The Ironic Icon

As always with the week before Xmas lunch in the canteen, it's a whole seven days of extremes and mixed emotions; like Tuesday for example.  I nipped downstairs to collect the usual carrier bag of drugs from Pharmacy - not for personal use I might add - and someone thrust a hymn book in my hand saying,
"Here, you look like you can sing ... have this!"  It was the size of the OED and I was starting to get scared because every carol ever written would take all night and into 2013. In case I've not mentioned it before, my favourite and oft ignored carol is On Christmas Night All Christians Sing - it's right in my singing range as I'm the child of heavy smokers.
"I'm not in Gareth Malone's league you know.  I never made it to the school choir."  A blatant lie because I didn't feel like singing Silent Night with Matron nearby on the descant part.
"Never mind  ... you'll soon get the hang of it."  Thus I was frogmarched off to take part in an impromptu carol service for the patients; and it was lovely.  And they gave me a mince pie.
Spirits lifted, it made light work of a long shift.  Not so the next day when I trotted in to be told I was needed urgently in a Feedback Session.  Confused, I wondered had I been flat during O Little Town of Bethlehem or, as everyone does, missed out an entire verse of Hark the Herald Angels?
Imagine my stark horror at being shoved into a boiling meeting room with a group of assorted P's and R's - pharmacy, physios, phlebotomists and radiographers.  Plus one Raven perched on the end of the nurses.
After three of the most tedious Powerpoint presentations I've had to endure [nothing tops the Data Protection Act ... nothing] and like Dr Who's iconic stone angels, I was praying for the lights to go out when we finally got to what's laughingly called 'The Staff Satisfaction Survey'.  Now there's nothing wrong with these if they're honest but I suspected some employees had been slightly economical with the truth, especially as our happy little band scored bottom in the category relating to team work.  Our group leader asked for feedback and bravely, I ventured the following,
"Could it be that some people don't care about the impact their thoughtless actions have on others?"
"Such as?" asked the management.
"Well, someone borrowed the monitor cable from my PC yesterday for five hours without considering the impact it might have on my workload."  i.e. I couldn't do any work without elbowing a colleague out of the way.  The assembled company were horrified at such an act of inconsideration and vowed it would never happen again except that when I got back upstairs, ironically the vital cable had once again disappeared.
Earlier, I mentioned probably the most overused word of 2012 - Iconic.  There ... I did it again.
And every day on the BBC or in the press, some idiot who can't use a dictionary misuses the word in relation to music.  Sometimes I feel like ringing Points of View but to save on the cost of a call, let's clear up the muddle here and now.  Please checkout any website you like for icons - in fact, there's a museum of them in Clinton, Illinois featuring not one reverential painting of Led Zeppelin in concert.  However, this picture is of a car park in Leicester and the one I was forced to visit on Saturday as there was no room at the inn ... also I'd had an odd compulsion to visit the 8ody5h0p and wish them all greetings of the season.

I'd just dropped off a slab of 70% chocolate to keep Sandra going for an hour or so and spying my previous employer's logo I felt a glowing tide of nostalgia.  How fortunate then that Caraway and her partner blocked my way with a welcoming hug and, after a brief catch up in the aisle, the moment had passed.  Sometime later, I returned to the car park with soaked feathers and laden like a pack animal, so imagine my irritation when the pay machine refused my cash. Use my switch card?  Oh dear me no!
Eventually, we were ushered to an alternative machine by a bully in a high-vis jacket - I wonder if he does crowd control at weddings?  To appease the grumbles, he quipped,
"This is an ICONIC car park ... it's historic."  I was at school when it was built and it's an eyesore, even if it has been featured on Top Gear.  Imagine my joy when the bloke in front of me made light of the situation.
"Mate.  This thing you call a car park is a pile of 1970s pre-stressed concrete and NCP would do us all a favour if they sold it to the Army for target practise."
I was sniggering up my sleeve until I realised we'd all been charged an extra pound for queuing.  Anyone got the Army's phone number?

Tip of the Blog:  LindyLou, one of the lovely ladies I work with in The Bunker marked the end of her shift on Friday by proclaiming,
"I've got to go to Asda now ..." and promptly burst into tears.  Grateful there's only a few of us on Tuesday, I dared to ask,
"God ... how many are you catering for?"
"Three!"  And she carried on through half a box of tissues.
From the bottom of my heart, may your turkey be golden and glossy, bacon crisp and all the trimmings taste delightful.  Give the pudding to the birds, they need it.


Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year.
the Ravens.

Groundrush ...

Are we there yet?  Instinct tells me when the big day is within easy reach because there's not enough hours in the day to put the tree up and motor through an entire bag of pick'un'mix washed down with Prosecco.  Best of all, I get treated to my favourite movie of all time.  I spotted a raven in it this year making 'The Muppet Christmas Carol' surely the finest version of the works of Charles Dickens ever made; better even than Patrick Stewart's offering.  I particularly empathise with Miss Piggy as she lays into Michael Caine for being a scrooge; a defining moment for anyone who is overworked and underpaid.  I'm both [still] but this year I'll be home early, my beak in a box of Thornton's finest, instead of being kept prisoner in the Retail Cathedral, piling up mountains of body butter ready for Boxing Day.  I'm almost giddy with excitement.
In Job 2.1, I'm also giddy from the mad rush of patients desperate to get 'done' before the holidays begin.  And so, to make the journey from check-in to bed appear slick, professional and seamless, I've taken on the mantle of a tour guide asking an assortment of fascinating questions while we all wait for the lift.
"Been here before? Good journey? Oh the traffic's awful and the car park's bursting isn't it."  General chit chat is the best I can do really whereas patients reply with,
"I got here early just in case."  Pity, because your surgeon's still operating on the other side of town. "Will it take long?  Am I first on the list? Is my gall bladder supposed to be poking through my shirt?"  I counter this with a short explanation as to my totally non-medical nature and please could they ask a nurse or doctor shortly.  Once we've arrived in the patient's room, I adopt my 'airstewardess' stance from the 1980s and point out the view - sheep, fields, etc - the wardrobe, the television with remote, two over-wing exits and a bathroom at the rear.  And run for it.
Yesterday, I ran a bit too fast and skidded to a halt in front of a gorgeous chap waiting by my desk with his overcoat and scarf on.  In a boiling hospital, he had to be a weirdo.
"Can I help you?" I chirped, an octave higher than normal.  Honest, he's in George Clooney's ER league.
"Not really, unless you can tell me if my next patient's shaved and ready."  Luckily, one of the student nurses heard his question, stopped hoovering up the remains of a jumbo sausage roll and blustered,
"It's okay Professor, he's on the bed and ready to go."  Professor?  When did this bloke start practising medicine - puberty?  I spent the rest of my shift feeling about as groomed and fragrant as Hagrid after a long afternoon mucking out dragons.
There's loads of those in this neck of the woods too, let me tell you. My boss had asked me to help with the minutes of the MedSecs meeting - lunch is a tactical ploy and usually included to negate the impact of bad news - so I sat at the back with my notepad and a serious look as they all piled in, picked up plates and rugby tackled each other for first place in front of the buffet.  Not everyone, but there was a definite amount of fire breathing going on due to over-seasoned the spring rolls.  Worse, I managed to inhale a pineapple chunk and no amount of cheese could stop me coughing through a grim powerpoint presentation.  Why do managers do it?  More slides only make dragons eat more?  One lady, tapped me on the shoulder, hissing
"Don't I know you?"  I'd moved on to the chocolate truffle cake by now and wasn't going to be distracted by her blatant ploy to get a double helping.
"No, sorry, I'm new here."
"Then why are you taking the minutes and not one of us?" Barking ... all of them.

Tip of the Blog:  The Asda advert has been making headlines lately as has the John Lewis weepy with the melting snowman.  But like the Muppets, the best is Morrison's offering and a brilliant pi55-take of all the others, especially the scene with the mother perched on a pile of sprouts covering the kitchen table - genius.  Here, we eat sprouts all year round to keep our tolerance levels up, despite Alphonse moaning that he doesn't need folic acid as he's not having chicks any time soon.  Tough!

 Raven