Tuesday 20 November 2012

Un-dead


As the weather gets worse, my attitude gets better - or that's what I am telling myself right now. When the going gets tough, people of my calibre come to a grinding halt - but out with the old and in with the new!

I've been doing a lot of moaning recently, but I now put this down to the well-documented after-effects of a viral illness, and as the last of the pesky invaders get booted out of my system by the ultimately victorious anti-bodies which valiantly man the gates of the temple which is my body (you should see it), a new spirit of enterprise infuses me, and I  flop spring out of bed at dawn (or about two hours after) eager to face the challenge of a new day.

What the hell am I going on about? I am simply putting the old adage about turning negatives into positives into practice, albeit about 40 years too late.

You may remember me losing my rag with my glamorous assistant a week or two ago, as he never quite does what I ask him to do, and what he does do is done behind the closed doors of his own workshop rather than mine, which he has been supposed to be sharing with me for over a year now.

When I first encountered him, I thought the sun shone out of his arse (to quote Carly Simon or someone), but over the intervening years, I have learnt to understand our comparative strengths and weaknesses - which is a polite way of saying that he came bloody close to fucking up a couple of very important jobs for me, for some of my best and most influential customers.

The initial plan was to make use of his patent gifts and 20 years credit in youthful energy by having him on tap so to speak, but the balance between convincing him to carry out my instructions to the letter and completely taking over the job until it had his name stamped all over it was a delicate one.

I finally blew my top with him last week, when he - having insisted in taking one particular, experimental and almost non-profit-making job home with him - then gradually let me know that he had changed and modified the piece (using techniques I had specifically asked him to avoid) until the whole concept had been altered to something different and altogether more simple.

I decided to pay him a surprise visit at the end of last week, fully intending to get hold of him by the neck and keep squeezing until his penultimate breath, but - as I walked over the threshold - he took me on a little tour of the processes he had been conducting against my wishes, and as we went from room to room, step by step - gently breaking me into the notion of the superiority of his simplified concept - the bastard won me over, and now I am even talking about setting up a different business with him to make use of this experimental prototype he has produced from my design, so we can both make some serious money out of it.

What the hell am I still going on about? Well, I will show you a photo of the thing when it is truly finished, then all will become clear. Suffice to say that it is a 'sculptural' thing with a commercial application.

All the industrial super-heroes of history have had one thing in common - boundless energy. This is something I have been lacking of late, but now I have decided to take a leaf from the book of another hero of mine - Bram Stoker - and suck the energy out of my glamorous assistant, simply in order to stay alive, if 'life' it can be called.

10 comments:

  1. I'm all agog...can't wait to see the wee beastie.

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  2. Oh Tom, If I had known how desperate you feel (and look) I never would have asked you to post a picture of yourself. You have my permission to take it down. Or at least lay the coffin sideways so you can get a little rest.

    And the young bastard who vexes you? Send him my way. I have a big barn of crap he can shovel. No one puts Baby in the corner.

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    1. No one puts Baby in the corner unless he wants to be thrown to the girls by me... (I laughed!)

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  3. Sometimes trying something new gives one a needed energy boost. That always surprises me, as i find learning new things takes energy, yet i guess the newness of whatever it is arrives with enough energy for me to undertake the process and with some to spare.

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  4. The new look may not endear you to barmaids, Tom.

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  5. Just think - if you two really do succeed in making some serious money out of it, your glamorous assistant could get an assistant!

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  6. Having remembered what you wrote, I thought from the photo you'd gone and REPLACED your assistant. Just goes to show how wrong you can be. Read the small print.

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