it's not what you do, its who you do
I had a taste of life as an unpacker on Saturday. Luckily it was a very exciting day on Phoenix FM, the only station our broken radio gives out with any clarity. Roy ‘Pretty Boy’ Shaw, true crime legend and ‘author’, was being interviewed. Though the DJ was having to supply a lot of the pertinent facts, which were a little slow in coming. Still, slaving away in this small windowless room, I got some insights into prison life from Roy’s mushy voice. Prison is mainly full of decent blokes, it turns out, except for the grasses and the nonces, who have to be ‘done’ regularly. Broadmoor, on the other hand, is 'full of nutters'. One tried to bash Roy up while he was sitting on the toilet. His reaction? ‘I pulled up me trousers, and I done ‘im.’ Never has such a simple verb been made to cover so much.
It wasn’t bland though, the accusation normally levelled at local radio. Even the playlist on Phoenix isn’t that bad… normally. Later in the day a female DJ interrupted Antony And The Johnsons in mid-song because they were ‘too depressing for a Saturday afternoon’ and put on Dr. Hook. It may have been the same woman who later said she was going to play a song and invited us to guess what film it came from. The song was A View To A Kill by Duran Duran. Hm, good question. What was the name of that film? Goldfinger?
But obviously it was better than being on the shop floor. In staff training we were shown some colourful posters from head office telling us how they want us to behave over Christmas. They want us to be ‘proactive’, and not only that but ‘passionate’. ‘Look and feel’, read one of the captions. It sounds like they want us to start humping the customers’ legs - an accolade previously reserved only for the sexiest regulars.
On Saturday night I was perhaps the only person hurrying home from Sainsbury’s to watch Deal Or No Deal rather than the rugby. I saw England playing France last Saturday and wasn’t surprised when they won. It wouldn’t have surprised me if China had won: the whole thing was incomprehensible to me. At least in football the players remain, for the most part, discrete entities and you can watch them moving about the pitch and it all seems to make some sort of sense in an abstract way. Rugby is just a mess. ‘He’ll cock his leg and send it long’, one of the commentators said at one point. That didn’t help.
It wasn’t bland though, the accusation normally levelled at local radio. Even the playlist on Phoenix isn’t that bad… normally. Later in the day a female DJ interrupted Antony And The Johnsons in mid-song because they were ‘too depressing for a Saturday afternoon’ and put on Dr. Hook. It may have been the same woman who later said she was going to play a song and invited us to guess what film it came from. The song was A View To A Kill by Duran Duran. Hm, good question. What was the name of that film? Goldfinger?
But obviously it was better than being on the shop floor. In staff training we were shown some colourful posters from head office telling us how they want us to behave over Christmas. They want us to be ‘proactive’, and not only that but ‘passionate’. ‘Look and feel’, read one of the captions. It sounds like they want us to start humping the customers’ legs - an accolade previously reserved only for the sexiest regulars.
On Saturday night I was perhaps the only person hurrying home from Sainsbury’s to watch Deal Or No Deal rather than the rugby. I saw England playing France last Saturday and wasn’t surprised when they won. It wouldn’t have surprised me if China had won: the whole thing was incomprehensible to me. At least in football the players remain, for the most part, discrete entities and you can watch them moving about the pitch and it all seems to make some sort of sense in an abstract way. Rugby is just a mess. ‘He’ll cock his leg and send it long’, one of the commentators said at one point. That didn’t help.
posted by martin at 7:46 AM
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