Cold beans, pickles, peas in Alice

To be a jolly foreigner is to be an adventurer, to taste a foreign culture and say I really like some thing called "wurst" or something called "frutti". To learn that things new and know things better.

And yet when the taste buds splutter a little, when a vaguely remembered brand name from Blighty crosses a supermarket shelf, expense is not spared as it fails to make the other side of a shelf.

Jolly Foreigner is not only phoning home, but eating at home Brit style.

The rot has set in....

Online searches are made for English shops, Brit shops, American cousin shops....

There is a desperation  that overrides mere trivialities of cross-cultural integration, a need to sup at the tablecloth made of red, white and blue.

Museums, statues, parks, exhibitions, sites of local interest are forsaken to visit a British shop that sells Brit things and to buy Brit things.

A thirst is slated. A hunger is fed.

Its time to go back to the wurst.

Yes Man Cometh

Crisis was once the other side of the world, bankruptcy was for banks, austerity was for emerging nations and suddenly, as fast as a man with diarhoea searching for the nearest toilet and  a compulsory gravity-assisted weight loss diet plan is  a GO, suddenly  the Big Bad Wolf is at the office door. We are facing the wrong side of the equation in a red-line world.

Austerity is amongst us like a medieaval plague. A Black death in shades of grey.

And I am in a strange twilight world,  an unwell man of losing-a-changing beliefs, a mix of a diabetic seaching for the insulin syringe waiting for a necessary pain and a heretic praying to a God that was long neglected. Beliefs are gone and a lesser life is accepted.

Austerity breeds a survival trigger that the young bucks are ready for.
I may be growing old, I am, its called life. I may be growing jealous, it is not necessarily called life.

Today I am jealous. I am seeing greatness in degrees.

He says "Great" when he means "Really?". We could be team players, a happy consensus decision-making entity; but we are not. We are evolutionary survivors in the maelstrom of corporate inter departmental empire building while Rome burns.

He is the greater evil. I am fighting not for glory but for peer group survival and a pension. He fights to be my boss and my bosses' boss. My bosses listen. They see a Boss, they see themselves. Rotten apples rot.

The Company was the greatest and now the Empire may fall in the real world that cares not for the inter departmental games we play.

I am a sadder person of the person I once was,  a man feel unwilling not to become bitter and twisted, as bitter words are twisted to my disadvantage.

He tells it like it should be, not as it is. Telling it as it is, will not please the listeners who prefer things like it should be. Bosses like it. And if bosses like it, he likes it. Rose tinted spectacles are de rigeur. Things will be allright as long as we say its so.
Critical appraisal is left for the peer group review coffee break.
I tell it like it is, from experience and its called lack of ambition and he is ambitious.

He was seen to be the future at the team building appraisal where a skill in building egg-carrying, paper towers turns heads and brings promotion.
The reality check of the Big-bad, Real-world Wolf, that is called "Egg eater", will huff and puff and bring the house of cards down, but that is for next week's reality.
At the team building appraisal contest he is king. The Big Bad Wolf was not there.

I built slowly in brick for I was older and I knew of the metaphorical Wolf  knocking at the door.
Perhaps I was thick as a brick. I expected praise for my craftmanship, my aesthetic fitness for purpose of tower magnificence, et voila,.......... it is old school, it is built for yesterday and may serve tomorrow, but paper is the "new black" and was in for today.

The corporate empire falls as Fiddlers roam the coffee areas, that were once Bosses, looking at the paper trail, looking to lay blame, looking over shoulders and wondering why.

Am I lauded for my forethought, am I turned to, to raise the phoenix from the ashes.

I am applauded as a fool. Brick building is the future now, but brick building was not the future back then.
Being from "Back Then" is Bad, because being right from 'back then' proves that the  bosses were wrong 'back then' when paper was good. They said paper was good. A guilty finger could point that they were misguided, and if no-one knows then no-one knows. No-one knows the Fiddlers were wrong.
The Fiddlers can  be Bosses still, and he moves on with an egg, paper dreams and a ready Yes.

I sit afraid the Company Pension is my paper dream. I sit with my metaphorical phoenix. I still have the fire to make the ashes part..

1% mutually assured destruction

Mr Pareto invented a theorem that most of the time, 80% is good enough, because doing that extra 20%  to get to the magic 100% takes twice as long and by that time the horse has left the barn, the boat has left the harbour and the train has left the station or any other saying that means you're walking.

I am probably not quite a Mr Pareto in that my comfort zone is 90% and I hope the pony is still in the barn and is not called Shank.

But sometimes....

I am being re-assured that something is 99% good. "Good" you may say, best foot forward, you may say, not bloody likely, I say. My local colleague is telling me the site, our site for a new mega project is 99% free of mines. Call me a cowardly custard, but a 1% minefield is still a minefield and the paralympics does not need another hero,
Mr Pareto's 80% can go to pot, Mr Pryce's 90% is old hat, I am a 100% man today. I want to walk away.

Oui to the Yes to the .....Man

Belbin may have talked of plants and stuff. He may be right with his team, but sometimes there are those that think teams are for relegating. There are those of  a pretence, who can "Oui", like a Python saying pretentiously, Moi.

There is a favourite word "Yes" in the whispering, there is a favourite phrase "Three bags full" in the ether, and there is a favourite sentence "Jesus wept" in the Bible;  and not only because it is short, but that some other fella is crying.

These are the machinations of the man going up, a ladder to the executive toilet,  a staircase to Heaven called Hell. The man with a will to please, a man awaiting his inheritance, a man who will represent rather than contribute, a man who will smile rather than laugh, a man who will say yes more often than bride.

He is surviving in a jungle marked by moveable walls and corridors. He knows it is a jungle, he is a man, he is the animal, he knows that survival of the fittest rests on saying yes, he is the survivor where others may cry.

Selling out the light for the cellulite

At the risk of sounding old, because I am. Although perhaps, if I stood in the shadows, dimmed the light, and squnited I may get away with looking 10 months younger.  I will then have dreams of mutton will dress as lamb, if one has handy some sticky back tape, a pair of scissors and the Angel Valerie in attendance. If truth be told, as it often is, its hard to see the facts staring me in my mirrored face. No wrinkles will see my retinas with or without cataracts. Oops I am afraid, wrinkles will have their day in the sun.

I am facing not only jowls the size that says "Feed Me......come on  Big Mac", but I am also facing the fact that the good years may be behind me. As careers go, I should get use to my cubicle-space allocation quota. The shape of things to come is not getting bigger. The light at the end of my tunnel  may damn well be getting nearer but it is not getting brighter.

I look around the desk that is my empire, a laptop, a phone, cupboards, shelves, and see...... is this my reward for the years when I scorched earth, where I broke through glass ceilings with bloody wounds, where I broke down the walls of heart attack aches with a Beta blocker or two ,where I put my foot in doors whether open or not.  I threw metaphorical grenades as friends became ex- friends, faster than Bruno Mars could come to the conclusion catching grenades for ya is not a good idea.

I may still cut it as the wise old jowled head of sanity, but sanity is a burden that I carry in the face of a wave that has King Canute's name on it.

These days  I see my dynamism as quaint, running up that hill like a Jack the Lad  with a pale look and furrowed brow, my mojo as perhaps a tad to earnest, a tad too unnecessary, when there were other things to do, like being a Dad. My foot perhaps was not so much, in , through , over doors as in my mouth. And by gum these days I could easily accomodate size nines with enough room for a Big Mac to sneak pass.

You know you're growing old....

So its come to pass and it is not passing well.

I face disaster of Biblical proportion. Is it raining frogs that cats and dogs appear to be kittens and puppies; are rivers parting at a drop of a sturdy rod; is there a plagues of locusts playing merry hell with the cauliflowers; are first born males seeking to get in touch with their feminine side that surgery is a viable option. So what has brought this religious old testament fervour.

I will tell you.

This catastrophe that will bring a tear to an eye and a wobble to a knee, more than my aging middle-aged body is happy to accept as normal for a man of my age.

I have been passed over.

I have a new boss. I have a boss half my age. I am looking up to a whipper snapper knee high to a grass hopper. A boss so wet behind the ears that a plastic surgeon would probably recommend shifting a tear duct.

He is dynamic, animated, motivated, excelling to the point where arrogance and confidence become a fine line he is not afraid to cross. He instructs me on things. I counsel caution, he sees cowardice.

Brave decisions will be made this night, and there by the grace of some decades there went I.

I made brave decisions once and learnt bravery should be tempered. I learnt too late for a few lost oldies  who foundered on the back of my survival as I succesfully avoided my come uppance. Small mercies for those who left that I got better, I learnt. I drew a firmer line between arrogance and confidence.

Times pass but sometimes it remains the same. The wheel turns and we can end up at the same space, if not the same place.  I have a feeling this may somehow be fitting justice for me.

I hope the Company survives. Let us pray.

The seriousness of the Middle-aged middling Exec

I  am there the old fella with a face that could waken the dead and unwaken them. I could star in a twilight years' movie. This is a serious face, a face that adds more to the IRR, more to the Company turnover, more to the profit margin a than a quizical look of a young eyebrow, more than a furrowing of the young brow. This face can portray by a consternation of a jowl that negotiation has not finished. This face can cause a sharp intake of breath that may need medical staff in attendance readying breathing apparatus. This is business. This is negotiation. This face is getting the bottom line a little higher. This is why they pay me sums of money.

I am a professional , having professional conversations, and the price I pay is small talk never rises to social talk most times. So we face the post Business dinner partying. This is not a party by any definition of my father, we are misleading the witness m'lud. This is small talk gone big-time.  Conversations settle into safe places, "how's the..." the kids doing at college unless they are not, the wife doing unless there is a divorce, the rugby is doing reasonably well unless the wooden spoon is being carved.

But out of the 9 to 5, in my time, I want to party, to tell the world a joke or two that may involve self deprecation, that may not be as politically correct as one ought to be. I want to go tabloid in the broadsheet world. I must stay strong in the face of an intake of wine that may release a general sharp intake of breath all round. I must not dribble the secret sauce. I must know how to use the silver spoon after it has been placed right-most on the dish. I must not suggest if you were my wife I would drink the poison and fail to give credit to Mr Churchill. I must remember that on Monday I must still be the strong jawed IRR-focused old fella.

Once at a younger age, I was a young fella and with other young fellas and we could party under the eagle eye of the old fellas in a corporate party, to get slightly drunk and hope to be forgiven, to laugh and then laugh louder on an equation inexorably linked to alcohol.We could party-ish.  An old fella may have joined us and regretted their faux pais on Monday, his respect left at a door called Emergency Toilet Exit remembered from the night before ~ one of the boys. Now I am an older fella and emergency toilet visits are to be avoided. Sacrifices to age, I must maintain my depressing work gravity that keeps my feet firmly on the ground.

I am destined to be bipolar and to hide it in the safety of my family home.

Two sides to The Coin

Its Friday the 31st and dyslexics be afraid. 0k I said it...I did not know he had struggled against this condition to achieve things that I found easy. Mate... its not even Friday 31 its 30th. I amde a mistake. I am stupid. Its obvious look at the Calendar. Hey mate call me names.....Its not the end of the world...its...let's....

It is not politically correct, but hell, its funny, I think. Anyway it was in jest, a joke, hell..... why do people take things so seriously... why do people report things to the HR department. Hell, this is political correctness gone mad, its political correctness defeating the man, political correctness gone bad, there is a man down. There is man being left behind.

Bringing things back to earth appears difficult these days. Maybe its something to do with global warming.

So in this world of growing old and I am watching others exude confidence as if it was a bodily fluid, whilst others may be playing scared feigning confidence to pretend to be extrovert whilst watching others grow old. The coin has two sides, and both has lost its cents.

Today is not a good day.

Hey I'm an executive get me out of here, or alternatively your position has been terminated.... the position mind, it may mean I am unemployed but its not my fault, the position has up and gone away. The position did it luv. Although as a by-product, a side effect, I am to be terminated.

An apology, a grovelling, an earnestness to clear the air, to be chastened, humbled; it seems the world is changing and I am not.

In my youth, we changed because we were the changers. We were catalysts. Advocates of a new world. We were cutting edge with tongues so sharp that smiles were lacerated into snarls and back again. We laughed at the old school, the old school where black fellas were not as efficient as whiteys so the old whitey folk said, or at least some of them said. Hell my father knew enough lazy black fellas, but that was coal dust hiding white skin and he called out many a lazy fella in no uncertain terms ... in un-politically correct terms no matter of race, hair colour, intellect or downright which side of the bed he had fallen out of. It was the way. A better, unequivocal, fair way it was. Calling a shovel a shovel.

Its easy to label and its easy to have fun in a circumstance without meaning. Sarcasm conquers the bully. Sarcasm can be the bully. Humour is cruel, humour makes one the leader, makes one one of the boys. And sometimes to one it has a meaning not intended but leaving wounds to be tended. Today I have misjudged the mood, not realised the sensitivity, I did not want to make you cry, but hell I did not want to cry either. The world has changed without me knowing.

My common sense appears to need to change to Common Law sense, and I do not know if I am wrong, but I do know...Its time to be scared, very scared. Sorry.

Not taking one for the Team

Suddenly I appear to be a relic of an older generation, a dinosaur. There is a fear of restructuring, a rumored clearout, there is a downsizing going on and age appears to be a bad thing. I appear to have a target on my back bigger than a bald head with a pimple in the middle of it. I may need a wig, a fitness regime and a forgery of a birth certificate to survive this battle of the corporate generation.

I made the issue a Showstopper, it seemed a good idea at the time, it seemed the right thing to do, a decision of maturity. Apparently not.

Now the corporate mindset has shifted ever so slightly by say 180 degrees. I am expected to be the fall guy, the climbown person, the one to be sacrificed for the greater good, the sacrifical ram; but there is more tricks in this old dog than you can wave a very large stick at.

They don't call me a magcian for my cutting edge swords-in-a-box routine, these swords are blunt for a reason. I have enough cards up my sleeve to make poker a non-risk sport. I wear long sleeves for a reason, and you whipper snapper short-sleeved full haired upstarts do not.

The boys and girls can sing poker face but it took yaers to get these jowls of cheekd that are impervious tp truth and lies. These are jowls of wrath. My innocence has long gone and it iis time to show a middle aged style.

I will fight them in the bureaus, I will fight them in the VIP lounges and I will survive better than a girl on rollerskates.

I have been told that whilst on the way up the corporate ladder, do not step on fingers because when....whatever; well the Bass Pryce corollary is on the waydown I will stamp on a few younger fingers. If I climbdown, I will go down with a few "friends".

Suddenly as much as it started, it ends that age-appropriate knowledge is valued. The boys have run the piechart model of ups and downs, advantages and disadvantages, the boys have come to the conclusion on multiple scenario planning that I was actually right to start with. Climbdown has been mooted to a moral stand of our principles and to hell with the bottom red line. Voices of dissent amongst the lynch mob jury of youth has been muted.

So my colleagues have realised that the blue skies need to be painted that way, rose tinted spectacles need to be bought, otherwise stuff happens, life happens. Bad stuff happens. It happens. Whisper it. Shhhhh.....it happens.

Taking one for the Team

Back in the Day, we learnt to use the slogans , the caveats, new-fangled proverbs, the words that meant we were damn cutting edge. We ran flags up flagpoles so often it could have been the back of Nelson's ship and it said every man must do his "cultural awareness course", touched bases that were not clothed and just about confused the older generation, until somehow we too were old, or at least older. How did that happen?

And today I am being asked to take a bullet for the team... yer wat? The old fella is being persuaded by the team that its time to be lead out and shot metaphorically.

Do I need a flak jacket, do I need a tank, do I need to prepare some final words -"Don't shoot' comes to mind. Or am I to lay my life down for the sake of reversing a business decision, that I stood by, until it became the sticking point, the showstopper, so its time to be humble.

Humbleness however is dynamic, this bullet will be taken over a dinner, perhaps the condemned man's last meal, perhaps not. Here is an environment to soften the climbdown, apologies can be whispered, 180- degrees can be re-aligned by say 90 degrees perhaps. Here is an an ambience that I can walk away from with my life..... Yee-ha.

But there is a penalty, I am taking some serious calories for the team, a starter that jollies up the weight watcher scale and makes it worth watching in Guiness Book of obesity stellar performance kind of way; a main course of potatoes garlanded with oil, layered in sauce, that sets a juicy piece of meat on its pedastal; a dessert that is not a desert of overflowing creams and sugary things, and all fluidised with an antiquated wine or two.

These calories for the team may not tonight lead to the heart attack.

But at some point, too many carbo-hydrate protein, cholestorol inter-snack fillers over three-to-five courses will lead to taking the metaphorical bullet anyway.....yee...beejesus.

Regretable Choice of Footwear

I am by common consensus an executive, I wear a tie a shirt with a logo on it and occasioanlly cufflinks. I wear trousers that match a jacket. I am wi-fi'd to my corporate head office like an umbilical cord that is broken only by an aeroplane. What more clear definition of executive is necessary.

I am at the meeting dispensing Excel sheets like toilet roll, laserpointing power point presentations that only need a cuddly Disney character to win an Oscar. I am shining from top to toe, debonair; I am eloquent in what is and what is not possible, urbane. I am doing my bit for the bottom line in an ethically defensible manner. Its a good day.

Therefore when I visit a site in some distant land, that resembes a war zone, perhaps because it was a war zone, and when it rains and when it snows and when I am guided by some well meaning local to view an apparently key manhole cover. A Manhole cover that may have been hidden from civilisation for some time, that an archeologist may well be more interested than I am, but this manhole is apparemtly key to our design considerations.

I am too polite to say I am an executive, not an engineer. I am too polite to say my executive shoes may get soggy.

Urbane to urban is a step, I am called to do today.

My executive shoes are no more. They are befitting of the warzone, camouflaged by real mud, encrusted to a giant size. I have the gait of a flat-footed Disney villain.

My executive expenses are not going to let this be a deductible expense.

At times its better to be an engineer. At times its better to be an archaelogist. Fun in the mud is long forgotten pastime. I am not an executive today and perhaps its still a good day.