There is a very famous triptych of photographs in my parents' possession that I am staring out right now. It basically sums up the relationship I once had with my siblings.
Jeff was a newborn baby, Eleena, aged four, in the first shot, is smiling and happy, and is cradling a similarly smiling Jeff in her arms.
I, aged about 14 months, am not in the first shot. In the second shot, I appear in the background just above Jeff's head, staring at the camera with a had raised above Jeff.
In the third shot Jeff is screaming and crying, and Eleena is trying to contain his wriggling, unhappy little form. I have this total, "What? What's the problem?" look on my face, hand no longer raised. This triptych is a family heirloom.
You don't eat potatoes, pasta, rice or bread. This is Atkins. Is life really worth living without these four staples? I think not.
Extract from 2002 #342
About this time two years ago I was working in a large legal publishing house and was trying to devise a way of stopping people from dying at their desk with nobody noticing...
Monday, July 1, 2002
I've just been struck with a marvellous idea. My office runs an Ideas Actions Group which workshops ideas to make this lovely publishing house a balanced and enjoyable place in which to work. (Brainwashed? Me?)
Anyhoo, being quite disturbed by the article I blogged on Thursday the 27th June (do scroll down, dear reader - no not Mark, well that too - but I mean the article entitled WORKER DEAD AT DESK FOR FIVE DAYS), I have decided to submit my marvellous idea to stop proofreaders from dying and being left there for five days without anyone noticing to rot and smell. (This last bit is particularly important to me because I sit just around the corner from the proofreading pool, and I have sensitive nose-buds.)
What I propose is that everyone in the office be issued with a wooden skewer, like the ones you use to make chicken satay sticks and kebabs etc. Then everytime you walk past a proofreader sitting at his/her desk, just give them a little jab in the back with the sharp end. That way we'll keep them awake and make sure they aren't dead at the same time.
Notes on the making of "On the Hot Seat" #1
Chapter one:
Commentary on Toni Collette's brilliant performance in Murial's Wedding and The Sixth Sense, leading into the moment I used the toilet cubicle straight after her in the bathroom of a prominent local theatre company.
Chapter two:
Historical notes in the style of Copenhagen University Professor of Danish Royal Studies' Ingvar Kopeelvel on the recent royal wedding between Crown Prince Fredrik and Tasmanian/Australian real estate agent Mary Donaldson, dating back to their meeting during the infamous "chest-hair test" incident in The Slip Inn, Sydney, Australia during the Sydney Olmpics (September 2000), leading up to the moment I used the toilet cubicle straight after Mary's bridesmaid in the bathroom at XXXX (a location that must remain nameless for security reasons).
Chapter three:
So many bathrooms, so many semi-famous people, so little time. Who will be the lucky subject of the third chapter? Must get myself invited to more A-list parties and film openings so I can complete the final 10 chapters...
I'm having one of those days when I feel as insignificant as a crumb of cheese caught in the bushy frond of Tom Selleck's moustache.
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