The Fully Full Glass

Was it Random Acts of Kindess Day yesterday in London? (Anyone who's read Join Me knows that this is officially on a Friday - but then yesterday my whole office was convinced it was Friday. We even went to the pub after work to prove the point). I think it must've been, as I had two surprising, excellent and cheering things happen to me.

Generally, it's a truth universally acknowledged that Everyone in London is Rude and Horrid. Newcomers try valiantly to make small talk with strangers on the Tube, and are met with a look that says, 'Are you going to try to mug me? Are you mad? Those are the only two reasons why you, a stranger, should be trying to talk to me, a seasoned Tube traveller'. You almost have to be like that, just to get over the daily stress of having your personal space fortress constantly breached, often ending up wedged under some man's armpit, trying not to expire through a mixture of toxic BO, frustration and boredom.

Other dealings with Londoners replicate this experience to a greater or lesser degree. However, the coffee shop that's next to my office, which I go into pretty much daily (our canteen coffee dosen't qualify as coffee - it barely qualifies as a hot beverage) flies in the face of all this taciturnity. The Italian man who owns it is twinkly-eyed and flirty. He makes running a coffee and sandwich shop seem like the best gig in the world. He is aided by two young women, neither of whose names I know (Italian man is called Tony). I think of them as the pretty, smiley one, and the dumpy, grumpy one.

Pretty Smiley Lady doesn't even require me to place my order every morning. She knows what I want! I can't tell you how thrilling that is. It's like being in an episode of Cheers ('where everybody knows your name' - ironically, this isn't the case for either party, but you get the idea). She wears throwback 80s pink and purple eyeshadow. She reacted with horror the other day when I said I was going to get my hair cut that afternoon ('Nothing DRASTIC??' she said, eyes widening in fear), then looked relieved when I assured her I was just having a trim. Tony then proceeded to tell me that my hair colour reminded him of someone in a film. 'Ooh', I said, 'um, Rita Hayworth?' 'No', he replied, 'who was in that cartoon?' 'Oh, Jessica Rabbit?' 'Yes!' Always good to be compared to a cartoon en route to my Very Important and Intellectually Challenging Job.

Dumpy Grumpy Lady makes a valiant effort to smile, but it always looks like it's causing her pain. She has the look of someone who was, perhaps, an eminent brain surgeon in her native country, but found on moving here that her qualifications weren't recognised, and so now she has to make lattes for grunting Londoners. Working in a coffee shop is clearly not her life's plan. She makes me a bit sad.

Anyway, yesterday morning, PSL whispered 'Regular white Americano to take out' to DGL as she passed by her, dealing with another customer. DGL whipped up my coffee with her customary gloomy efficiency. I pulled out a crisp tenner, ready to apologise that I didn't have anything smaller. She pushed the coffee towards me, as I proferred the tenner. 'No, don't worry', she said, beaming at me. 'Huh?' I said. 'No, it's fine!' she replied, waving away my money. I went all Hugh Granty and bellowed, 'WOW-THAT'S-REALLY-SWEET-OF-YOU-THANK-YOU-SO-MUCH-WOW-HAVE-A-BRILLIANT-DAY!' and ran out before she could change her mind.

Crikey! Free coffee! For no reason! I felt like texting the BBC local news (they're always encouraging you to get in touch - generally when it snows, so they can fill ten minutes with photos of elaborate snow sculptures. Which, as any fule kno, is not news).

I had a spring in my step for the whole day. Also brilliant: I'd left the previous day's profits from selling cupcakes on my desk in my hurry to leave the office. And all the cash was still there! I was positively Tiggerish. After work, the pub was calling, so off we went to our local. There were big sofas available, there was wine and beer. One of my friends and I ended up staying on for quite a few drinks, putting the world to rights. You'll be glad to hear we've sorted out climate change, world debt/poverty, unemployment and How to Fix Gordon Brown (just make him stop talking to journalists, radio and TV presenters. In fact, anyone apart from his wife). Next week: world peace.

As we were officially there 'just for a quick one', my friend and I hadn't bought a bottle, but were taking the 'd'you want another one?' 'ahhhhhhhhh, yeah, why not?' approach and going glass by glass. I went up for our final round and was served by Paul, the very genial landlord. Paul loves our gang, as we're there pretty much every week, and endlessly gives us free stuff. Discounts on bottles of wine, free chips and onion rings - I kind of think of him as my Work Dad. He hadn't been much in evidence last night, but immediately said he wanted to give me a free bottle of wine to try. I thanked him profusely, but said it'd be lovely for another time, as we were pretty near our limit and this one was definitely our last. So he served up two glasses of red and waved away payment.

See? Random Acts of Kindness Day! Properly fantastic. People being nice to you for no apparent reason; friends who'll listen to you moan about your job/impending midlife crisis and will be sympathetic and offer advice; a nice local with sofas. These are the things to remember to give thanks for, when February's getting you down and life seems a bit gloomy.

Middle Class Dilemmas No. 1

I was shopping for baking ingredients last night at my local Tesco Metro (is that tautological? Is Tesco Metro, by its very existence, 'local'? I digress). I needed eggs. I'm militant about buying at least free range eggs, as I used to live up the road from a battery hen farm. I went into one of the 'sheds' once, and it's every bit as grim as you'd think. I think everyone in Britain should be taken to one on a school trip when they're about ten, and then no-one would ever buy battery eggs again and the whole business would collapse.

Usually, the Metropolitan Tesco which I frequent offers a number of different options - free range (large and medium), barn-roasted, or some such, and then, of course, Evil Eggs. I bowl in; grab my six-pack of Happy-Go-Lucky Eggs; wait half an hour whilst the one member of staff on the checkout checks me out (the fact that Streatham Tesco never has more than one checkout staffer, no matter what the time or day, always infuriates me) and then I leave, calm down, and get on with my life.

But last night, disaster struck. There were no six-packs of Happy Eggs. My choices were practically Sophian:
Either - buy a box of ten Happy Eggs - and suffer the middle class angst of knowing that at least half of them would end up in the bin. (FOOD WASTE! How dare you, you childless, freaky singlehousehold person, contribute more to landfill? You're already sucking up God knows how much extra of Mother Earth's resources than proper, family people do in terms of electricity, gas and probably oxygen!)
Or - buy a box of six Death Eggs. Which I'll use all of, but, you know, I might be haunted by visions of battery hens shaking their beaks at me, more in disappointment than in sorrow.

There was nothing for it - with both a heavy sigh and a heavy heart, I opted for the six-pack of Batteried-to-Death Eggs. To whichever unfortunate fowl it was that laid them, I can only apologise.

Safety first

So, there is all manner of hoo-ha at the moment about terrorist threats, international security and the like. There must be loads of new schemes, plans, checklists, etc to deal with all this, presumably? Not according to the Evening Standard, who went with a big front page splash not long ago, which declared: HEATHROW STAFF TAUGHT TO LOOK AT BODY LANGUAGE: ACTING NERVOUSLY OR GRIPPING A BAG ARE TELL-TALE SIGNS. Yes, a 'specialist counter-terrorist team' (headed up by Jack Bauer? One can only hope), is pioneering a new technique using 'behavioural science' to detect a threat by analysing travellers' facial expressions and conduct.

Seriously, what on earth were they looking for up to this point? A rucksack with wires sticking out of it making an ominous ticking noise, with 'Bomb' written on it in Tippex? The Standard tried to reassure its readers by describing this new policy as 'a ground-breaking move', thus proving its total idiocy. Apparently, if it's successful at Heathrow, it might even be 'extended to other UK airports'. So it takes a bunch of advisors and policy makers to roll out common sense?

Even a 'police source' was quoted as saying, 'It's not rocket science... It's a bit like undercover officers who target pickpockets. After a while they can spot them immediately as they behave slightly differently from average commuters'. Gosh, really? D'you think if you were in possession of explosives you were going to try to detonate you might look a bit jittery too?

Well, knowledge is power, so we can all try to gain valuable levels of expertise in this area, and help out the authorities. Here's what to look for - according to the Standard's experts, you want to give anyone demonstrating the following a wide berth:
1/ Wearing heavy clothing whatever the season. Long coats or skirts may be used to conceal explosive belts and devices
2/ The appearance of being drugged
3/ Bags or backpacks. The bomber holds his or her bag tightly and may refuse to be separated from it
4/ A hand in a pocket tightly gripping something. This could be someone clutching a detonator
5/ Nervous behaviour, avoiding eye contact

What a relief! Apparently, the greatest threats to national security are either old ladies off their nuts on Valium, clutching their house keys in their pockets and their bags under their arms, terrified of being mugged by hoodies... or female Goths.

Money for nothing

As a person who watches too much telly, most of it entirely unedifying, I've often wondered if I should make the move into, y'know, creating it. Then I could be one of those women who race around with statement handbags and hair that costs £100 every time they go to the 'salon', and I'd probably have a wacky posho name like Cressida and I'd be able to refer to TV presenters as 'The Talent' without either having to put ironic air quotes round that phrase every time I uttered it, or cracking up with inappropriate laughter. I mean, seriously, 'The Talent' really puts the 'moron' into 'oxymoronic' for most of them.

Having been at meetings with a few independent TV companies, I've come to the conclusion that there are two methods for creating TV shows: take a reality format, in which you've featured ordinary people, and do the 'celebrity' version of it. (Viewing figures will have established people like your show; everyone likes celebs, no matter who the hell they are/aren't - you're onto a winner). Or, come up with a workable pun, and then imagine a format idea that might fit it.

The best one I had pitched to me was: 'OK, so we're in a recession, right, but people still want to have nice homes. In fact, they want to have nicer homes now, because they can't afford to go out and they can't afford to move. So, for this programme, right, we save money AND we give people better homes. What we do is, we get someone who's really good at making things, like curtains, and cushions, and tarting up old bits of furniture that you'd otherwise throw out, and we get them to live with someone for a week. And they re-do their house, with stuff they've already got!'

'Oh, I see', I said. 'What's the name of this show going to be then?'
'The Artful Lodger', they replied.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

Anyhoo, last week I decided I definitely could work in telly because I and my cohorts came up with three CRACKING formats. One of our authors was trying to think of a celeb reality format for one of his characters, a celeb who was down on his luck and trying desperately to revive his career (does celeb reality contain anyone who doesn't fit that bill?) He was aiming for a show of barrel-scraping awfulness, and had come up with Celebrity Pot Black. Whilst thinking this sounded like a show that had actually been on at the end of the 80s, I told his editor that it wasn't really hitting the mark. Not out-there enough to be funny; too boring to be conceivably commissioned. Although that BBC3 show, where 'celebs' had to live with pigs or something? Clearly commissioned by a farmer who'd been given an internship for a week.

'Right', said my editor, 'you'd better come up with something better then.' 'Done!' I shouted, giddier with excitement than Alan Yentob when they declared him top of the Important and Relevant BBC Presenter Tree not long ago. And so behold, what I have done: I've made a better world for everyone (spot the obscure pop reference!) I give you, with an Alan Partridge-esque drum roll:

Celebrity ER - mentored by a selection of junior doctors, celebrities do 18-hour shifts trying to patch up drunks after Friday night punch-ups; shouting 'CLEAR!' when a civilian's flatlining, and, if they survive the voting process, triumphing by rooting out a bullet with a biro and saving the life of a gang member from Brixton, whilst bellowing 'HANG ON, BRO!' and demonstrating rare flashes of hitherto concealed humanity.

Celebrity Prison Break - a revived version of the infamous Stanford University experiment, celebrities are randomly divided into groups of prisoners and warders. Whilst seeing how quickly the warders become mildless brutes intent on demeaning their charges - and how far they'll go to accrue 'points' - the prisoners must also try to escape, using teamwork, their innate paparazzi-dodging cunning and Twitter.

Celebs Under Fire - this is the one that I think will definitely be commissioned. Ross Kemp presents a 10-week series in which a bunch of celebrity wimps, numpties and so-called hard men (ie Vinnie Jones) are shouted at, denied sleep for days, forced to tunnel under barbed wire in the mud whilst being fired at, and otherwise 'trained' by the SAS. The winner receives a 6-month tour of duty in Helmand, possibly with Prince Harry, but definitely filmed for a Sky One documentary (presented by Ross Kemp).