flanerie.org

Hello Mr Bank Manager

Please can I have a bigger overdraft facility?

No, you can't.

At least that's what I think he said, but he kinda mispronounced it. Time for plan B then.

I had a meeting with a supplier yesterday, a supplier from over the water, the Emerald Isle.

There were two of them. One with a round, very red and slightly jowly face, the other with an angular, very pale and taut face. Chalk and cheese. Or, if I may, chalk and beetroot.

One had an Irish name, and the other Italian, although both had tick (sorry, thick) Irish accents.

I was fascinated by this double act, but especially by the angular one, whom we shall call Seamus.

Seamus' head was large and generally square. His jaw line was hewn from granite. There are people like this in cartoons, and when they get into a fight someone punches them and their hand shatters. That was the kind of head it was. If I was going to fight him I would have a horseshoe in my glove. (Did anyone every really do that? Really? Or just in cartoons?)

Actually if I was in a fight with him I would kick him in the plums.

But I digress. On top of this head was a standing wave of black hair. It was higher on the left, and it didn't move. At all. Below this was a permanent frown. Not a frown, but a creased forehead. Whatever his eyes did his brow didn't move. If he ever had a face lift they would find a couple of feet of extra skin in his forehead, and a good part of that has never seen natural light.

You know when a kid runs a stick along metal railings? You could do that with Seamus' forehead.

The other curious thing was his mouth - a thin line in his face. More of a blemish than a gateway for food and bullshit. The mouth barely moved. Just the occasional twitching of the lips, a slight broadening or narrowing, perhaps the hint of a smile. And yet there was a voice - a normal voice, if a little hurried. Seamus would make a perfect ventriloquist, and had the Italian chap not been on the other side of the table I would have assumed they were a cabaret act.

Such is the crazy world of supplier meetings.

Of course, Seamus probably blogged that he met this weird finance director that wouldn't stop staring at him.

I walked over to the boss' desk this morning, clutching the weekly sales report, and was about launch into some corporate-speak bollocks when I spotted a Tamagotchi sitting on his desk.

What the fuck are you doing with that?

Ah. It's one of those electronic aliens. I had to confiscate it off my daughter this morning and forgot to give it back.

Look! It's pooped all over the screen and that skull thing means it will soon die.

So what do I do? If it dies I will be in big trouble.

Use this icon clean it up then this one to feed it.

What? You know how these things work? Shit, look after it for me, we can't let it die.

So I have cleaned, fed, nursed and pampered the Tamagotchi critter and it is now looking pretty healthy. Unfortunately I forgot about it when I left work and found it in my pocket when I got home. Shortly after that my boss rang, 'have you got the alien?'

Yeah

Well keep it alive, ok?

Sure

The future of British commerce in our hands. Best emigrate now.

Tea-break over, back on your heads.

I quite like the working days between Christmas and New Year - the roads are quiet, and the office is quiet. It is a great time to do those things that you keep putting off because there is always so much immediate stuff going on.

For the past five years, it has been the lull before the storm - the quarter ended on December 31 and then all hell broke loose. The big cheese accountants suffer from an inferiority complex at Amazon, and as a result they insist on working New Year's Day. They do this so that the following conversation can take place:

Him: "I am an accountant at Amazon"
Her: "Say, did you see that weather report this morning?"
Him: "No, wait. Accountants are different at Amazon"
Her: "I wonder if I remembered to lock my front door"
Him: "No, but really. We are so important to the success of the company that we have to work New Year's Day every year"
Her: "Wow. I want to sleep with you"

It is not like Amazon is in a hurry to get its results published - it usually reports at the end of January, two weeks later than Apple and nearly three after Yahoo. Such are the needs of unloved accountants.

Thankfully in my new company I get to decide when and how. The December reporting period ended on Christmas Day and we will do some accounting this week, the rest after January 9.

The gap in the middle is because I am celebrating my freedom by going to Miami for New Year, out on Friday back on the following Friday. Yeah yeah yeah yeah, Miami uh uh, as big Willy Smith would say.

During my trip flânerie nonsense will continue unabated, just in case you were hoping otherwise ;-)

If there ever was a God, he invented cricket before handing control of the world to the neo-cons. So while we are going to hell in a handbasket (and wtf does that mean?), we at least have something to take our minds off it.

The true majesty of cricket does cause some problems. The game lasts five days but can turn on each and every ball. England have lately developed the habit of allowing the balance of a game to shift several times a day, which makes for gripping spectating.

And traditionally the spectating is done with a radio tuned to long wave for the BBC's Test Match Special - a broadcast that is one of the last bastions of civility, decency, English wit and the joy that is an afternoon cake. Cricket, like baseball, involves a lot a nothing going on interspersed with a few seconds activity. TMS fills the nothing with talk of red buses (on the St Johns Wood Road), arcane statistics (the fastest 50 by a left-handed batsmen at number four on an English wicket) and the chances of an afternoon shower.

TMS is perfect for idling. An idyllic summer's afternoon involves tea, crossword and TMS while sat in the garden.

When working it does present problems. Although these days it is often streamed online, it is far too distracting unless you have managed to clear the decks for a few days of workplace idling.

Step forward Guardian OBO cricket commentary. TMS is ball-by-ball on radio, the Guardian has over-by-over on their website. This requires a few seconds of reading every few minutes, and thus allows more work to be done by the suffering wage-slave.

They have also managed to carve their own niche by telling it how it is and by engaging the readership in irreverent chit-chat. For example:

46th over: England 150-3 (Collingwood 19, Pietersen 15)
Up comes the 150, but at lunch England would have hoped to have reached it for the loss of one wicket at most, not three. Still, this is steady stuff from these two against Malik's off-spin: two off the over. "Not a snowball as such, but whilst staying on a farm in New Zealand, I was taken out on an early morning rabbit shoot by the farm hands," says Andrew Hallsworth. "When we spotted a bunny I was handed a rifle and took aim. It was the first time I'd held a gun, the target was 40m away in a stiff cross-wind and my hand is as steady as Michael J Fox's. So shaky was I that the rabbit only entered the sight every five seconds or so, so in the end i shut my eyes, used the force and pulled the trigger. Flopsy took it right between the eyes and I was left to insinuate to the impressed farm-boys that I had been an SAS sniper in my youth. Bunny's revenge was that I shortly discovered that I am highly allergic to NZ rabbit fur as my eyes closed up and sinuses opened."

65th over: WICKET! Flintoff c Shoaib Akhtar b Naved 12 (England 201-5)
Oh Freddie! The trap had been set, but Flintoff can't resist top-edging a pull to fine leg where Shoaib takes a simple catch. Perhaps Steven Harmison should write "Twat" on his forehead again?

39th over: Pakistan 147-3 (Mohammad Yousuf 70, Inzamam 34)
That's tea, and this game is very nicely poised. Another 50 runs for these two after the break and Pakistan will be thinking of a first-innings lead. But two quick wickets and the advantage will be England's. Join Sean Ingle at 10.30am GMT for live coverage. And thanks very much for all your emails. "I had an aunt Gert who was married to uncle Bert," says John Osborne. "I swear that's true. He was my gran's brother and she was my grandad's sister. Slightly weird, but then we are from Norfolk."

Lovely.

I was doing a butt-load of budgeting work with my boss last week, and at one point he was trying to put together a schedule, but the going was painfully slow. He isn't quite the 8th Dan Blackbelt at Excel that I am.

So I took control of the schedule and sent him off to make me a coffee - Santos and Java, milk, no sugar. He came back with a black coffee.

"The good news is I made you a coffee, the bad news is there is no milk"

"Paul just went to the convenience store for his lunch. Maybe he will get some milk"

"I'll call him"

He calls Paul's mobile, but no answer. In the darkest corners of Iraq there is a mobile signal at all times, in Gloucestershire the only way to get a signal is to wrap yourself in tin-foil. So, not much of a surprise.

"Wait, I have a plan"

He then calls directory inquiries and gets the number of the convenience store and calls the store.

"Er, hi. I just want to check one of your customers. Is there a guy in there, kinda middle aged, brown hair, a little grey maybe, tallish, glasses. Er, looks a bit geeky."

"Great. Can you see if he is buying milk"

"Fantastic, that's all I needed to know. Click"

Man, what a week.

Busy busy busy ahead of the board meeting on Monday, so I never got to send off my first Postcrossing postcard and nor did I take a photo for my Friday Photo.

It's lame and I'm sorry.

Plan for the weekend: sleep

Last week's Moment of Zen was a beauty. Unfortunately I am not able to report it and it will have to wait for my autobiography.

The book of my life will be one of the most tedious books ever published but thanks to the new technologies of Print-on-Demand (eg Booksurge.com) and e-Books at least I don't have to worry about persuading a publisher to run with it.

But then again by the time I get around to writing it, books will be redundant in all forms and I will have to create the VR-experience of my life. Now THAT would be ugly.

Back to the moment of Zen - I will give a quote from it, more for my own amusement than anyone else's. A tag which equally applies to almost everything I write. But hey, that's why I'm a blogger not a journalist.

Anyway...

"Not only is he a nerd, which is bad enough, but he is a fucking idiot!"

Wednesday was my final day at Amazon Seattle, topped off with a very pleasant dinner at Lola.

Then up at 4.45am, hotel, taxi, terminal, aircraft, unscheduled landing at Calgary, terminal, aircraft, landing at Toronto, terminal, bus, terminal, bus, terminal, aircraft, landing at Heathrow, terminal, shower, car, bar.

I missed my connection in Toronto after the detour to Calgary, which itself was due to a broken doohicky in the aircraft, so arrived in London five hours later than planned. Air Canada redeemed themselves though by placing me in row 1, and I did get around four hours of respectable sleep.

The downside was that I arrived late for my own leaving celebration, but no-one seemed to notice!

The afternoon was spent completing last-minute work, stripping the laptop, clearing my desk and getting an expense claim in, and then out at five for the final time. My escape from Slough.

I would like to say something nice about Slough after seven years over two jobs. But... nothing nice to say. It is a suppurating boil on the face of England; a filthy beast lying in its own ordure. Okay, maybe one nice thing... The Office is based in Slough. Now there is a double-edged sword if ever there was one.

Although Amazon have lost me as an employee, I am still a big fan. There are a couple of very exciting Amazon projects launching soon, which I will comment on once they do (currently double-triple-secret), and I will also try to explain what the Robot Coop is all about.

Meanwhile, I guess I am unemployed :-)

...this is goodbye.(*)

I quit my job this morning, having accepted a new job the day before.

After five years at Amazon, I decided a couple of months ago to look for something new. Wonderful though Amazon is (and it really is) it has become too big and hierarchical for me to enjoy. It's not as much fun as it was, and the moment you start thinking that, it's time to move.

My new job is Finance Director (aka CFO) of an independent UK multi-channel retailer. Meaning it sells via internet, mail-order catalogue and retail stores.

I start my new job on 3 October, so my last day at Amazon will be on/before 30 September. In that time I need to get somewhere to live nearer to my new company. My house is already on the market, but there will be some overlap even if it sells tomorrow.

It will be a frantic month, followed by a very exciting new dawn.