Bah Humbug

Whoo! How nice is it to get home to Sam And Dave after a day of Christmas specials from decades of otherwise excellent American Negroid musicians cashing in on whitey’s festival. I don’t begrudge them, probably the easiest dollar they ever made, but it’s torture to be subjected to these soulful R & B and funk versions of Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, and especially White Christmas (a picture of these folk sitting in the back of the bus singing I’m dreaming of a white Christmas never leaves me alone) over and over. Who ever compiles these music ‘tapes’ (do young folk still understand this meaning of this word) must just Google ‘Song Christmas’ as included on ours is the Pretenders; 2000 miles, which though it contains the lyric “Christmas time”, has nothing to do with Christmas and is in fact a lament for a dead lover. I use to like it and who knows, twelve months of abstinence may yet reprieve that like.

Over twelve months of service now has gifted me with hindsight, providing a more complete picture of my work environment. My delightful colleague Meghan with five school age kids, was chuffed that young Patrick received the schools Labour Party sponsored, prize for leadership. In our circumstances I could not help reflecting, that on the down side, that could mean he would grow into a Danny or Marie, first and second in command of our daily grind or even a Hitler for that matter. The noun leadership certainly stands alone better than say, ‘quality’ but is none the less vitally dependent on its accompanying adjective and of the two that immediately leap to mind, good and bad, bad, seemed most appropriate to our circumstance.

Danny who physically resembles the more loathsome aspects of Shrek and has been thus nick named and Marie who closely resembles his donkey mate, with a voice not at all unlike a real donkey’s bray were, at the time of this reflection, deeply engaged in ‘site meeting # 12’ in the corner (our unventilated and incredibly humid corner)* where the new portable coffee counter construct was coming together. Here customers will be able to enjoy that symbol of sophisticated lifestyle the decaf-caff-late and most of its close relatives as they take a welcome break from the adjures of shop shop shopping. “Inspirational and a credit to your leadership Danny”. brays Marie. Nobody seems to remember that not twelve months ago similar infrastructure, fifty meters from here, was dismantled, demobed, abandoned. Why? Who knows, ours is not to reason. Staff recall sticky spills and mugs upended in product bins by disgruntled customers (yes we have them). Can this be reason, and if so what has changed to make coffee vending viable? Will the cups be made from double sided tape that once gripped can only be pried loose at special thinners wash disposal bins? Probably not but it’s a good idea don’t you think?

The memory span of these management types is appalling, always living in an imagined future of vast profit and gain they have no concept of present and the past, well that’s just history, how do you expect to make a profit off that unless we can get it really cheap. “Make a note Marie to see if any of the Chinese factories are producing cheap history”. This overweight clown bounded into the staff room yesterday (Saturday) morning like the coach geeing the team in anticipation of the projected $200,000 turnover for the day and when hearing of the death of Ken Lee, founder, owner of the Bing Lee retailing giant became all reflective noting that he would probably never be as wealthy as Ken. Don’t worry folks, I kept the biting “don’t worry Danny one day you’ll be just as dead” retort to myself. ‘Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it’ thank you George Santayana. I expect to soon add washing up and mopping to customer relations sales and shelf stacking.

Stepping away now from local to a more global scale I should like to share with you some of my reflections on the market place. At the local cake shop a satisfactory Portuguese Tart costs me $2.00 and although in many parts of the world, possibly your very own suburban mall, this may seem expensive, in Enmore it seems to me in AD2007 to be about right and for this reason I have chosen it as my measure of value for the following discourse. Alice and Jack were until it was cancelled due to severe flooding, going twix Christmas and New Year to The Peats Ridge Music Festival. Alice clever planner that she is, for which I take full responsibility, noting the weather forecast (rain till March) and not wishing to risk her or Jack’s newly wed bums on the wet earth, asked me to research camp chairs at work. They are now proudly in possession of two well designed tube steel and canvas folding chairs and in return for this largess I shall have to forego seven and a half Portuguese Tarts.

My recently acquired 50’s retro look trannie, that’s transistor or portable radio for you youngun’s not transvestite, which in 1962 would have cost approximately sixty pounds (can you believe this there’s no pound symbol on this keyboard) set me back a massive nine tarts. For those of you who never experienced pounds or 1962, by my calculations I could have bought a whole Portuguese tart business in that year for sixty pounds though that would have had to be in Portugal as in 1962 we were still awaiting Vasco DA’Gama’s baker relatives.

We can only hope that this trend will slow or hopefully reverse sometime soon least we reach that moment in history which seems very close, when we find ourselves forgoing the meat pie in favour of the twenty two inch plasma screen

Now for once I can’t but agree with you that that’s enough drivel for now.

Merry merriment to all
Robert

Oh but PS. Im looking for a good public forum in which to symbolically burn my 18 odd Westfarmers shares after reading in this weeks papers an article that places Westfarmers at the forefront in support of Morocco’s illegal occupation of Western Sahara and the plunder of their phosphates.