It's Alive!

It's a boy. Satan Jesus Elvis Sadler has been born, and by Caesarian section. I can only presume that Mat did not take photographs of the birth. 'Mum and baby both fine', said the text which knocked my glasses to the carpet at seven in the morning on Thursday. It didn't mention Mat.

Satan Sadler's a good name actually, especially if you are using your baby as a kind of social experiment, which I believe Mat is intending to do. Although ideally there would be a twin called Jesus. And I don't fancy his chances of getting into a Church school.

But of course he isn't going to be called Satan! Neither is he called Caesar, after the manner of his birth, another great idea of mine. Caesar Sadler: it has a ring to it, yes? Or, even better: Caesar Waldorf Sadler. No, he's called Samuel Rhys, which is not even remotely funny. Oh well. Good luck.

The BNP shoved a leaflet through our door. I immediately stuck it in the recycling. It was so... bland. Although there was a bit about Turks being given permission by the government to 'swamp' the nation. Is that how they word it in the government pamphlets? 'You now have permission to swamp the British Isles. Here is a list of the equipment you will require.'

But I'm sure that in reality the government has very strict guidelines on swamping.

The Daily Mail, to their credit, did a story revealing that the smiling BNP supporters pictured in the leaflet are not only models, they are not even British! I'm presuming here that they did this with the intention of discrediting the BNP rather than trying to outdo them in nationalistic frenzy.

The fear is that people will express their 'moral outrage' over the MP's expenses scandal by voting for the BNP. Though voting in a bunch of racists does seem a curious way of expressing moral outrage.

political incorrectness gone mad

'Night of the Rapemobile', blared a headline in a copy of Take a Break that was lying about in the coffee lounge at work. There's a word you don't see every day: Rapemobile. Like a piece of kit for a superhero who never got off the drawing board, thanks to those feminist critics.

The serious news was full of MP's expenses, which amusingly conformed to party lines (or were made to by sly journalists). Hence, a Tory MP was said to have claimed for cleaning out his moat and a Liberal Democrat for biscuits. Soon the only person fit to rule will be Joanna Lumley, but even she is far too busy importing gherkins into the country, or whatever it is she does.

(No, I'm being ingenuous there: I know who the Gherkins are really - soldiers who toughen up their green skins by bathing in vinegar, and who were of immense help to us during the cod war.)

It was Mat's 30th and we went round to Sunshine House, the Sadler pile (where this blog began, if I remember rightly) to celebrate it. Because the baby has not yet emerged it was touch and go whether Mat would even be there. A helium balloon on a string bobbed awkwardly about amidst the guests, saying '30' and looking like it might have functioned as a stand-in, had he failed to show. As it was, the balloon, when I first glimpsed it, was between Amanda's legs, like a primitive means of induction. Meanwhile Mat wandered around making tea, which is not - he said - what he expected to be up to on his 30th. 30 is going to be more than just a number for him - it really is going to catapult him into 'maturity', if that exists.

I don't envy him - even uncledom is too much for me. Just before the celebration I had been told to 'watch Heidi' by Bobs - only for a minute or so, but it was enough to make Justin laugh at the very idea of me managing even that. And yet I did watch her. I watched her as she played with the blowtorch and drank petrol. I'd never seen anything quite like it before.

Health and Safety

I had my DSE training, though since I have not yet had my 'three letter acronym' training, I did not know what it was. 'Display Screen Equipment', it turns out. It was full of sound advice. If somebody comes into the room to talk to you, for example, you are encouraged to look away from your screen, at them. Eye exercises are suggested, including 'stretching'. The mind boggles.

It really does, if you sit at your screen too long. The mind boggles. Which is most unpleasant, I can assure you. They showed us a video.

There are reasons you might not want to look away from your screen, of course. A particularly striking headline on the BBC news website for example. I recall this one from a few months ago: 'Pope distorting condom science.' Which sounds like the caption to a quite extraordinary photograph. And only this week there was: 'Five guilty of neglecting horses.' Like a bleak late entry in the Enid Blyton series.

The fire alarm is not currently working, and '28 air horns' have been provided, and scattered around the building as a substitute. They gave Friday's fire drill an air of Fiesta Time, as we all danced outside to collect beneath 'Tree D'.

A fire marshal has to patrol the floor every hour on the hour, checking to see if anyone is in flames, or about to be. What happens if a fire breaks out at, say, five minutes past the hour I really don't know. One was just starting when I left at 5:15 on Friday but I figured I'd deal with it Monday.

dem panic

A knocking on the door at 6:15 Tuesday morning got me out of bed to find two burly men in black outside. They looked like bouncers but, being on the wrong side of the door, could only have been bailiffs. They asked if I was Mr. Mudrovic (the previous tenant), and when I said he'd gone back to South Africa they apologized for bothering me and returned to their car. It all seemed too easy. How did they know I was telling the truth? At that time of the morning I don't know who I am. It's lucky that I didn't just say yes.

It seemed in retrospect like a credit crunch phenomenon - this big dramatic thing that, finally, doesn't seem to have any real impact on you. Certainly the previous tenants seem to have escaped the effects of the crunch, at least temporarily. I'm wondering (judging by the amount of mail we get for them) whether they might not actually have caused it.

This happened just before the work 'awayday' to (near) Stratford-on-Avon. Taxpayers will be pleased to hear that there was no suckling pig, just a lump of chicken plunked down on a pile of vegetables, underneath which was potato so thin it was like a section sliced off to be examined under a microscope. If it even was potato. The next day's lunch was preceded by a presentation on organ transplantation. A lengthy discussion on brain stem death (BSD). A picture of a 'split liver'. So nobody was very hungry.

Meanwhile the flu pandemic has moved up a level, to five. There don't seem to be enough levels for this thing. Six is the full-blown thing itself; seven is 'post-pandemic'. Surely, if only for the media's sake, a couple more notches would have made things more interesting. At least, from my privileged position within the NHS I can inform you that an official set of guidelines on when to panic and how to do it properly is about to be issued, plus there's a new series of TV ads in which Gok Wan tells you how to look good while panicking.

So there's no need to panic.