Perched as usual...

Yep, lodged between my favourite rock and hard place...

You take two days off - and you get texts and calls from The Lieutenant on the Monday and email correspondence from The Boss on the Tuesday...

Nice to be able to relax...

I always loved the notion of waiting for the other shoe to fall... it's such a simple, brilliant image... There is that anticipation that follows a noise... you want to hear it again to be able to analyze it, to decide whether or not it's a threat, to start the process of working out what to do next...

Ever woken in the middle of the night? With that heart pounding, something just happened, what was it? feeling?

If you live with other people it's not as dramatic... If you live on your own, it can be terrifying.

You know that there is a reason why you are awake, and at the back of your subconcious you know what the reason is... Unfortunately at the front of the mind, you really don't know what it was... so, you find yourself, sitting up, adrenalin pumping and anxious, but lacking any idea of why...

By the way, the phrase "waiting for the other shoe to drop" apparently dates back to the turn of the century and vaudeville...

But back to the call and emails - since the day the Quarterly Report, I've been waiting for that other shoe to clatter to the floor... But it's been ten days... and there still had been no sound...

It's almost a relief now that the questions have started and the cycle of blame can begin... The question now is, have I done enough? Will there be a significant change when the next Quarterly figures are released? And best of all, what happens if there isn't any difference?

Inching slowly backwards...

This is one of those posts that is awkward to write, but I need to speak. I don't really want people to read and comment, but I need to clear these thoughts out of my head.

Call it free therapy, click on to something else.

The problem as always, is my partner's psychotic ex.

The bile and poison that the Ex injects into my partner's life and my life gets harder and harder to deal with.

All of the posion that was produced in court, the invasive photographing of me and my partner, the following, the detectives, the medical records, the fake emails, the discussion of my name, my car registration, my job, my career prospects, how often I stay at my partner's house all of these things have been circling since the court case.

Now, slowly they are settling to earth.

I cannot be seen at the house, because the Ex's parents video and photograph my entry and exit.

I cannot keep anything in the house, becuase they may have gained access to the house and may make claims that I live there, if I have anything more than a change of clothes.

All of the poison, slops around in the space between me and my partner. It fills the air with fumes, it forces distance, it brings talk of lawyers and court orders and custody.

It removes any and all trace of affection. It drains any conversation of humour, or light or warmth.

I am cast out. I must not be seen. I am more trouble.

So, I feel the ties shiver lose, I feel the binds come free, I feel the distance grow and the warmth falter.

I am crushed with despair and understanding at the same time.

This is what the Ex wanted. They wanted the poison to kill whatever new life there was, they want control and mastery over my partner now and forever.

And my partner is trapped, caught in the glare, the spotlight of madness, pinned down by the In Laws and tortured by poky, obsessive, curtain twitching cunts.

I try to be bigger than that.

I try to rise above, to be patient, calm and wise.

But, I'm not.

I'm despairing, I'm distant and every day inexorably shifted further away by the tide of poison... I'm very nearly done...

And I'm angry. Beyond words or action. I am furious. But powerless, an observer, an eye witness at someone elses car crash...

The Day of Reckoning

Well, today was the day...

The much talked and posted about, terribly important day. The day on which I was to be fired. The day that's kept me awake and dreaming in technicolour for quite some time, the finale to a triptych of horrible events that occured within a 14 day window...

Here's the deal... Every Quarter, there are results announced, indicating performance / sales etc.

And so, there is naturally a huge amount of pressure for the results to be uniformly positive. And as is the way of these things, not all results are good and it is tremendously difficult to break a cycle of bad results.

There are always two parts to Quarterly Report day. Part one, is the anticipation, the grim, giddy, stomach churning inevitability of the moment when the Report is published.

That part is the anxiety, the twitches and tics, the moments that stretch into hours, the tense, tetchy corridor conversations that just serve to pass the time.

It's the faint glow of hope from colleagues and the terrible, tantalising scent of optimisim that is the worst part of Part 1.

Interestingly, whatever the Report shows, Part 1 is always the same. No matter how well your previous Quarter went, you find yourself clenched and grim faced, waiting for that rollercoaster to drop away from under you...

Part 2 though, is a different matter. This is where two roads diverge.

On the good days, the Miracle Quarters, you open the report and everything is good. Sales are up in all the right demographics, all of the product lines are more popular and best of all, it looks like the closest competitor has had a nightmare...

You bask, briefly, in a glow.

And then in the peculiar way of my industry, you move on. You don't really celebrate, you don't collect acclaim, you shrug and start to worry about the next Quarter.

Part 2 on a Bad Day. Not pretty. The grimness accelerates, the rollercoaster surges downwards and you bang your head on the support bar.

Now, everyone else is upset, they look sad, they look angry, they look at you...

And the real management, the distant and all knowing Higher Ups? Oh, they're on the phone, or they're coming in for a meeting and you, yes YOU, must instantly be able to do the following

1) Explain what happened

2) Explain why it happened (and ideally how it will never happen again)

3) Devise a cunning plan to fix everything immediately

4) Explain what happened.

5) Find a scapegoat

6) Explain what happened.

7) Promise that immediately after this meeting, the face of the company will change utterly, so that from this day forth, there will only be good results, preferably for less cost and with more revenue...

Those meetings are tricky.

Today?

More Bad than Good. Officialy, I'd be saying "flat" or "static"

In reality, one of my offices went up, one stayed where it was and the newest one did remarkably well...

In the weird world i live in, not good enough, more pressure than ever for the next Quarter...

Oh and... still not fired!

I'm a difficult friend...

I can only imagine that I'm a difficult friend to have...

I'm not nasty, or malodorous, at least as far as I know...

But I do maintain a certain distance, I think it's partly because of my work, there is a difficulty with managing people who you'd rather be friends with.

So, it's easier to be their manager and not be their friend. In fact I specialise in the art of the distance. It's a little bit of smart mouth, a touch of disappearance and a smidgeon of not responding to calls / texts.

Oh and rarely making public appearances.

It's trying never to be drunk in company, it's watching how much you reveal about your personal life and it's about careful misdirection of conversations, usually through humour.

The question is whether this distancing is work related, or has it been a life long thing?

My mother used to say that I made friends easily, I suspect every mother says / wishes that.

But, it's true. I get on well with most people, I guess I have a certain oily charm.

The problem is, I retreat then, I step back and I drift away.

I do it to friends, I most definitely do it in relationships.

I don't really know why. Sometimes, I just prefer to be by myself, living in my head, having quiet and space. Maybe, because I work in a "soft skilled" industry and I spend a lot of my day adjusting behaviours and sidestepping egos. But I don't think that's the real reason.

I'm happiest in my own head. Odd, but true.

So, all my life I've drifted off, leaving in the dead of night, metaphorically, slipping loose from the moorings and setting off across a new horizon. I have made and lost friends, started and never finshed relationships, had more great first dates than I could count...

But some people are relentless. The small but ferocious band of friends I have amaze me. They just will not let go. They persist beyond all reasonable effort, to the point where I eventually ask myself, "what exactly am I resisting?"

That is the mystery, I like these people, damm it, I love some of them, I am amazed at their persistence, curious as to what they see in me that is worth pursuing...

Some, prod me, poke me and drive me to do things I like doing. Like posting here.

Some, push me, challenge me and try to break me out of my gloomy rut.

Some, I've left behind and wish I hadn't.

It bothers me, in my secret heart, I wonder if I'm missing something, am I wired wrongly? Why, when I have the social skills, do I prefer to hide, to duck and skulk?

And why in God's name do Paul and the rest persist?

All I can say, is, Thanks

Stop me, if you've heard this one before...

Maybe I've mentioned this before, but Good God, I work with some thick people.

Not by choice. By which I mean, not by my choice, I'm sure at The University of Thick there's a list as long as my arm of people who'd love to work under my benign but invigorating regime...

I'm still in work by the way. 13 hours of nonsense so far today.

I've been away for the last week as I mentioned, so I've been running things by remote control using email and the occasional threatening phonecall.

However, I was back in the glorious, technicolour world of the Thick today.

And my God, they unlearnt a lot in one week.

I had three infuriating meetings at which people wandered around in leisurely circles, wondering about things and making half assed suggestions, that I know they will later be bitter and resentful about, when we decline to take their suggestion and use it...

I can hear them now in the kitchen, during one of their many breaks, muttering to each other, about how "I told them, we should be doing X and of course now we're doing Y and I'll get the blame"

Of course in this case, X would be the equivalent of having a quiet smoke on the forecourt of a garage and then stuffing the smouldering butt into the fuel tank.

They say in brainstorming there is no such thing as a bad idea.

Sadly, this could not be further from the truth. And bad ideas are a potent currency that the generators of cling to with a touching fondness, hoping that they can cash these crappy suggestions in at the altar of success.

Trust me when I say, I'm a lot closer to the altar and frankly the ideas you so fondly offer are worse than useless.

I sometimes have to literally bite my tongue to avoid shouting aloud "What is wrong with you people?"

The worst ones are the ones who just fail to get things done. You discuss something, you explain, you answer their questions, you listen to and deal with their objections and you get their agreement that this new idea is the best way forward.

Then, at the next meeting, or say for example if you had been out of the office for a week, at the next opportunity, you hear a cavalcade of complaints and moans about how they don't understand, how no one explained, or my favourite one "We tried that and it didn't work"

The notion that the way that they had approached it might be at fault, or that their execution was completely arseways, simply does not float through their heads.

I guess that is the most annoying thing. Thickness and Self Confidence seem to run together, hand in hand...

It must be a wonderful world for the Thick. They seem to suffer from no self doubt, or maybe they simply lack the ability to think about whether something is right or wrong.

If I could remove one category of people from the world, it would be the Self Confident Thick person... Then maybe I'd be home by now...

A Day Off...

But not from blogging... obviously...

Today was the first day in a while that I had nothing specifc to do.

It took me a while to get my head around it. I kept making up things that I should really be doing, fighting off urges to get in the car and go somewhere, maybe to get the car washed, maybe I should go and buy new sheets or something. I don't know. I just had this nagging urge that I should be doing something.

I didn't.

I went to the shop, I bought stuff for breakfast / lunch, I bought meatballs for dinner, it's kind of a shop meets deli... And then i cooked pasta and had the meatballs with it. Great.

I watched the rugby, I watched Shrek 3 on Sky Movies, I played around with Sky plus and recorded loads of stuff I'll never watch.

And all the time, I felt like I should be doing something else. In fact I checked my email any number of times... I thought about hoovering...

It was only late in the day that I realised how much difficulty I was having unwinding. And only on my second glass of wine that I started to think about what my friends keep telling me.

This is all too much, or rather, the last few months have been too much. I kind of got lost in the rush, drama, pressure and anger. I've been wound up like some kind of tightly wound metaphor...

I still have a million things to do and huge issues to worry about, but at least today I had a moment or two, to realise that there is an end in sight, that other things matter too, that I have a nice house, that I can cook (or at least reheat stuff)...

Not too bad really.

Itunes is more depressed than I am...

I posted earlier today from London...

Now, I'm back in Dublin.

This has been an hellacious week. Stress, anxiety and very little sleep because of the insane pressure that I've been witness to...

It's exhausting.

And I know that in some ways the week ahead is worse...

So, I put on Itunes when I got home, and brought the bottle of grappa and a shot glass upstairs with me. I need to stop thinking for a while.

My first choice of song, Bob Dylan "It Ain't me babe" - probably tells you more than you need to know about where my head is it.

And true to the mysterious game I was introduced to in one of those two room pubs in the back of beyond in Kildare, Ipod Iching, the next song up?

Joy Division, "Love will Tear Us Apart"

Have you played Ipod Iching? You ask the Ipod a question, then you set it to random and click next...

It doesn't always work. But, it you've been drinking and are in that place, where everything is crowded with meaning that will evaporate in the morning, it can seem fleetingly profound.

I struggled to assign meaning to the third song briefly - Gorillaz, "Dirty Harry" - but with a chorus, sung by children of "you need a gun to keep yourself from harm" meaning quickly suggests itself...

And, because Itunes, knows that I'm effectively live blogging it's choices, now it's playing Radiohead "Bones", which I blogged about only last week...


Inchoate is a word that has been floating through my head... It is a word that for me is always attached to the word rage...

Inchoate rage. Incipient or imperfectly formed.

That's me that is. Anger floods through my mind, dark thoughts of vengeance against an enemy who is not mine, impotent and crushing worry and despair.

Itunes has provided The Beatles and "A Day in the Life"... It's not really trying to lift the mood is it?

Like everyone else, I don't know where my breaking point is, but I'm starting to feel I can see it from here...

This week, Thursday in fact, the single biggest day in my working life happens. I have to have fixed the problem I have by then. The figures will be analysed, there will be phonecalls, it may be the point of breaking.

Frankly, I have nothing left to break...

And the last word from Itunes?

We're waiting... and it's stupid, childish and superstitious to say... We're hoping...

The song, flooding from the speakers? Cocteau Twins, "Cherry Coloured Funk", a song, that for me is rich in sadness, happiness and mystery... A good place to end.

Ex-treme behaviour

Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to find your partner's ex going through your pockets, or walking out of your house or your partner's house and having a flurry of activity from two doors down, as they video and photograph your every move...

It sounds odd... It is odd

Ok, so the ex's partner wasn't actually at the foot of the bed, but for the case that is ongoing, they have been poking around in every intimate detail of my partner's life and my life...

It's not a joke... We've been followed and photographed, they have gained access to medical records, there is at least one private detective, the ex has set up fake email addresses to get information out of estate agents, cancelled insurance policies, opened post and quite possibly bugged my partners house...

It all sounds impossible, like a bad made for tv movie...

Apparently, not only is it possible, but it's happened and is happening.

And, the oddity and obsession seems to have no rhyme or reason to it...

The Ex left my partner, the Ex settled down with someone else, the Ex has all the money...

In fact, I suppose as always it comes down to money. The Ex is so obsessed and consumed by the fires of greed and arrogance because of money that they will stop at nothing to tear apart the life of my partner, my life and anyone else that the Ex thinks there is an advantage to be gained from.

I am physically sickened by the arrogance, by the obsessiveness and the all pervading, creepy, disturbing, twisted, ignorant bitterness of this freak.

I have thought about some dark paths in the last few days. But, I am not prepared to become twisted and Gollumlike. I will not follow down the gloomy path, I know that madness lies that way, I fear that madness has already taken hold of the Ex.

The question is, when the case is over, when the verdict is in, where does all of that twisted, manic, destructive energy go next?

Well now...

Ok, I survived...

No being carried out my shield today.

In fact, I faced down the tiger, I ducked the chariot and I answered the right questions at the right time...

Now, it seems silly and anticlimactic.

But, there you go.

I never know what the actual value of the equation is.

Did I worry too much, wasting time and effort imagining scenarios that were never going to happen?

Or, did I get it right. Was I prepared for every eventuality and so, could answer all the right questions?

I don't know.

I know I eyeballed the Billionaire and he seemed happy.

Roll on the next event...


In the meantime, I've been followed by a private detective for the last three weeks.

It turns out, I would be crap at spying.

People have been videoing me, taking pictures, noting my every move since the end of December.

Admittedly, they are by and large, crazy, psychotic people....

Still, it's a total headfuck.

Long story, current partners psycho ex is trying to wiggle out of a settlement.

It is however an intensely upsetting experience.

However, tomorrow morning I am having the words "Fuck you, CUNTS" spray painted on the bonnet of my car...

And I will now be parking directly in front of the psycho's house