A Sizzling summer?

Apparently this year we're going to get a sizzling summer.  I'm not holding my breath.  Last year was meant to be a barbecue summer.  My wardrobe is still full of the summer clothes I optimistically bought last year, waiting for those barbecue days that never happened. 

I am quickly learning that the only way to guarantee a summer is to travel to the continent during the summer season.  The only certainty one has about an English summer is that it will rain and it will be awful more days than it is not.
 

The Office

 

When I last wrote about the office farter, I did so from the relatively luxurious position of being seated far away from him.  His emissions affected me only if I happened to walk past that area of the office.  Otherwise, I could laugh at the problem, knowing as I did that only those less fortunately seated colleagues had to suffer the smell on a regular basis.  All that has changed now.

This week, in a brand new cost-cutting measure, we moved into a new open plan, hot desking arrangement.  Work has used a lot of jargon to describe the new arrangement; we’ve been told not to call it “hot desking” but “flexible working” and that instead of it being called “open plan” it should be called a “free flow area”.  In reality, what has happened is that they have removed all of the privacy dividers between desks, given us smaller desks and crammed 3 times as many people into the same space.  The best part is they have provided us with fewer desks than people, on the assumption that there will always be a few people out of the office attending court, clients or working from home.  Sadly, all too frequently all of us are in the office on any given day. Mornings are therefore a fight to get in early and nab one of the few available desks, as those who miss out find themselves sitting at tiny temporary desks near the boss (the professional version of wearing a dunce hat and sitting in the corner).  It’s all rather unpleasant.

What is perhaps most unpleasant is that it means each of us in the office finds ourselves on various occasions sitting next to the farter.  And as someone who was in that unfortunate position today, I can say that it is one of the most unpleasant experiences one can have in a professional environment.  Indeed, it took me some time to work out just what was happening on the first occasion, as the smell was so foul and odorous I simply didn’t think it could come from a human being.

No one in the office knows where to begin to resolve this problem.  A conversation with the farter needs to be had, but who is to have it?  Perhaps I have been in this country too long, and I am starting to become a Brit, but I am increasingly thinking that it might be easier to change jobs than to confront the farter.  So if you hear of anyone needing a (mostly pretty useless) lawyer, let me know.

Bad Theatre

The blog has been fairly silent over the last week.  This is largely because G and I haven't been home much.  That implies we've been doing exciting things.  We haven't.  With the exception of a lovely dinner party with friends, we've been seeing bad and depressing theatre.  First off was the Caretaker. Even Jonathan Pryce's excellent acting couldn't save Pinter's play from being a snooze-fest.  The only entertainment came when G's seat broke, and a theatre employee engaged in a Fawlty Towers-esque rearranging of all of the theatre goers so that everyone had a seat. 

Last night we saw Serenading Louie at the Donmar.  I highly recommend you avoid seeing the latter.  In fact, it probably ranks as one of the worst plays I have seen in London.  A quick read of the reviews this morning shows the critics are in agreement, with the Guardian giving it two stars out of five.  The Independent and the Times were slightly more positive (three stars out of five) while the Telegraph struggled to find anything good to say about the play.

I have just invested most of my worldly fortune in seats in each of the plays showing in the Summer and Winter seasons at the Donmar (usually a reliable bastion of good theatre).  Therefore, I sincerely hope that Serenading Louie isn't a taste of what's to come.

Acclimatising

Childhood is regarded by most as an age of learning. At the very least, it's a period during which we adjust, or acclimatise, to most aspects of life. We learn about, and get used to, the concept of things that embarrass us. We develop from children giggling at the word "sex" to learning about its meaning (even if still grossed out by it), becoming teenagers who are greatly excited by seeing it on mainstream TV and, finally, hardened adults who aren't in the least bit titillated or bothered by Sex And The City.

However, there are some that we simply never acclimatise to and so find ourselves manifestly ill-equipped to deal with as adults.

Flatulence is one such thing.

As a child, I remember there was nothing quite so hilarious as when a child would accidentally fart in the classroom. However, back then we didn't use the word "fart" (which made several of us in my nice girls' school uncomfortable) but referred to them as "pop offs". After this early period, it seems people were divided into one of two extreme camps: those that in adulthood still find a fart hilarious (evident by the numerous fart scenes still appearing in movies) and those who find the whole thing too disgusting to even talk about out loud. No one that I know became acclimatised to, and comfortable with, farts. I know that I certainly haven't become acclimatised to them. Although, depending on the context, I alternate between the two camps: someone else's inappropriate and unintended noise will always be hilarious but any smell will make me both blush and gag.

My failure to get to grips with this issue has now come back to haunt me as I now find myself sharing an office with a farter. Thankfully, I'm not sharing a desk with the farter. But the poor colleague of mine who does share a desk with the farter is in a complete quandary. We can't even think of appropriate adult language to use to discuss this problem, and the phrase "silent but deadly" has been used, accompanied (I confess) by a great deal of giggling on my part. We don't know whether it's a medical problem or whether we can even ask - is farting something that you can raise with the farter or is it a no-go zone? Life has left me manifestly ill-equipped to deal with this current problem; I don't even know where to begin. How on earth does one deal with an office farter?