Monthly Archives: July 2016

No. 18 Farming Aphids – An Ant’s guide

July 26, 2016 By in Monopolis Leave a comment

(Written by a Person)

Ants and Aphids

The difference between an Ant and an Aphid is tiny, but in that tiny difference lies a world of pain.

Ants farm Aphids. Chemicals secreted onto the Ants’ tiny little feet mark their territory and sedate and pacify entire colonies of aphids. In this way Ants keep their Aphids close, as a ready source of nourishment. Ants feed on Aphids.

In addition to the use of chemical tranquilisers, Ants have developed an arsenal of tools and techniques with which to subdue their Aphids, including physical and chemical mutilation and even food deprivation.

The complex relationship between Ants and their Aphids makes a fascinating study.

 

Selecting the Aphid

Ants select their Aphids very carefully. There are typically six to eight interviews, not including the third-party recruiter’s filtering interview, before an Aphid is invited to join the Colony. This is part of the indoctrination process. An Aphid applies to join a Colony of their own free will. There is no force involved. The Aphid submits themselves to a protracted interview process from which they could be ejected at any moment. This serves to develop both a degree of impostor syndrome in the applicant, plus an equal and opposite sense of entitlement. Once the interview process is over, the successful candidate dumps the impostor syndrome and grabs hold of the sense of entitlement with both hands. From this moment they have become willing participants in their own indentured servitude. The Aphid is therefore complicit in their own imprisonment. Simple.

The social superiority of Ants

Ants, of course, are little if any better off.  Ants are subject to the constant pressure of unachievable goals which they will all ultimately fail to realise. Upon failure a number of times to achieve the essential goals of an Ant, the Ant will disappear, only to reappear, magically, as an Aphid. This substitution is never mentioned, never discussed.

Until the moment of the transformation however, the Ant occupies a position apparently at the pinnacle of the social hierarchy of the Colony. I say ‘apparently’, because the Ant, all Ants as a matter of fact, are unaware of the existence of the true rulers of the Colony, those few Executives sequestered away in the centre of the complex, invisible to all except the very few senior Ants who serve them directly.

Ants are destined to farm the aphids for their entire lives, sustaining themselves by sucking the honeydew that Aphids secrete from the sphincters of their alimentary canals.

Ants encourage Aphids to secrete the life-sustaining goo by stroking them sensuously with their feelers.

The Colony

The Colony, Executives, Ants and Aphids, is a single, self-sustaining, self-organised, living being, competing savagely with other similar Colonies distinguishable only by their logos and marketing. There is really nothing to choose between Colonies, especially from the point of view of Ant or Aphid (insofar as Ant of Aphid can be said to have a point of view).

So when next you encounter an Ant, busily serving its Colony, have a thought for the mutilated honeydew excreting Aphid it will inevitably, one day become.

No. 17 Waiting

July 25, 2016 By in Love and Loss Leave a comment

The period of ecstatic joy that accompanied the moment she first gave me her phone number has now emphatically passed.

Now I am beginning to realise what a curse it was. I had waited and wanted and wished for her number for months. I had blamed, berated and beaten myself for a coward for not simply asking for her number.

My friends told me: ‘Just tell her you enjoyed her company. Tell her you’d like to get to know her better. Just ask for her number.’

Then, one magical day when the spirit of a braver more self-confident me miraculously inhabited by body, I asked her.

She took a small notebook from her purse and a small enameled Biro, and she wrote her name and her phone number in neat, clear letters. She said Wednesday evenings were good for her and weekends. She smiled.

I didn’t call her straight away, the moment I got home. I wanted to of course, more than anything, but I didn’t. I wasn’t trying to play it cool, though a couple of times I tried to tell myself that I was. I didn’t call her because I was afraid she might have given me the wrong number.

When at last I did call, on the following Tuesday, she was out. I got her voice-mail and hung up immediately without leaving a message. Once again I was ecstatic, for a moment, she had given me her real phone number. Then, again I was seized by anxiety and self-doubt. Why hadn’t I left a message? What kind of an idiot would I look?

Then five minutes later, pretending I had not called previously, I called back and did leave a message. I said it was me and that I wondered if she had any plans for Wednesday.

I hung up, pleased with myself and more than a little relieved. But then five minutes after that I realised that I hadn’t given her my number. There was no way she could call me back.

Should I call again, affecting rueful amusement, and leave my number. No. That would take someone far more courageous than me.

Maybe she knew my number, maybe she had already asked someone else for it?

Now I had her phone number, I had called her, I had left a message and I was no better off than I had been before. Worse in fact, as I would now look an idiot whether I called her back or not.

I decide to call her back. The phone rings and immediately she answers it.

‘Oh’ I say.

‘Who is it?’

I say it’s me and that I am phoning her back because I realised I hadn’t left my number in case she was free Wednesday.

She says she’s glad I called. She says she is free Wednesday evening and that I can pick her up at 7:00pm. She hangs up.

I am beyond ecstatic I run around chasing my tail and chanting ‘Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Until I realise I do not have her address.

Should I phone her back?   I’m not going through that again. Maybe if I work my way through the phone book I can figure out her address from the phone number.

I can’t call her back again, not so soon. I am physically and emotionally exhausted as it is.

I start working my way through the phone book. It is amazing how many Johnson’s there are for such a small town.

After about half an hour the phone rings. I pick it up absentmindedly and say ‘Yep, Wha-Sup?’

It is her! I must sound like a complete bozo, no one says that kind of thing anymore.

‘Hi, she says, ‘just thought you’d need my address for tomorrow.’

I write down the address. I say ‘See you tomorrow then.’

‘Tru Dat’ she says with a little laugh and hangs up.

 

No. 16 Annulment

July 17, 2016 By in Love and Loss Leave a comment

We have only ever been friends, thank goodness. I have never been given ‘the treatment’.

She is handsome rather than pretty, sporty and competitive. She loves to compete, one to one, never in teams, and she loves to win.

She keeps her dark brown hair short, almost boyish. She says long hair gets in the way when she is kayaking, or foot-boxing, or rock climbing, or doing anything else for that matter.

She always has a boy in tow, usually tall and thin with corded muscles, wiry, never big and bulky. She calls them her beaus. I think she thinks it sounds more classy than lover and more grown up than boyfriend.

The pattern is always the same – though she never seems to recognise it. She is always either in love, head-over-heels, besotted, or collapsed, very temporarily, under a crushing grief – either of abandonment or disappointment, depending.

Each is always ‘the one’, and while he is the one he is the subject of her absolute, undivided and unremitting attention. He gets ‘the treatment’.

From the outside it always seems a bit unfair, like shooting fish in a barrel.

She loves sex of course, that’s the heart of the matter, she loves boys and she loves sex and the best sex is always to be had when one is swept away in the first unbearable, unsustainable flush of new love.

It always seems to me that it is not the boy that is important, it is the love, or more precisely, it is the being in love. It is the being swept away with love. The craziness of it, the irresistible force of it, the consequent absence of culpability. The effective innocence afforded by love is what she loves.

She slumps down in one of my oversized blue cotton arm chairs, carefully crosses her legs, like a child, and then she says:

‘He is wonderful, you have to meet him. I know you’ll love him. We met in <Tibet/The Amazon/Astronaut Training/Insert Selection Here>. He says the funniest things <Insert funny thing here>.

She enfolds the new beau in a thick blanket of words such that no sense of any individual remains. His very being is synchronously deified and annulled by her act of love, he becomes concurrently a God and a cypher destined only to abandon or disappoint.

Which of course, inevitably, he does.

No. 15 Monopolis – The Customer Survey

July 16, 2016 By in Monopolis 1 Comment

One practice that will stick in the mind of the recent returnee from Monopolis, must certainly be that of the so-called ‘Customer Survey’.

Such great store is set by the results of the Customer Survey. Every conceivable interaction between the Monopolian and his or her customer is surveyed and evaluated.

The Monopolis ‘official version’ of the Customer Survey concept is that customer satisfaction is the single most important measure of the work, and therefore of the success, of Monopolis. The Customer Survey is king, people get promoted or fired based upon their Customer Satisfaction Survey Results.

Of course, being Monopolis, the Customer Satisfaction Survey is not referred to as the Customer Satisfaction Survey at all, but is instead, entitled the ‘Customer and Business Partner Experience (CBPE) Survey’, which, you will agree, is very different and obviously much better as it places somewhat at one degree removed the vexed question of customer satisfaction itself, and substitutes instead the more ambiguous, and therefore more malleable, concept of customer ‘experience’.

From an apparently objective measure, the renaming of ‘satisfaction’ to ‘experience’ repositions the matter nicely from the world of facts to the word of perceptions. And as we all know, within Monopolis, perception is reality.

The recent returnee will recall that the CBPE Survey asks a number of questions about some more-or-less recent customer interaction and allows the Customer or ‘Business Partner’ to select from nine possible responses, where (1) indicates that said individual is ‘Highly Dissatisfied’ and (9) indicates ‘Total Beaming Satisfaction’.

Although there are nine possible responses, only an (8) or a (9) actually ‘count’, i.e. anything less than an (8) or a (9) represents the abject failure on the part of the Monopolian to satisfy the expectations of his or her customer. As mentioned, failure to satisfy ones customer (or more accurately, failure to obtain an (8) or a (9) in the CBPE Survey of said customer) is a recipe for corrective training, reduced bonuses or even dismissal.

It naturally follows that the Monopolian’s focus on keeping his or her customer very satisfied indeed, or at least of obtaining an (8) or a (9) from them when surveyed (which of course amounts to the same thing) is laser-like both in its refinement and its intensity.

One might infer, given the overarching, indeed central, significance of CBPE Survey results to the success, comfort and ultimate lifestyle of the Monopolian, that the Monopolian might do anything and everything necessary to obtain an (8) or a (9) from every customer, on every occasion they are surveyed. And one would of course be quite right.

The first question a Monopolian would ask, when musing upon the question of an upcoming CBPE Survey, would be whether or not to survey the customer at all. Monopolis, being nothing if not reasonable in matters such as these, does of course allow for odd occasions when, for whatever reason, a customer cannot be surveyed. Actually, I should correct my previous statement: to say ‘for whatever reason’ is not accurate, there are of course a limited number of prescribed reasons why a customer can and indeed should, be excluded from a survey, and of course each one comes with its own attendant risks…

The reasons for exclusion are:

  1. Death of the customer
  2. Permanent disablement of the customer
  3. The customer no longer works at the same organisation
  4. The customer has specifically asked not to be surveyed

The risks of using any one of these exclusions are as follows. The Monopolian’s manager may:

  1. Send their condolences to the organisation
  2. Send their condolences to the organisation
  3. Send a survey to a customer representative of their own choice at the organisation
  4. Call the customer directly to ask why they did not wish to be surveyed, and/or the manager may record a ‘black mark’ against the Monopolian’s name for failing to convince the customer to accept a survey

Finally of course, above a certain unspecified quota, failure to survey itself engenders a black mark.

The second question a Monopolian would ask, when musing upon the upcoming CBPE Survey, would be who, at the customer organisation, would be the most ‘appropriate’ recipient of the survey request. A great deal of thought and preparation can go into this selection.

The third question a Monopolian would ask would be what is the customer’s email address? Any error, even the most minute and apparently insignificant, might make the difference between the customer receiving the survey request and not receiving it.

As mentioned, a small number of customers will not to respond to the survey, and this is only to be expected.

Having selected the customer and their email address, the Monopolian then sets assiduously about explaining to the customer how the survey system works, in particular, the fact that anything other than an (8) or a (9) represents abject failure. The ways this is done are many and various.

The Monopolian must ensure, at all costs, that they get overwhelmingly (8)s and (9)s. An occasional (7) is acceptable and even adds a frisson of authenticity to the results. No response below a (7) can be tolerated.

It is therefore a testament to the quality of the customer service provided by the Monopolian, that the overwhelming majority of Monopolian’s achieve overwhelmingly excellent results the overwhelming majority of the time.

Overwhelming really…

 

 

 

No. 14 Alteration

July 11, 2016 By in Love and Loss Leave a comment

I observe her, as I have observed her so many times before, from across the crowded café.

I cannot hear what she says from this distance, but I can admire the perfect curve of her lip, her sweet smile. Her scent, fondly remembered from chance moments of physical closeness, cannot bridge the void between us.  I taste hot dark coffee on my tongue, taken with one large Muscovado sugar cube, just as she takes it. I admire the way the curve of her tiny waist so closely matches the violin curve of her chair. I feel the hardness of the curved wooden chair beneath me, worn smooth by the passing of many strangers. I am a stranger to her and she to me, though we have shared these Tuesdays, this precious half hour, many times.

I should not come. I should stop coming. I should be resolute and firm with myself. I should move to the South as my brother keeps urging. Yet I stay, unable to approach, unable to speak, held at this exact distance Tuesday after Tuesday, time after time.

Abruptly, from nowhere, or perhaps, had I greater self-knowledge, from the fuming fire of need and desire fulminating within me, comes decision. This time it will be different. This time I will approach, I will speak!

No, not yet. I will follow, I will watch. She is wearing her primrose silk high heels. How perfectly they set off her shapely ankle!

At the allotted moment she pays the waiter and walks serenely from the café, eyes down, demure. As she leaves the café I see her put up her pale blue umbrella, the colour of childhood skies.

I pay too and leave hurriedly, knocking over my chair as I grab my coat. Fumbling, apologising. I see her turn left down the little lane, heading for the main road. An early autumn drizzle has started. I run to the corner struggling into my overcoat as I go. I do not see her as I enter the lane. Desperation drives me through the crowd. I push through them, noticing my unaccustomed discourtesy, shouting out uncomfortable apologies and pardons as I go.

At last I make it to the main road. She is standing, patiently at the front of a small group of people waiting to cross. I slow. I approach nonchalantly, weaving through the loose knot of people. Making my way to a point just behind her and to her right.

A taxi drives past, splashing a little water as it goes. An elderly lady is startled and slips on the wet paving stone. She stumbles. I see one primrose silk shoe slip off the curb and into the muddy slurry.

The girl turns, her face twisted and contorted by rage.

‘Watch what you’re doing you stupid, clumsy old bitch! You’ve ruined my fucking shoes. You should be in a home!’

The crowd pulls away from the altercation. The elderly lady mutters an apology. The crossing light turns green and my life walks away.

I stand in the early autumn drizzle, my world collapsed.

No. 13 The Crisis, or ‘It’s a big trough and I want my snout in it’

July 9, 2016 By in News and Current Affairs, Opinion Leave a comment

You know that feeling – a dawning realisation that someone, somewhere has stuffed up mightily, and that there is going to be hell to pay?

Well the good news is that a crisis is a peculiarly human invention. Indeed, strictly speaking, it is entirely and exclusively a human affair. The other piece of good news, for the freelance consultant, is that every crisis is a massive opportunity. From the freelance point of view a crisis is a splendid example of ‘The Mess’ (see previous article on freelance consulting).

A crisis is a very different thing from a natural disaster like a flood or earthquake. While any kind of natural or man-made disaster will offer opportunities to the astute freelancer, the crisis offers an embarrassment of riches due to its uniquely human aspects. A disaster can precipitate a crisis for the unprepared executive, but a disaster is not, in and off itself, a crisis.

A crisis is caused by the executive failing to deal adequately with a disaster whether natural or man-made. It follows that an executive who deals quickly and effectively with a disaster will not precipitate a crisis. Essentially, what the freelancer is looking for, is a failure of confidence in the ability of those tasked with dealing with a disaster, to deal with it effectively. This is your opportunity to swan in with a quick fix.

Recent examples of political crises might include the Brexit Vote (June 2016), the emergence of Donald Trump as the front runner in the Republican presidential nomination race, or the collapse of the Australian Liberal Party’s vote in the recent general election. Commercial crises of recent note include the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the VW car ‘defeat’ software that falsified carbon emissions, and the endless and repetitive corruption scandals afflicting banks and the financial sector.

All these events have become crises because the powers that be, and in particular the powers that popular opinion believed should have dealt with the underlying issues, singularly failed to do so. The fall of the UK conservatives David Cameron and Boris Johnson as well as Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, and the leadership challenges about to engulf Malcolm Turnbull in Australia, are all directly caused by the failure of these ‘leaders’ to understand and deal with the underlying causes of the disasters which have befallen them.

The push in Australia for a Royal Commission into banking corruption is a perfect example of how a commercial crisis can become a political crisis if both sets of executives fail utterly to deal with the underlying problem.

In the business context a disaster happens, but only results in a crisis when management fails to address the issue adequately. So crises in commercial and organisational settings are always and everywhere due to a failure of management (N.B. $$$).

The failing executive will of course seek to deflect the blame – onto the economy, onto more junior employees or even competitors, but this is merely sleight of hand. The truth will always be that the disaster has triggered a crisis because the underlying disaster has not been dealt with effectively. For the freelancer, it is essential to remain fully aware of this fact while absolutely ignoring it. Focus instead on suitable deflections, shallow solutions, and broader targets for blame.  If you can come up with a plausible solution that will enable the failed executive to keep his or her job you are laughing.

So for all executives, everywhere, I offer this word of advice: When disaster strikes, ask yourself how best to handle the matter to avoid a crisis. Decent continuity planning and risk management will help you prepare for the foreseeable, but when the unforeseeable happens, and it will happen, remember that clear thinking and honest leadership are your key to avoiding a crisis.

That said, and in the sure and certain knowledge that only one in a million executives will heed my advice, I will just remind the freelance consultant that a crisis frees up cash, lots and lots of cash, which it is incumbent upon someone to spend – well it might as well be you, right?

No. 12 The Returnee’s Handbook – Passion

July 4, 2016 By in Monopolis Leave a comment

Those who have recently had any interaction either with the colony of Monopolis or with a resident Monopolian will be aware of their attitude towards, and use of, the word ‘Passion’ and its derivative, ‘Passionate’.

Monopolians are passionate about everything, from clipping their toe nails to ending world hunger.

There is no subject upon which the Monopolian is ambivalent, they are never ‘so so’ on any topic. Being passionate goes with being super-excited. Monopolians are never merely ‘excited’ about anything, if they are going to be excited at all, they will be super-excited.

The Monopolian will be passionate and super-excited about whatever task they are engaged in, or are about to be engaged in, or have recently completed. If the Monopolian is in a particularly good mood or if you area a close friend, superior, or someone who may help them in some way either immediately or in the future, the Monopolian may be super-excited about your currently allocated task, or one you’ve just completed or are about to start. They may even claim to be passionate about it.

If you have recently returned from Monopolis it is important to be aware that the words passion and passionate are used differently here than they are there. In Monopolis the word passionate is roughly equal to the phrases ‘working on’ or ‘aware of’ back on Earth. Its use is of course derived from the same original core concept, that of caring about something very deeply, but as it is applied to everything the Monopolian does, all the time, it has evolved a less fervid meaning.

This can be confusing to the recent returnee, as Monopolians are genuinely fervent abut some things, for example bonuses and fulfilling their true potential. They are also ardent in their attachment to Monopolis. Research has shown that the average Monopolian will not leave Monopolis willingly, ever.

The Monopolian is also zealous, genuinely so, in articulating the superiority of Monopolis and all its works, over those of competitors; avid in their interest in all things Monopolian, and obsessive in their need to iterate and re-iterate their key sales messages and points of differentiation.

As with any organisation, its hangers on and enthusiasts, there are those who go too far. These are the fanatics, every large organisation has them, particularly in the fields of sports and technology. They are the storm troopers of Monopolis and its competitors, those who adore the leader and would die for the cause. The fanatics, are, mercifully, few in number though their voice is loud and their influence great.

It will be evident from this short reading that hanging out with a Monopolian can be exhausting, and is typically tedious after a little while. For the recent returnee from Monopolis, therefore, it is important to be aware of the common use of words on Earth if they are to avoid ridicule, or worse, becoming a source of ennui amongst their fellows.

 

No. 11 BREXIT

July 4, 2016 By in News and Current Affairs Leave a comment

The Brexit vote is a trigger for much more than just the UK, or parts of it, to leave the EU. It is a trigger that will actuate the many fault lines that have been growing beneath the surface of the modern world. It is also a symptom of those growing fault lines. The impacts will be economic, social, legal, military, political and historic.
Furthermore, the Brexit vote will trigger those tensions to erupt across the world to a greater or lesser extent in each and every country.
The popularity in the political sphere of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in the USA, the Tsipras’ Syriza party in Greece and the Brexit vote itself, are all symptoms of a breakdown of, for want of a better descriptor, the ‘social contract’ in each of these countries.
We are heading for seismic political changes in which traditional parties will be forced to adapt immediately or die, and since few human organisations can adapt quickly to change, my guess is that many of the old parties will die.
We are already seeing the early economic fallout as predicted, but it is the medium to long term impacts that really matter. After the dust has settled, the significant pressures already impacting late stage capitalism (or early post capitalism or whatever you want to call it) will re-emerge as driving forces. For example:
• Permanently low interest rates
• Static or reducing demand
• Vast increases in automation, leading to
• Destruction of many traditional jobs
• Growing abundance of low cost goods – think Sock City in China produces a huge proportion of the world’s socks at minimal cost
• Massive increase in virtually free ‘information goods’ e.g. music, movies, books, education etc.

These forces remove more and more goods and services from the economic sphere. This happens in two ways, firstly as more and more goods become effectively free, and secondly as the free, information based, portion of the value of goods increases, for example as the value of information increases as a proportion of the goods you buy – think Amazon’s purchasing suggestions.
There will inevitably be changes across the legal spectrum from treaties to trade agreements, IP rights, residency rights, forms of property ownership and so on. The only way an ‘information’ good can be profitable is if the supplier has a monopoly – just think about the music and film industries, without their monopoly on IP rights music and movies would effectively be free.
Militarily, we can already see a shift in focus in the USA’s attention from supporting Israel to confronting China and Russia. In Europe too Brexit will impact NATO and the will of the allies to work together.
Socially we are already seeing in every advanced industrialised (or post-industrial) country the growth of non-market relationships, the desire to opt out, the development of social networks both via social media and in specific physical localities.
Technological developments in terms of the internet, social media, solar power and now the promise of cheap batteries to store solar generated electricity, and ever increasing automation of work both enable and speed up the social changes mentioned. The immanent arrival of self-driving cars will free up real-estate and reduce the number of cars on the road. Changes which have the potential to shift our societies into whole new modes of behaviour.
All these trends taken together have the potential to ‘bump’ our world into a new historical groove.
In the years to come we may look back on the Brexit vote as the defining moment when everything changed, when all those pre-existing trends and tendencies were suddenly brought together in a new combination.

Let’s hope it’s a brave new world, it may have to be.

No.10 Single

July 3, 2016 By in Love and Loss Leave a comment

The smell of boiled cabbage wafted occasionally from the kitchen to mix with the stench of my partner’s cigarettes.

The flat was spacious and expensively decorated.The nights were just starting to get longer and I yearned to be somewhere else doing something else with someone else.

On the last day of that relationship we were sitting watching TV as an acceptable alternative to talking, and a welcome alternative to arguing.  I was well-over her, had been for six months or more if I’m honest, but I needed time to find another place and to get up the nerve to leave. I want to say I was trying to allow her the opportunity to change but the truth is I wasn’t. I couldn’t care less if she changed or not. I was just biding my time.

On that day though, our last day as it happened, as we were watching TV, a woman was being interviewed. She said that she was newly single after an unhappy relationship. She was determined to remain single for at least a thousand days.

‘That’s you isn’t it?’ my partner accused, ‘You want to be single for a thousand days don’t you?’

I said nothing. I made no response at all, keeping perfectly still, feeling the smoothness of the leather sofa, scarcely daring to breath. I had learned to give no sign, to give her not the slightest excuse for another explosion of rage. We had been arguing for months. I had even packed my bags a couple of times, but I had nowhere to go.

My partner was right of course. I decided right there and then that this would be our last day together. I could hear the sounds of the traffic over the din of the TV. I am lured by the bustle of the world outside. The next day I moved out, determined to be single for a thousand days.

I left a note, I explained my decision, and I jumped in a taxi with everything I, personally, owned.

My first morning in my new, more or less empty apartment was spent removing and un-friending her, her bloody family and all our mutual friends on social media. I emailed my good friends to say I would be back in contact in a few months.

On my first afternoon I went for a ride on my new bike, to check out the cycle route to work and just to be free and alone and have no one to answer to.

It was bliss. I felt a certain non-directional guilt at taking pleasure in being alone. This was it. This was what I wanted – to be young, free and single again. Ok maybe not quite so young as the last time, whenever that was, but the ‘free’ felt more free than it ever had done before, and the ‘single’ felt fantastic!

My first weekend as a single guy I cycled to the German club in Tempe. I spoke quite good German from a few years working in Berlin, and I liked to keep it up, but the main reason I went was for the bratwurst and the good German bier.

I locked up my bike and sat down. Everyone wanted to hear about my breakup and my new flat, and how it felt, and did I have any regrets and was there anyone else on the horizon, and NO, THERE WAS NOT. I told them all I was going to be young, free and single for a thousand days. And that was that.

I felt, rather than saw, a quiet girl with an enormous jug of pilsner sit down on the bench behind me.  I felt her presence as a kind of gentle warmth on my back. I ignored her and spoke with my closest mates for a while. People got up to get drinks, people changed seats. After a while she ended up sitting next to me. I ignored her. Not pointedly of course, I wasn’t trying to be rude, but absolutely and emphatically. I was only about eight days into my thousand and I was enjoying myself.

Then someone kindly introduced her. Her name was Stephanie. She was from Berlin. She worked for some international conglomerate in an incomprehensible marketing job that nobody in their right mind would ever want to hear about.  Cool, that was safe.

Then she spoke to me in a voice soft as silk on a summer’s night. She didn’t talk about work, she didn’t talk about herself. She didn’t offer vacuous opinions on topics she knew nothing about. She asked me about me. How come I spoke such good German? How long had I lived in Germany? Which city? What brought me to Australia?

I was attracted. I admit it. I was immediately attracted and I wanted to get away before she got under my skin. I had to get away.

I made my excuses, saying I had to meet friends for a cycle ride, and ran, or cycled away, as fast I could. I pedalled hard, clearing my mind of her, the cool breeze blowing away the sound of her voice, the warmth of her eyes, her scent.  I renewed my commitment to my thousand days, in the process all but circumnavigating the city.

My week at work was busy, I spent the evenings collecting items of furniture I had ‘won’ on eBay, and arranging and re-arranging my flat. Life was clean, simple and good.

Next weekend I met friends for drinks at the Goethe institute. Some horrible modern German poet was giving a reading. Anyway, the company would be good. The night was fun, the poet wasn’t too awful and I had a few more glasses of wine than usual.

At some point I noticed that Stephanie was in the room. She did not approached me. She did not even catch my eye or give me a quick nod. Rude cow!

I ignored her, pointedly. I didn’t need her sniffing around, complicating my life.

A few moments later she was standing behind me talking with a not unattractive young man from Dresden who was in Australia studying reptiles. I could feel her eyes on me. I caught a few snippets of conversation.

‘…yes, there is a fixed ratio between the maximum size a reptile can grow to and the average ambient temperature.’

‘Fascinating. So Australia has bigger reptiles than Germany?’

‘Oh yes, and many more varieties.’

Oh for goodness sake!  I turned and said:

‘Stephanie! What brings you to a poetry evening? I wouldn’t have thought it was your thing at all, all those nuances, and finer feelings.’

‘Oh, hi’ she said, ‘nice to see you again. This young man was just explaining to me about Australian reptiles.’ The young man turned and smiled nicely. On closer inspection he wasn’t that attractive at all. He had an overly large nose, small eyes and thin lips. In fact he looked a bit like a reptile himself.

An awkward silence grew, and grew, until even reptile-boy noticed and had the good grace to drift off somewhere.

‘It really is very nice to see you again’, Stephanie’s voice washed softly over me like a scented breeze. ‘Oh shit’ I thought, ‘here we go again’.

We got talking. She was attentive. She smiled at everything I said and gave every appearance of being interested. I drank a bit more and began to laugh loudly at my own jokes. We swapped numbers. I warned her I worked late every night and my weekends were booked for months ahead. I did not call her and was not expecting to hear from her.

The following Friday she invited me round to her apartment promising to make me a lovely home cooked supper.

Of course I went. Of course she turned out to be a wonderful cook. Of course …

I managed fifteen days as a single guy. Not bad.