madhouse
There was still time, as it turned out, for just one more crap horror film before I went back to work. This was a rare screening of 1974's Madhouse at the Barbican. Vincent Price plays a horror movie star (not the greatest challenge of his career, then) who suffers a mental breakdown after the decapitation of his wife, and then goes to stay in a creepy old house with only Peter Cushing for company. Oh, and a madwoman brooding over a colony of spiders in the basement. Not quite what the doctor ordered then. Almost, in fact, it's like he's trapped in a bad horror movie... Amazingly, the man behind me, judging by the mobile phone conversation he was having just before the film started, had walked in off the street just because he had a couple of hours to kill, and had no idea what he was seeing ('I dunno... some old crap.') Possibly he was even under the impression that this was a new release.
Maybe he thought he'd gone back in time. Not a luxury I can afford: I returned to work to find that conditions had deteriorated somewhat. The office nextdoor has been opened out and repainted, and when I walked in it was to be confronted by a vast white space full of a glaring light that lent its occupants a ghastly aspect... Worse, Radio 2 is no longer the station of choice in the admin department, and has been supplanted by Smooth Radio, home of all the DJ's that were thrown off Radio 2 for being too inoffensive. My colleagues find it more 'relaxing' and indeed it's hard to be deeply annoyed by it, or to focus on it at all really. The only thing I find difficult is when they say the name of the station. For some reason that's like fingernails down a blackboard every time. But at least they don't introduce the Smooth News or the Smooth Weather. That would be too much to bear.
Nevertheless, perhaps it is an essential means of combating tensions in the office. Interviews have been scheduled, so everybody has been plunged into gloom. Especially as the interviews are in London, in the Chief Executive's boardroom, and are thus more formal affairs than the ones that got us these jobs in the first place. In fact, I'm beginning to wonder if I ever did get the job. Maybe this has all been a dream. I do hope I won't have to wake up.
Maybe he thought he'd gone back in time. Not a luxury I can afford: I returned to work to find that conditions had deteriorated somewhat. The office nextdoor has been opened out and repainted, and when I walked in it was to be confronted by a vast white space full of a glaring light that lent its occupants a ghastly aspect... Worse, Radio 2 is no longer the station of choice in the admin department, and has been supplanted by Smooth Radio, home of all the DJ's that were thrown off Radio 2 for being too inoffensive. My colleagues find it more 'relaxing' and indeed it's hard to be deeply annoyed by it, or to focus on it at all really. The only thing I find difficult is when they say the name of the station. For some reason that's like fingernails down a blackboard every time. But at least they don't introduce the Smooth News or the Smooth Weather. That would be too much to bear.
Nevertheless, perhaps it is an essential means of combating tensions in the office. Interviews have been scheduled, so everybody has been plunged into gloom. Especially as the interviews are in London, in the Chief Executive's boardroom, and are thus more formal affairs than the ones that got us these jobs in the first place. In fact, I'm beginning to wonder if I ever did get the job. Maybe this has all been a dream. I do hope I won't have to wake up.
posted by martin at 12:51 PM
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