Pay-per-click 4

I don't know a great deal about Jenny. What I know I found out through, well, call it stalking, call it observation. I know who her friends are. Her life schedule, her interests.
It did take hours and hours. And Mr Google did what he could but there are so many Jennifer Simpsons in this world, it is no joke, this obssession of mine. And I wish I could say now, calmly, "the moment has passed", but it has not, by a long way.
I have moved on somehow. When I fell in love with that woman I didn't know the difference between sweep rowing and sculling, or a quad and a four, or a double and a pair.
I know the difference know. I've taken to rowing. After reading so much about the milieu I decided that rowers were a very dedicated bunch and it was worth checking that scene out.
Dedicated indeed they were, as well as a tightly knit socially. But meanwhile I got deeper and deeper into cycling, and that is a much hotter burn.
I've heard about rowers practically going blind during competition, due to all oxygen going to the legs, and not enough going to the brain. Now that must burn. I don't think I'll ever reach that stage.
On the downside there is a lot of hanging around. Waiting for some tardy crew member. It's a bit like playing in a band, or travelling with a big group. You travel at the average speed of the group, never faster.
With cycling there is less hanging around, you get on your bike and your off somewhere down hilly Surrey and Kent. A few laps around Richmond Park. A night ride in London, up to Hampstead Heath to look at the beautiful skyline, then down to Primrose Hill for some of the same and with a bit of luck catch some live music if some neo-hippies happen to have a strummable acoustic guitar.
Then off to the 24 hour bagel shop. By then it could be 2am, the places starts to heave with clubbers coming back from Old Street and your head is so full of oxygen it's unreal, I'm more or less in the same state as the clubbers, except they've done drugs and I've been riding.
I took up sport as a substitute for drugs anyway, so it's a fair exchange and I'm where I want to be, takes some work to get there, but it's the same high without the come down, although you can take anti-come down drugs nowadays, that pad your crash landing. Cheats!
Five hours have gone by.
I lie in bed, hair dripping wet. Staring at the ceiling and thinking about Jenny.
I asked her out three times. Three times she declined. Not before opening the most beautiful and engaging smile. It melted me.
God it took a Herculean effort to get off my bum, walk up to her and ask if she was doing anything that weekend. It was as if I was in a dream where some kind of force kept pulling me back and it was near impossible to move forward. Still, I went all the way up to her and asked.
She was doing her streches and stared at me in disbelief. Time froze. Then the smile. I took a deep breath, my eyes must have been staring wildly. A relieved "I thought you would never ask" look on her face but she said "I'm going rowing this weekend."
"Uh, ok", I replied and started turning away, shell shocked.
"Thank you for asking" she replied before getting back to her stretches.
I was in heaven for days. Then somehow, it all went wrong. Or more likely, it wasn't meant to be.
And since then things have changed. She stopped dying her hair blonde. I keep and eye on her, I know she's doing well, I like to be near her. Her presence has a calming effect on me.
She has this sisterly relationship with her mother, who had her when she was still very young. The mother, not having any sisters, developed a relationship with the daughter to fill the gap.
I don't know how that affects both or if it's good or bad. It's just one more piece of the <> I'm sewing. And one day, maybe it will all make sense, at once. On the last page, of the last chapter, before the grim reaper appears, in the shape of a sharp bend, near a cliff in the Pyrenees, saying, "Time is up, son", and over the guard rail I fly to a violent and instant death, a few seconds away. My life flashes before my eyes. Scenes of my childhood. Me playing with my brothers and sister. Walking with my mother on the beach at night, hand in hand. She stands so tall her head seems to touch the starry sky. And then darkness. But no. Aching life continues. Off I go, to break another pain barrier, then to compare notes, with my aching friends.
Knocked down on every round. Yet, up and away. Saved by the bell, again. The referee was up to nine. A brief respite then the flying blood, the cracking bones. "Will I survive, is God watching?"

Pay-per-click 3

I hear a random gentle tapping. Rain drops on the window pane.
Outside traffic is thickening. Umbrellas appear. Darker clouds gathering above.
Lightning. One elephant, two elephant. Thunder. Six-hundreds metres away.
It may have struck a tree, a passerby, a car, on a spot never to be stricken again.
A police vehicle, followed by an ambulence, make steady progress along Victoria Street.


It's now mid-afternoon and I'm feeling very sleepy.

Pay-per-click 2

Back to my desk, in my cubicle. Eating my delicious toasted bacon sandwich on brown bread with brown sauce and no butter, to Franco's great disappointment.
He knows I don't take butter, yet he asks every time so it cannot be helped.
How many calories has this sandwich got? I think it's 3 calories per carbohidrate grams, so, probably say 100 grams of bread so 300. Then 4 calories per gram of protein and 5 per gram of fat. The bacon is pretty fatty so let's make it 4.5 times say 50 grams so total calories comes to, uhm, get the calculator, 525 plus brown sauce make it 550. I probably burnt 750 on the way in so, I'm losing weight.
I don't really need to lose any but it's good to keep track, I think. My biggest problem at the moment is flatulence. Well, can it be classed as a problem. If I had no morals and farted any time I felt the necessity it would never be an issue, but I can't really stand up in the middle of the morning meeting, let rip a thunderous one, and thunderous they have been, raise my arms to the heavens welcoming the kudos and then taking my seat again. I wish I could do it, though, now that I think of it.
It's so unnatural to try not to fart. It's against nature, are you listening people.
My dad told me never to fart. I don't know where he picked that up from - Christian upbringing?
But my mother was brought up that way, too, and never mentioned anything about farts. About sex, yes. She gave me a thick book. "Read this". She said.
But no advice on farts.
Why am I farting so much?
I lay down for my extended Saturday sleep and cannot believe the amount of gas that comes out of me. And it doesn't really bother me, when I'm on my own. So GUILT, yes, guilt, turns me into something that I am not. Still, why is it happening?
It seems to coincide with me cold-turkeying from the coffee. Maybe it was too big a shock and my digestive system is confused, expecting a big caffeine hit any moment and mal-functioning in the meantime.
And all that time ago, a woman was giving me oral sex, and I felt like farting. It is not a nice predicament.
If I really didn't give a damn I would have, but I dind't want her to stop, so had to stop enjoying oral sex and direct my efforts to avoid farting. It is almost tragic, come to think of it. But the Greeks wrote nothing of it, so it can't be.
But halitosis, yuk! That is far worse, confess. That woman I kissed and kissed not because I wanted to, but because she wouldn't stop. She had rotten breath, still we kissed for what seemed an eternity. Her eyes closed, her fingertips running through my hair. I thought I was going to faint.
And I never told her, "By the way, you have terrible breath." I should have said. "I know" she probably would have replied.
So, will I fart in my cubicle. No, I decide. Chicken. Jenny might walk by. She never does but she might.
I finish the sandwich. Inspect my desk for crumbs and proceed with the afternoon task list.
Number one, music. Sweet music. Number two, chatroom. Number three, news updates. Number four, emails. That will do for the next couple of hours.
Some soldiers turn up for a chat. Verbal chat that is.
They are good hardworking people enjoying an early afternoon skive and social, before the going gets serious.
Tom is into snowboarding. Very addicted to it, in fact. He's done a couple of seasons, meaning, left everything behind and went to live on the mountain for the entire winter.
I visited him while he was out there. He tells me of snowfall across the Alps, where it's looking good, etc.
He lives for snowboarding and in the summer he sulks.
Meanwhile the others are getting kind of interested, wanting to experience this fever Tom talks about.
It won't be long before the company ski trip, so they will get their chance.
"Dan, from the top of the L'Yret, remember that first left?" He asks me.
"Yep, I remember". I reply.
"Ah, killer. Two blokes, Italians, died, the day after you left."
The others look, wondering how close Tom himself got to death, having been close to where it happened and speaking of the area in such familiar tones. Oh, this fascination with death. The last frontier, the unknown, something in those lines. It's got to be.
The mountain is dangerous when it bites.

Pay-per-click 1

The weather forecast last night predicted rain. Yet, it does not look like rain.
Young Sam told me of his discoveries, a few weekends back, as we cycled up and down the Surrey hills. He said that two side effects of global warming will be inaccurate weather forecasts and high winds, that will ultimately create permanent hurricanes, circling around the world, non-stop.
He is studying for his A-levels so I took his word for it.
The head wind is brutal. I still haven't left Richmond Park and there are another 12 miles to go.
I spot for the third time what I believe to be an albino deer. I have been observing that creature and this is my third sighting.
The first two gave me the impression it was integrated in the herd but now I see it lying on its own. Has it been rejected? Eyes on the road.
There is a 20 mile speed limit inside the park, not that it means much. Cycling is dangerous.
Big Al has a girlfriend, Ali, a doctor. She deals with serious head injuries and has seen a couple of bad ones, consequences of cycling crashes in this idyllic looking park.
She does not advocate the use of helmets - says it's better to die that to live in a vegetative state.
Well, I had a younger brother once, who died in a bike crash. He was not wearing a helmet.
What would have happened had he been wearing one? Would he have turned into a vegetable?
If I had to choose, between leaving the life support machine on or switching it off, what would I have done? I wonder.
Are we heart and soul? If so, where is his soul now?
Three blondes driving black porsches, in quick succession the opposite way. That is life, one fleeting moment after the other, never to be repeated.
Goodbye park. Hello big smoke. The horror.
The diesel fumes. Still, in the bitterest cold day of winter they will do to keep me warm. Billowing out of a bus, as it pulls up the hill.
A mother, child and dog. A beggar. A policeman. I stop at the red light. The pedestrians cross the road, most on the way to the train station.
A man smoking a cigarette. The tobacco smells good. A young woman, listening to her music and working on the next selection. An old woman - my mother's age.
Next to me pulls up a cyclist. He coughs. Green lights.

***

I sit behind my desk and try to put things in perspective.
Number one concern - money. Two - women. Three - time off.
How am I going to get more of all three? In one fell swoop? Answers on a postcard.
A reminder pops up on my screen. Meeting 9am. Bummer.
I need to write a presentation.
I dig out one I wrote 3 1/2 years ago. Edit it and it's done.
I make a few modifications to jargon. Segmentation. That's a reasonable one. Slightly out of my remit. I'm dealing with technical aspects of this project.
It's a very useless one. No wonder morale of the troops in so low. An army of eunuchs. Defeatists. And who could blame them? A concerted effort to create junk that connects to other junk, that drives up some other junk, up to the top of your search results.
So you, who's hand rests on the mouse, can push it forward on the desk, and the pointer up on the screen, and with your index finder press the button and generate the all import click for which we get paid.
And millions of people click, the shareholders get paid and my wages go into my bank account.
Although I understand the business model, sometimes I'm caught off-guard and it baffles me. How can that collective act be generating wealth?
But soon I remember, because it is an intention to do something and there is the value.
What would Marx make of this, had he been living?

***

Being the scumbag that I am I manage to place concern number four high up on the agenda. Travel, that is.
I love travel. A change is as good as a rest. And what can be more changing than travel, as long as you are not always travelling to the same places.
The meeting ends up in a little tug-of-war. The chief operations officer offers some minor resistance which I must handle in a very dismissive way to emphasize the absolute necessity of a face-to-face with our people in Amsterdam and his <> in objecting.
The problem is the dates. I know he wants to play golf on Thursday. The scoundrel. Working from home. Oh, well. Good luck to you mate, if you can get away with it.
I want to go on my own. To smoke my weed in peace.
Jerry is our COO and we see eye to eye in most cases. I'm a "hands on" project manager, meaning, I'm still in the trenches, typing away, with the other soldiers.
Jerry is pulling a classic. The parent company is not doing well in the US, meaning, competition is at our heels, the market in polarizing and odds are soon we'll be bought out. The moment it happens Jerry will go. So he devised this big project, the biggest white elephant you can think off, and outsourced it to an eastern European software house.
Meanwhile he has an understanding with the supplier. They'll get paid big money for their standards, and they'll supply two products. One overboard for our company, and one under the carpet for a start-up he'll be moving to, once the buy out is completed.
A stroke of genius. Well, not really. He got so many perks off suppliers, that bastard. No wonder, he must have given them tens of millions of moneys, easy.
And how do I know all this? Well, I'm curious. I wander where the others don't and/or cannot go. In one word, access. That is what I have. And I use it. Sometimes.
Jenny had an abortion. Peter is gay. Etc. Pretty useless information.

I walk around the lake at lunchtime. I see Jenny and Peter in the distance. She works in Sales, he, in operations.
She is a very good looking woman and to be fair Peter is a very good looking man and they would make a lovely couple but they are very close and good friends and that is as good as it gets. Put sex in the mix and it's all fucked. Literally and metaphorically. Am I friends with any woman I had sex with? No. I wonder why.
Well, I'm not exactly enemies either with every woman I had sex with, but it seems to add rot. There is something repulsive about the effect of sex on friendship, I reckon.
Jenny is pouring her heart out and Peter listens. Never interrupting her speech, in that difficult moment. Only moving his head, now nodding, now shaking, looking at her intently.
She goes out with a married man, or used to. You work out the rest.
I think she would go out with Peter, given the choice, but he's had heartbreaks of his own and he goes with men.
Still, they prop each other up, through the hard emotional times, and come out at the other end, stronger.
I wish I had a friend.

***

In the Italian cafe I talk to Franco. He's been living in London for 25 years and has recently returned from Italy, where he was on holidays. I tell him of my love for Italian ice cream.
It turns out he was in Desenzano del Garda, by Lake Garda, which I know. I ask him if he knows the Gelateria Vivaldi, in the town centre, which he does.
He is a very healthy looking chubby man. The bloom of youth still in his cheeks and a sparkle in his eyes. Unlike the owner, who recently suffered a stroke and can hardly make a sandwich.
Franco's favourite english word is butter, and he asks his customers every time, even though they've been going there for yonks, if they would like butter on their bread. And as he asks, he gestures with his arms and hands, as if he was spreading imaginary butter on imaginary bread, and failure to agree would break his operatic heart.
My co-workers have spotted this habit and make no end of fun of it. Which is quite funny in itself. I can' t think of another instance, where the original and the imitation are equally funny.
I leave the caf with a toasted bacon sandwich, with brown sauce and no butter.
I see Jenny on her way to the office.
"Alright, Jenny?" I ask.
She smirks. I fell in love with this woman when I first saw her, on the ergo, in the gym. That was over two years ago and since then, I have never spoken to her for more than a couple of minutes at a time. And I probably can still remember every exchange, if I tried.