Creak

It’s been a week now and my right knee is still really sore when I go down stairs. It’s beginning to feel a bit sore (but not as bad by a long chalk) going upstairs. Because I am favouring my right, my left knee is beginning to creak, too.

I guess this is nature’s way of telling me to move to a low gravity planet, or just evolve flippers and go back to the oceans. Or I could try again, to ignore the siren call of the iced bun and try yet again to shed some tonnage. I am frankly unsure which of these three scenarios is the most plausible or practical option. But really: cake.¹

Happily for me, I live and work in areas where there are no hills and walking along the flat as yet presents no additional problems to me poor belaboured pins. This means that if I can actually shed a couple of belt sizes, my knees may well perk up ² and all will be well. I came to within an ace of achieving my initial target of being able to wear my leather jacket properly, but one too many snacks seems to have put paid to that at least temporarily. I guess it will be a bit harder over the winter, too.

Oh well; more effort required, I guess. In the meantime, I may hobble out at lunchtime and get a tub of ibuprofen…


¹I actually don’t eat much cake. You should assume I use it as a marker for any food that makes life worth living, but which gives dieticians neck strain from frantically shaking their heads.

²Perky knees!

Snide building syndrome

This building is developing a personality, and it is a crotchety one. It is not actively vicious, but it is most certainly cantankerous and prone to fits of annoyance.

We are deep into the second week of the two atriums (atria?) being sealed off while workmen with scaffolding use pulleys and joists to haul lumber up to the glass roof so that they can check to ensure that no more of it is going to drop 10 storeys and brain/decapitate the denizens. The building has only recently become so distracted as to actively drop things on people, but it is symptomatic.

The hot water frequently stops being hot and sometimes the water just stops – well, it stops coming out of the boilers in the tea points. We do have a microwave, so we can boil up cold water in that if necessary, but it really oughtn’t be needed.

You don’t need me to recap on the state of our IT, but I should just reiterate that it has a mind of its own and likes to sulk between about 3.15 and 4.30 in the afternoon, particularly. I mean, I don’t blame it; that’s when I like to sulk, too.

I rarely use the lifts these days. I only work on the first floor and knees not withstanding (er…), even I am not so lazy as to call the lifts down for one floor. When I did use them, I remarked about their eccentricities quite frequently, I think. If you are in the lift lobby, there is nowhere you can stand that will not involve you in at least one futile dash to get in a lift that has arrived, stood with the door open for a minute or so without alerting you, before the door closes to the sound of the alert bell before it slopes off up into the darkest recesses of the building. Often, this is the moment, just as you have arrived at the now closed lift door, that another lift, at the furthest distance from you will announce its arrival. Under no circumstances should you attempt to get on it. It will stay there and you may enter, but you will be very much aged before the doors closed and then it will not move. When you get tired of that game, your original lift will reappear and, if you are lucky, will deign to take you to the floor of your choice.

Only two lifts will take part in this ritual at any time; the other six (usually five; there’s always one out of service for maintenance), will stay hidden on the floor of their choice, smirking at our attempts to not use the stairs.

I was prompted to recount these eccentricities after a visit a few minutes ago, to the little civil servants’ room¹. There are air fresheners in there. Not little dangly ones, nor even cubes of smelly salts or anything of the sort. We have spray air fresheners, operated by some kind of sensor, or timer, or indentured midget. At random points in the day, they spray some vaguely floral scent, probably highly carcinogenic, into the air. Or at least they do when the maintenance monkeys remember to fill them.

I was in said room attending, as it were, to business, when the damned thing on the wall behind me blew a raspberry. I swear it was provocatively and pointlessly rude for no reason whatsoever.

The building has a personality.


¹the loo