hold forth safe in the knowledge that they're not disturbing anyone, because their conversations are so interesting that the whole of the rest of the office will want to stop what they're doing and listen in. This is a good job, because those other workers don't get a lot of choice in the matter. They're gonna hear what the guy (or gal) is saying whether they want to or not.

The other variety has a neurological condition that physically prevents them from sitting still when a phone approaches their ear. They are impelled to pace up and down the office, and in really bad cases even through the entire building, while conducting their telephone business. In the same way as a pigeon can't walk without bobbing its head, the Ambulatory Holder of Loud Telephone Conversations can't talk without walking.

Inasmuch as any of this has an advantage, it is this: it allows students of human nature access to a wide variety of office euphemisms, which I thought might make an interesting subject for an occasional series, starting today. I have no idea how long this will run (or even if it will), or how many different phrases I can extract, but for today, here's #1.

"I'll leave you in peace."

This is an attempt to stop the conversation that actually means "I've got what I wanted from you and I'm not interested in hearing about your problems, so shut the fuck up and let me get off the phone."

Its effect is limited, as witnessed by the fact that our resident HoLTeC had to say it three times before his callee got the message.

Tis the season to be merry - #1

No, I didn't mean jolly. Although I started off jolly as I left to drive into town yesterday morning just before lunch to meet up with an old team of mine for the first of several Christmas "dos", the last one of which won't take place until January 28th. Don't ask.

I had intended to catch the bus, thereby giving myself maximum flexibility to get bladdered or not, as the fancy took me, and depending on how the party panned out. You know how it is. Sometimes the sparks fly and you're really enjoying the mood, other times you can't wait to get home. A combination of another bitterly cold day and the probability of rain made me realise (a) I didn't really fancy the 20-minute walk from Piccadilly and (b) I wasn't really that bothered about having a lot to drink. That, and the fact that the restaurant I was heading for is surrounded by a multi-storey car park, meant the car was the obvious option.

This particular do was the "VME" Christmas party, so named because it's organised by, and ostensibly for, those people who are still working on VME. Many years ago, and for many years, I was one of those people. I still know a lot of them quite well, but more to the point their senior PA is also the lady who ran our office when 40 of us, followed shortly by another 40, branched out into the scary new world of Microsoft technologies a little over 12 years ago. That team is no longer together either, but since many of us came originally from the VME team, we share a history, and therefore a Christmas do. For most of us it's the only day of the year when we get together, because the majority of the original members (of either team) have moved to other companies, other parts of the same company, or retired, and even those who now work in the same building don't see each other very often owing to the overly paranoid security locks on all the internal doors, which admit staff only to the floor for their own department.

Today's meal took place at the modestly named "Glamorous" on Oldham Road, an establishment which I had visited on a couple of previous occasions and which can usually be guaranteed to provide mass catering on a huge scale and at extremely high quality.

Has it changed hands I wonder? Or chefs? Or is the credit crunch biting? I certainly don't remember the Christmas meal being this piss-poor in previous years. Two small scoops of chicken and sweetcorn soup, followed by some sad looking dim sum (paper wrapped prawns, spring rolls and ribs). OK, the ribs were excellent, but the rest didn't do much for me. Little did I know it was about to get worse.

Aromatic crispy duck was optional on the menu at an additional charge of £3.50, and owing to having a minimum requirement of two diners (per table), it had been left to us on the day to organise. Regular readers will know I'm an ardent lover of crispy duck. I'd be happy if that was the ONLY thing on the menu. So I was fortunate - I thought - to find four other duckophiles on my table. So we coughed up our £19.30 (10% service charge mandatory) and awaited our pancakes. 13 sad, cold, dry little pancakes between 5 of us. Two tiny plates of shredded leek and cucumber, and less than half a duck. Clearly, having left the ordering until the day, the restaurant had been caught on the hop by the popularity and run out. Instead of coming clean and saying "we've run out, sorry" they decided to fleece us of our £3.50s and spread what they had between all of us.

The mains were a disappointment too. No large, steaming bowl of rice for each table. No. A cold plate, with a handful of tepid rice (which was cold by the time the food was served).

That's another place to strike off my list of acceptable eateries at Christmas. But! All was not lost, for it's a truism that if the only thing you're going to a Christmas do for is the food, you're bound to be disappointed. The company is the thing! The craic! And boy, did we have some craic on our table.

After lunch we decanted to the Crown & Kettle for a pint. No offence, but what a dismal little hole this is. Sadly, what few sparks were flying at this party were extinguished as soon as we set foot through its dingy door onto its bare, dirty floorboards. I cracked an inward smile at the irony of the drink I ordered - a pint of Flat Cap - quaffed it as quickly as I could and beat a hasty retreat. Sincere apologies to those luvverly people I was sharing space with. Had the food been better, the watering hole more comfortable, and the weather warm enough to walk, I would have loved to stay longer. Next year, maybe?

Illusions newly shattered

When I was offered the chance to attend Fujitsu-Siemens Computers "VISIT 2008" event in Augsburg a couple of months back, I jumped at it. Jollies like this are few and far between these days and my memory of such events in the past is uniformly good.

When I learned UK delegates were to be flown to Munich by private jet from Stansted my excitement leapt up a notch. Memories of our most excellent trip a few years ago to visit EMC's factory in Cork were uppermost in my mind: the 8-seater Gulfstream, the stretch limo, the feeling of ultimate luxury. So it was with great expectations that I set off from home just before 8am to ensure I arrived at the Inflite terminal in good time.

The bloom left the rose slightly when I drove past the gate guard on my arrival. "Make sure you don't leave any gaps when you park up," he advised. "We have to get 100 cars in here today."

Sure enough, for my second experience of private jet travel, it wasn't at all what I'd expected. Gone was the 8-seater executive jet; the leather; the gleaming, polished walnut. Gone were the dainty sandwiches with their crusts cut off, served on crested china plates, fresh coffee in china cups. In their place a 30-year-old Boeing 737-200, its seats configured in the worst charter airline style. I swear there wasn't more than nine inches between me and the seat back in front of me, occupied (as they always are) by a man incapable of sitting still for more than five minutes at a stretch. I couldn't even deploy my tray table without breathing in.

The meal, when it came, was the ubiquitous mystery chicken beloved of airlines the world over, served in plastic, along with a schizophrenic dessert that wasn't sure whether it was apple pie or apple crumble. I couldn't tell you what the coffee was like: I didn't dare try it. Having missed my chance of a pee at the airport after consuming a complementary coffee in the lounge, and with a tray table that wouldn't rest less than 25° from the horizontal, it was too risky on all counts.

Touching down at Munich I finally remembered the mantra of seasoned travellers - never pass up a chance for a pee - and leapt for the gents' as we were waiting at the baggage carousel. After an uneventful (but long!) transfer we arrived at the Hotel Dorint in Augsburg, about 70km NW of Munich.

My room - a slightly more upmarket version of hotel rooms the world over - was very pleasant. The hotel is in a cylindrical building of about 35 floors, only the bottom 11 of which are the hotel. The rooms, arranged radially around the central lifts, are wedge shaped, with a walk-in shower nearest the centre, widening into a well-appointed bathroom which then widens further into the main part of the room. Each room has a semilunar balcony which gives the building the appearance of a series of bubbles on a stick (I've since discovered the hotel is known locally as the "corn cob").

With a free bar starting at 7pm and a late arrival owing to traffic and a massive construction project on the autobahn out of Munich there was just time to phone home and confirm my safe arrival before heading downstairs and seeking out some fellow Northerners with whom to sample the local Bavarian ale.

Three short ones

Travel to London always seems to get the blogging juices flowing, and today was no exception.

The Tutter.
This morning, catching the Tube from Victoria Station heading for Westminster, I stood next to a tutter. I don't know what she expected. It was 8.30 on a Tuesday morning. The middle of the rush hour. And yet whenever anyone jostled her, she'd make with an annoyed little tut. Like it was a personal affront, or something. I was behind her on the platform and we stepped aboard together. Having already had to let one train go due to overcrowding, those behind us were determined not to be caught out again, and heaved forward into the train, forcing us right up against those already standing inside. Sardines have it better. But it's nothing unusual for that time of day, on that particular part of the Underground.

After the train departed, the jostling continued for some minutes, as people made themselves more comfortable and adjusted their body shapes to fit whatever space remained. An elbow here. A laptop bag there. Tut. Tut. Tut.

The Wrong Date.
I've been blogging about travelling down to London on and off for almost two years, and actually making the journey for a lot longer. One thing has always puzzled/annoyed me. That car park in Fairfield Street never has the right date on its ticket machine. How hard can it be, I thought each time the ticket was served up, to set it to the right date? In my experience it is the only machine to suffer from this ignominy, but for at least three years it has been set exactly one day ahead.

On occasion it's even occurred to me to phone the number on the machine and complain. Why don't you get the flippin' date right on your machine? Funnily enough, after all these years when it's been the only machine with this problem, I found another one last week when I went to Wakefield to give a presentation. Right opposite our offices. Same problem.

Am I glad I never called up to moan about it. Don't know what it was about this morning that made me more awake than usual, but I finally had a Doh! moment and realised what was going on. It's a full day journey to Westminster and back. I feed the machine to the max. £4.50. It gives me a 24-hour ticket. It shows the expiry time. Tomorrow.

For an intelligent guy I can be *really* dumb sometimes.

Final presentation.
The last of my roadshow presentations this afternoon, and a much reduced audience after last week's high of 19. Both morning and afternoon sessions only had 5 attendees but the second one was marred by one of my audience texting throughout the whole performance. I'd have considered this rude whatever the size of audience but with just the six of us in a tiny meeting room it was not only rude but astonishingly blatant. A couple of the messages were deemed amusing enough to show to her immediate neighbour, along with exchanged smiles.

I just kept on talking. The consummate professional. The old guy at the front never noticed the smiley exchanges. He was asleep for almost the whole thing.

Christmas Do. (part 4)

Lunch in the staff restaurant has never appealed to me. I always bring my own. Christmas though - that's a different kettle of peaswax. They make a special effort, and I can never have enough turkey dinners, so it's kind of a match made in heaven. Today was even more special, since it's my last day in the office for 2007. Three of us went down from my bit of the office (aside: you can't say "from my office" any more. Not since they went open plan. Time was when we all had offices big enough for small groups. Back then you did things by the office. I went down the pub with my office. I went bowling with my office. Not now. Now they've knocked all the walls down and the desks are arranged in little floats. Two desks back-to-back, arranged in groups of three. So six desks to a float. You can hardly say "I went to lunch with my float" can you? Makes you sound like a milkman.) and the place was really buzzing I can tell you.

We opted for roast tomato soup and crispy croutons for starters. Could have had liver paté or parmahamwithmelonballs. I thought paté might be a bit heavy for lunch time and when I eat melon I like to bury my face in a wedge, not delicately place individual balls in my mouth. Besides it was a cold and frosty morning (yes, Steve and Dave, I'm still playing the "get Christmas carol lines into the conversation" game) so I thought a bit of soup would go down lovely. It did.

Mains was the traditional roast turkey dinner and they had done us proud. Three thick slices of breast meat with a slab of stuffing on top, carrot batons, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, sprouts and as much cranberry sauce as you like. Fabulous. Feeling already somewhat stuffed (we've been dieting for three weeks after that fateful visit to the local club, and my stomach's shrunk) I joined the line-up again for dessert. What else - Christmas pudding. "Watch out for that brandy sauce," one of the dinner ladies advised. "It's a bit potent." She wasn't wrong. I think I had an entire bottle of brandy in my portion alone.

We sat at the table for half an hour after finishing the pudding, debating this and that. It wasn't that the conversation was especially stimulating, more that none of us could move. And all for a fiver, too. When you consider how much I paid to (almost) go without Tiramisu at Don Giovanni's, deciding which was the better meal is a bit of a no-brainer.

Christmas Do. (part 3)

The final "do" of the year was this lunchtime and was organised by one of the ex-secretaries from our old building in Wythenshawe.

There was a strong sense of camaraderie in that building. When we first went there in 1996 the sense of something new and exciting starting imbued us with a kind of team spirit that has survived for ten years, even though many of the original joiners have since left the company. It was a new venture - the first time we had tried to build a business around Microsoft technologies and application development - and they were exciting times.

The excitement has long since passed, but the friendships remain and we'll probably continue to enjoy a Christmas dinner together every year as long as Chris keeps organising it. At 15, numbers were slightly reduced this year owing to many people working away from Manchester, and as it turned out the ex-staffers outnumbered those of us who are still there. That just meant the conversation was more interesting, as everyone brought their tales of the year's activities to the party.

We started out with a drink in the Paramount bar on Oxford Street and then repaired to Don Giovanni's for the meal around 1.30pm. The meal was nice, but nothing special. Tuscan bean soup followed by the traditional turkey dinner. There was one slight hiccup when the dessert course was served. We'd already waited for it for half an hour when the waiter came around with a notepad. I thought this a little strange, as we'd all placed our food orders over a month before, but didn't say anything except to repeat my request for Tiramisu.

He returned to the table ten minutes later to inform us that Tiramisu was off, and the remaining choices were profiteroles or panacotta. I was really disappointed with this as I'd been looking forward to the dessert all day, and I wasn't really in the mood to take it lying down. I layed into the guy, loudly telling him it was a disgusting way to treat Christmas guests, I'd only come for the Tiramisu, we'd placed our order months before so how could they have run out? I placed an order for panacotta but added I was very disappointed and it was the least bad choice as far as I was concerned.

The panacotta arrived (and between you and me looked quite nice) but I left it untouched in front of me. Ten minutes later the headwaiter came striding across the restaurant, beaming widely and carrying two plates. He'd managed to find two remaining portions of Tiramisu and placed one in front of me, and one for the person next to me. I thanked him graciously and tucked in. It was delicious. When I'd finished I noticed he hadn't removed the panacotta, so I polished that off too. Bonus!

Christmas Do. (part 2)

Not a bad night at the De Vere hotel, Daresbury last night (ooh, it do sound posh don't it?). A very nice room, after our complementary upgrade to an Executive King suite (that's a bigger bed to you and me, and very comfortable it was too) caused by the fact they'd over-booked the Christmas do in the "Alice Room" (the whole place has a Lewis Carroll theme) and had to bump us into a smaller side room instead.

OK, the decorations weren't up to much - a single Christmas tree plonked into one corner - and the dance floor was a little smaller, but it didn't affect the food and drink ;o)

We arrived as usual mid-afternoon and spent a pleasant couple of hours sipping drinks, chatting with Nikki's colleagues and, since the diet was once again on hold for the day, tucking into a plate of club sandwiches and chips. This is the best part of the event for me. The meal is just like any other mass-catered Christmas meal, the disco holds no interest whatever and the dinner conversation can be a bit hit and miss, but the afternoon session is the height of civilisation. Comfy seats, a warm lounge, beer (or, in this case, Magner's cider since the draught beer selection on offer was uniformly awful) and pleasant chat. I love it.

We repaired to our room to freshen up around 6 o'clock and returned, showered, shaved (that's just me doing the shaving) and togged up, to the bar for a pre-dinner drinkie around 6.30.

I carried my third pint of Magners of the day into dinner with me and was immediately offered another by Nikki's manager. You can't say no can you? It would be rude. I'd ordered a rather nice salmon roulade to start and a traditional Christmas dinner, which was fine as mass catering goes apart from the sprouts which were like bullets.

The pud was a bit disappointing though. One of those occasions where you stare longingly at what someone else has ordered (in this case the strawberry pavlova) because your own choice is not quite all that (chocolate tart). The coffee was piss-poor too. I don't think I've *ever* had a good cup of coffee in a hotel.

With crackers pulled, hats put on and taken off, balloons blown up and shot across the room and the disco in full swing I began to flag a bit. I was surprised to discover it was already almost 1am so I made my excuses. Nikki was enjoying the disco too much to want to leave just yet, but I was more than ready to sample the delights of the king bed and watch enough snooker to send me to sleep. That is, about 3 minutes' worth.

Christmas Do. (part 1)

First works Christmas do of the year this evening - or I should say yesterday evening given that it's now past midnight - and it had to be in Reading.

Most of the guys in the Technical Group are based darn sarf, so that's where the meal was booked, even though the CTO sportingly tried to suggest somewhere more middling like Birmingham or Solihull. We didn't have anyone in the group who knew a decent curry house round there, so we gave up and resigned ourselves to a long journey.

I wouldn't have gone normally, but the CTO had arranged a meeting for the afternoon (which meant we could claim expenses for the travelling) and I also had a four-hour meeting at 10am which I *could* have attended as a voice conference, but in this case provided another excuse to go along to the meal.

We had about ten attendees from the North, and everyone but me arranged to stay over. I like my own bed too much though, and (thought) I had another Christmas lunch to attend tomorrow...err...today, so I wanted to be back in plenty of time.

The Technical Group meeting broke up around 5pm giving us 90 minutes to drive the 15 miles from Bracknell to Reading, park, and congregate at the nearest pub, which the organiser said was Branningham's. It was pissing down as we left Bracknell. I'd offered a lift to one of the other guys and we passed a pleasant 45 minutes in the rush-hour traffic catching up with what we'd each been doing since we last worked together. After we'd parked, we discovered neither of us really knew where this place was - either the curry house or the pub - so we wandered aimless through the pouring rain towards the Oracle shopping centre - the only landmark we'd been told about. Two nice young ladies pointed Branningham's out to us, but it wasn't much use. The place was a nightclub, not a bar, and didn't open until 9pm.

We spotted the Slug & Lettuce across the water and headed for that, me on the phone to the organiser to explain the situation and arrange the Slug as the alternative rendezvous. I downed a gin & tonic prior to dinner (still conscious of the diet even though the rest of the evening would be a disaster as far as that went!) and having all assembled and wet our whistles, we headed for the restaurant - the Bengal Reef. My passenger and I agreed we would never have found it - on the first floor of a separate mall round the back of the main precinct and down a narrow street that looked more like a service road. Once inside though, the restaurant looked very nice. We were shown to our tables - a 16-seater and a 10-seater - and perused the menus while sipping on bottles of Cobra.

Suffice to say the meal was equal to anything Manchester has to offer, but at 9pm with the prospect of a 200-mile journey ahead of me, I made my excuses and left. The rain continued unabated pretty much for the whole trip home, but at least the roads were clear and I arrived back soon after midnight, tired but buoyed up by the good food and company.

Having started the Christmas celebrations with our mulled wine party at the start of the week, this had been a perfect next step!

How's it swinging?

After my audition last week, I wondered how long it would take Dave to make his decision. I was in Bracknell today for a morning meeting, so when I turned my phone back on afterward I'd had a message from him.

Ever the gentleman, he apologised for leaving "bad news" in a voicemail, but said he'd decided on balance to stick with a female vocalist. Can't say I was surprised after the conversations we'd had last week. It would have been a lot of work for him to transpose all those arrangements - judging from the pile of music they all carry around with them there must be over a hundred numbers in their repertoire - and as I said before there's always the glamour angle to consider.

He was gracious enough to say that if they hadn't had a female interested they would definitely have gone with me. You might think that coming second out of two is not such a great result, but I took some comfort from his words, although I really wasn't bothered either way. In fact on reflection I think it is the right result. If I'm honest I could see myself getting bored with very quickly. Swing isn't really my genre, the Friday factor would have come into play too, and it would have been wrong to put the band to all the trouble of learning new arrangements only for me to walk away after a few weeks.

New lamps for old

When you work for the same company for a long time, you get to watch their building management over the years, sometimes with interesting side effects and hidden messages.

I visited our offices at Bracknell today. Over the past year or so they've been engaged in a refurbishment programme for the lifts in the tower block (10 floors) and decided on a very high-tech system that uses the very latest software and algorithms to achieve the most efficient pattern of lift travel between floors. To achieve this, the lift has to be able to plot its route in conjunction with the other lifts and the demands of the users. Lift designers worked out that the most efficient way of doing this was if the users could choose their destination floor at the time they called the lift, rather than once they were inside.

So the lift call buttons were replaced with touch-sensitive screens displaying the numbers 0-10, and users were supposed to touch the button for their floor, at which point the display would change briefly to tell the user which of the (up to three) lifts they should take once it arrived. Once in the lift, the only buttons available were the usual door open, close and alarm buttons. There was no way of selecting a floor from inside the lift. To do so would defeat the pre-scheduled route of the lift and make the operation less than optimal.

This was the clearest case of technology driving its users that I have ever seen. Usability and human-oriented features were abandoned in favour of the holy grail of achieving the most efficient servicing of the outstanding calls. The whole idea was to speed up the total time for each individual's journey. As it turned out, it had almost uniformly the opposite effect.

Visitors to the building often didn't realise they had to pick a floor number, especially when other people were already waiting for the lift. They would get into a lift only to find no way of selecting a floor. Those who had selected a floor would occasionally forget which lift they had been told to take, and get into the wrong one. Again, no override was possible. Arriving at the lifts at the last minute, it was impossible to dive into the one that was just leaving. If you hadn't selected your floor it could be going anywhere (a display panel inside the lift lit up the floors it would be calling at, but riders couldn't influence the journey). Finally at peak times, the delays as the display switched between "select" mode and "please take lift X" mode for each person led to large queues building up and half-empty lifts leaving the ground floor because the remaining users hadn't had time to select their floors.

After a few months and much grumbling the scheme was abandoned, and refurbished lifts are now having an internal panel fitted to allow riders to select floors in the normal way.

By way of contrast, in a less public but just as essential part of the building, refurbishment is long overdue. I remember when the gents' lavatories were last refurbished in this building and it must be at least 20 years ago. At the time, they were the height of lavatorial chic. Now, there is hardly a square centimetre of chrome remaining on any of the taps, the basins are cracked, the taps drip when they're turned off, and never run at very much more than a drip when they're turned on. The floors have been mopped so many times they're almost worn away and the whole place has an air of abandonment that is most depressing.

I can't help feeling that a little less high-tech in the lifts would have freed up some funds for a much-needed revamp of the "facilities." Maybe next year...