Plinky-Plonk

My Dear Fellow,

I have been in an irritable frame of mind today. I partially blame the office layout for this. It's the weirdest set-up of sets of doors after doors after doors, and narrow causeways between banks of desks because they've shoved too much furniture in there.

The result is that it is impossible. I repeat, IMPOSSY-BULL. To get from point A to point B in the office without lots of "excuse me", "sorry, if I could just...", "sorry", "sorry", "cheers", "sorry".

That is what I actually say. What I want to say is GET THE EFF OUT OF MY WAY. But I don't say that because I am not an unreasonable man. But the three-year-old in my head is in a constant state of dummy-spit.

For some reason it was particularly bad today, and then I had a meeting with Man Who Cannot Finish A Sentence who tried to tell me how to do my job. I wanted to say, "ACTUALLY the reason our progress is slow is because you keep interfering in my actual job ACTUALLY."

I didn't say that. Instead I kept my mouth shut because he is on holiday next week so I'll do it my own way then. HA.

So I got home and put on Diana Krall. I strongly suspect this is something I should be ashamed of liking as not genuine real jazz music, but some generic sanitised version for old people but I do not care.

Adrian the Aussie got me into her years ago. He gave me his hard drive when he emigrated back home. It was full of her albums, and I immediately fell for "Love Scenes" because it was soothing and calm and just what you need after a day of being irritated by people.

The problem is that - technically - she is jazz. And this started me off on a journey that led to Chet Baker, Vince Guaraldi, Sarah Vaughan, Susie Arioli, Anita O'Day and Oscar Peterson. And Er Indoors HATES THEM ALL.

If Er Indoors comes home and hears Diana giving it her all, she will instantly complain that I'm listening to "plinky-plonk" music and it will have to go off. No matter. Diana will have done her work, and the world can go away for the weekend.

Parsones