The Devil wears Primark

So, it's the weekend, it's the end of week six and I am in my new favourite place: the internet cafe.

My post today is about my new boss, Karen. She is the publisher and MD of the magazine I work for and no one messes with her. She saunters around the office making everyone's lives Hell, because, well, because she can.

I don't know whether she has always been like this, or whether she saw Merryl Streep in the recent film and decided she wanted to be just like that. The major difference though is that instead of being a Glamazon decked out in this season's latest look, she looks just like any other mid-40s woman working in an office. And it makes me laugh that she thinks she's better than anyone else.

She always seems to know when to do her 'walkabout' and catch people doing things they shouldn't be doing. Since I've started, I've been early most mornings, stayed late in the evenings, I rarely have a lunch break and I have even taken some things home to do over the weekends so that I am on target for the following week. And yet last Thursday, I needed to leave the office dead on half five so I could meet Doormouse, and she wanders past just as I was signing off my Mac and the time was barely 5:29.

"That's what I like to see; a man who's so confident in lhis job that he can leave before the end of the day."

Busted.

I also got caught in a stand-up row between her and the designer this week. She wanted a feature to be two pages, he'd done it as three and rather than speaking to him like a human being, she starts saying that she has 20 years' publishing experience and she owns the company and therefore pays his wages and doesn't he agree that she knows more than he does. Er, no, because you talk out of your arse.

Oh, and she uses words like 'profligate'.

Stupid bitch.

The Honeymoon is officially O.V.E.R.

How long is long enough to realise that your fabulous new job is in fact a job and therefore unlikely to actually be fabulous?

I'm plumping for six weeks.

This is because I am in week six and it officially sucks. Sure, I am doing what I want to do and the people are genuinely nice, but nice just isn't enough anymore. The office is distinctly male and it ain't the flavour of man I prefer. This morning by 10am, I had already been stuck in the middle of two sporty converstions; one about football (bad enough) and the other about snooker players from the 80s (if you can believe that).

Add to that the fact that my manager is constantly telling me to do utterly ridiculous things. In my first week, every time my phone rang, I answered it. All the calls I took were for other people and all I had to do was put them through to the correct bod. At the end of the week, my manager said that my phone only rings if everyone else's was busy, so there was no need for me to keep answering it. So this morning when it rang, I ignored it.

"Who's phone was that?" she asked.

"Mine. It was a number I didn't know so I didn't answer it."

"Well, when your phone rings, you ought to answer it in case it's someone important."

"OK," I replied, when I wanted to say, "Yes, I do know how to use a poxy phone; I did work in call centres for 4 hellish years of my life, you ridiculous bitch."

Instead I went into the loo and plotted her downfall.

These things are all enough to make a boy wish he was at home in bed instead of sharing air space with a bunch of bastards, but the thing that really gets on my nerves is the fact that everyone keeps going on about the woman I replaced. Apparently, turnover at this company is quite low and I was the first new person to join them in about two years. That's fine, I feel a little bit special. So stop telling me how great Vanessa, my predecessor, was and let me get on with making my own mark on you all.

"Oh, Vanessa was so efficient."
"Oh, you would've loved Vanessa - she was so funny.
"I do miss Vanessa and her ways."

Fuck off. I get it. She was brilliant and you made a mistake taking me on.

Now let me sit here quietly for six months so that I have the relevant experience on my CV to start applying for the jobs I really want.

And tell Vanessa from me she is a whore.

All systems go

It was all very exciting coming back to Blogland earlier in the week. I spoke about my fabulous new job, my continued hang over life (did I mention that I'd taken 8 pain killers by lunch, just to 'take the edge off'?) and my still-single status.

But in all the excitement, there were a few things I forgot to mention. Like, the guy who sits opposite me in my new office is one of the gayest straight men I have ever met in my life. One of the very first things he said when I sat down on my first day was that he was a HUGE fan of Kylie Minogue. I mean, can you get any queerer? And then he starts talking about his 'girlfriend' and what they get up to at weekends.

I then find out that people in the office have actually met this 'Emma' character and no one thinks he even whiffs of pink. The only thing that makes me doubt his closet status is that he is the biggest sci-fi geek in the land. Practically every day he gets another delivery of something Trekkie-related and his desk is surrounded by bizarre comics and Daleks. Surely no self-respecting secret homo would be into that pile of shit?

I also forgot to mention that I was in the process of selling my car. Well, at 10am this morning, a lovely girl from my 'hood came round, took it for a test drive and plopped a few thousand pounds in my hand to take it home.

So, officially, I am now in a position to start looking at places in London.

Yippee! No more commuting. No more sitting on the train for hours in the morning. No more elaborate plans to avoid talking to The Bear. Fabulous.

Time to look forward. Where will I be living? Will I get a superb one-man pad in Crouch End close to Snow? Will I move into a cool flat-share scenario in Primrose Hill with some hunky, witty gayers? Or will I have to settle for a scab-infested bedsit in Balham?

The chances are, it will be none of these things. I have all this money on me and I am sitting in an internet cafe in Soho. Hmm, the shops are just around the corner. I could get a few pairs of Levis, some aftershave, tops from Topman and all sorts of Triga DVDs.

NO, I must be practical and use it for a deposit. That's what this has all been about.

Oh, sod it. I'm signing off and spending the lot!

Valentine's Day, Schmalentine's Day

I'm back. I'm blogging. And it's about effing time.

I won't harp on about the fact that even at week five, I am still really enjoying my new job. I won't go on for ages about the fact that I am slap bang in the heart of Soho with all the homos. I won't even mention that I am finally working in 'the media' and that when I have six months' experience behind me, I will be in a position to apply for jobs on the magazines that matter - you know, like heat, Closer and Reveal; really ground-breaking journalism.

What I will say is that I am so hung over right now, even my hair hurts. I doused myself in Doormouse's Lacoste aftershave this morning to disguise the stench of vodka that was seeping out of every pore on my body.

You see, Doormouse and I are like the only single people in the entire city of London, and so we had an Anti-Valentine'sDay party at his place last night. I say 'party', but I simply mean a session where we necked a whole two-litre bottle of Smirnoff and didn't end up going to bed until 3:45am.

During the debauchery, we remembered how, at the start of the year, we had claimed that 2007 was going to be the year of The Cock. We were supposed to be putting the 'sex' back into homosexual. Well, it's halfway through the second month of the year and neither one of us has seen even a sniff of action.

We went to Fiction a couple of weeks ago for an evening of substance-fuelled Friday night joy, and while Doormouse flirted with his dealer, I found myself telling everyone that I really loved them and I really loved the music and I was having such a good buzz. Yes, I danced on tables with boys, but sadly, did not go home with any of them.

To remedy the sorry state of affairs, we have pencilled in some fun evenings, one at The Ghetto for Doormouse's birthday (he'll be 29, but we're telling everyone he's turning 27 - it just sounds better), and the other at Popstarz to try and bag us some Indie boys.

So, basically, in all the weeks I have been away from the world of The Blog (and they have been hard - I can't send any personal emails or go on any fun sites at my new job. How much time did I waste at my old one? I'm starting to understand why they got rid of me), nothing has changed. I had hoped that Mr Right, or at least someone who knew Mr Right, would be waiting for me in my new company. Turns out they're mainly straight, married people with little or no fun in them.

And as if all that wasn't bad enough, Doormouse decided he was too unwell to go to work this morning, so I had to brave the underground on my own. This in itself is harrowing enough after a night on the lash, but I was lucky enough to be standing near a young girl who puked her guts up, covering her shoes and her mum's jacket.

This was exactly what I wanted.



In case you're wondering, I am blogging on my lunch break at an internet cafe just round the corner from my office.