idle thoughts

For some reason I lay in the bath trying to think of another word for ‘cool’. ‘Lazy’ came to mind. It has connotations of effortlessness, and cool should seem effortless. It’s also pejorative, like ‘bad’ or ‘wicked’, so it has that edge. Of course all slang has to be approved by the African-American arbiters of what is hip, but that should work for it too since one of the big racist assumptions about Africans, historically, is that they’re lazy, so this would have the virtue of turning that on its head (cf: nigga). Clearly, we can expect a few awkward conversations while this takes hold (‘That outfit is lazy.’ ‘But I spent hours putting it together!’) but I confidently predict that by the year 2010 we should see groups of unemployed chavs congratulating each other on being lazy. Except they won’t be called ‘chavs’. They’ll be called ‘legumes’. I don’t know why that is.

Possibly I am wrong about all this. My suggestion for a slogan for Ottakar’s stores converting to Waterstone’s (‘Now we are shit’) did not go down well with Waterstone’s marketing department. Why not? It’s bookish. It’s true. It could hardly be more offensive than some of the books we sell. God’s Call Girl: ‘one woman’s incredible journey from the convent to the massage parlour’. Once upon a time that would have been the other way round.

Also, unpacked this week: Lorraine Kelly’s Baby and Toddler Eating Plan. I never believed she was capable of that. Well, maybe I had an idea.

It’s the usual chaos at work. A man came to rip out some cables, only he was meant to be putting cables in. ‘Crossed wires’ are blamed. What this means, effectively, is that we have to keep lugging heavy boxes of books up the fire escape - because when the shop was set up they put our goods-in upstairs in our tiny cash office, and we’ve no lift. At least this raises the possibility of an unfortunate accident - those stairs can get very slippery - and compensation we can live on for the rest of our lives. Trouble is, everyone wants in. We’re going to have to get all the staff arranged on the fire escape with the area manager at the top and the Sunday staff at the bottom, then rely on the domino effect in its crudest form.