Life... With No Breaks (A laugh-out-loud comedy memoir)

by Spalding, Nick

  This calamity was brought down on my head because someone had suggested that it’d be good for the morale and productivity of the staff to spend a day shooting at each other in the woods.

  Sigh.

  This is what employers, team building session organisers and tanned American business entrepreneurs fail to realise: There are only one or two things that actually raise morale and productivity in the workplace.

  The first of these is shorter working hours.

  The second - and by far the most important - is:

  Money.

  Cash.

  Moolah.

  Reddies.

  Old-fashioned sterling, guv’nor.

  Forget all your well-meaning motivational posters and stupid team building exercises. Chuck out the morale-boosting bring your child to work and wear jeans to work days.

  You want us to work better, work harder, work faster?

  Then pay us more than the paltry amount we currently get!

  …this is not the way of things, however.

  Instead of paying us more money, our employers choose to spend twice as much on hiring corporate entertainers - or organising company outings to the back of beyond.

  Pay peanuts and invariably… get monkeys.

  I don’t think any of us labour under the misapprehension that management are going to raise our pay unless they have to. So it’s doubly important to make sure we make our work lives as pleasant as possible.

  To whit, here are a few helpful suggestions:

  Spalding’s Top Tips For A Stress-Free Working Life

  1. Never work more than the hours you’re paid to do. They can’t sack you for it. It’s right there in your contract, alongside your job responsibilities and the warning about not stealing office equipment. If you don’t have a copy then Cheryl in Personnel is only a phone-call away.

  2. Don’t be an arse kisser. Don’t spend your time being nice to the boss and working over-time because you think it’ll curry favour. It won’t. It’ll just make him think you’re an idiot that extra work can be piled onto at a moment’s notice.

  3. Avoid office politics. If a colleague approaches you and starts to moan about how that bitch from Accounts got a bigger office even though he’s been there longer, just smile, nod and walk away. You know damn well if it gets back to the bitch that you’ve been complaining about her, it’ll be you she marks out for special treatment and him she’ll end up shagging at the Christmas party.

  4. Don’t plan your future in your current job more than six months in advance. Why? Because if you start to hang all your hopes on it, it’ll take on more meaning and you’ll plan your life around it too much. More meaning equals more pressure, which equals more stress - and we don’t want that!

  5. Don’t compare yourself to those around you. Just do your job and do it as best you can. Yes, Michael across the hall might have his name on the employee of the month poster, but chances are he’s also got no social life, lives with his mum and can speak Klingon.

  6. Get the job papers every week. Even if you’re happy with what you’re doing now. You never know when an amazing job will crop up and you don’t want to get stuck in a rut. It can lead to depression and a feeling of being trapped. Besides, seeing that someone is advertising a job strikingly similar to yours - but for two thousand less a year - always puts a warm glow in your heart, doesn’t it?

  7. Try your hardest to never mention work when you’re not there. It’s impossible not to think about it sometimes when you’re up against it, but it’s vital you don’t tell your friends or family what the problem is. They won’t understand and you’ll spend an inordinate amount of time explaining what a processing report actually is, before you get to why it’s important you deliver it to the boss at 9am. Just leave well enough alone and with any luck they’ll do the same.

  8. Throw sickies as much as possible - unless your work involves saving lives in some way, in which case you’re stuffed. Otherwise, the company isn’t going to fold just because you take Monday off with an attack of the shits.

  I’m a terrible one for skiving off sick.

  If there’s something I’d rather be doing than sitting at a desk, drinking machine coffee and eating tasteless sandwiches while I write bullshit, then a convenient phone-call to the boss to say I won’t be in today is inevitable. Talking through a tea-towel into the phone always helps, I find.

  I try not to do it too much in a short period of time. It’s a constant balancing act. How many times can you be off ill without people thinking you’re skiving?

  I’ve got it down to about once every three months.

  You also have to account for the law of sod, which dictates that anytime you skive off work for a couple of days to go jet ski-ing, you can be guaranteed the following week you’ll get a dose of the flu and will have to go into work with it. You don’t want to use up your boss's patience completely and eight days off sick in two weeks might do just that.

  You know who I hate? The bloody people who get sick, but come to work anyway.

  They sit and complain about how crap they feel, but also state they had to come in because they’ve got a mountain of work to do that just can’t wait.

  Bollocks.

  You’re not that important, you little shit.

  Someone else could have handled your work load, or it could have waited until you were better!

  What’s more, you’ve now managed to spread your disease through the whole office like a modern day Typhoid Mary. We’ve all caught it and can look forward to a week of sneezes, coughs and headaches.

  If anyone you work with comes in with the flu, cover your mouth with a damp cloth, stand at least ten feet away and threaten to beat them to death with a Kleenex box unless they turn tail and return to their sick beds at once.

  To sum up: the best way to run your working life is to accept your position, never let your job take control and always remember you’re there to make money.

  Yes, that is a very mercenary outlook, but how many mercenaries do you know with a stomach ulcer, eh?

  3.20 am

  19646 Words

  Good grief!

  Did you hear the cracking noise my back made when I stretched?

  Been sitting here for over nine hours and it’s taking a toll.

  Remember those noisy people outside? They’re long gone now.

  …everything is silent in the watches of the night. We’re all alone.

  If we look out of the window for long enough we might see the occasional cat crossing the street, its fur cast with a strange orange tint from the streetlights overhead. We might see the odd car - someone returning later than they’d intended from a party, or a junior doctor driving to the A&E to start a 36 hour shift.

  But other than that, the world on the other side of the window is quiet.

  Tranquil, you might say.

  …the weather’s calm tonight.

  There’s a slight mist hanging over the street. The kind that leaves traces of dew on your jacket when you walk through it. When you breathe out, a soft plume of cold air forms and hangs around you like a shroud.

  The only sounds are from far off: the low rhythmic rumble of trains passing through the dark - and the plaintive barking of a solitary dog, missing the warmth of hearth and home.

  The beast of the world is snoozing, in those magical hours between closing time and the dawn chorus.

  This is when the slate is wiped clean.

  When the mistakes and errors of yesterday are forgotten and the playing field is reset, ready to begin the game anew tomorrow.

  It’s at times like this you can think, when there are no interruptions and when the quiet of the night makes your mind serene.

  In short… it’s pretty fucking boring out there.

  Puts you in mind of a bad romantic comedy - probably starring Jennifer Aniston.

  Yawn.

  Did you think that passage sounded atmospheric? Full of poetic description and subtle nuance?

 
; I couldn’t resist ending it on a gag though, could I?

  It’s a failing of mine. I find it very difficult to be serious, especially in the stuff I write.

  I started out with the best of intentions with that passage: to write a nice descriptive few paragraphs about the world outside, only to ruin it with a gag that wasn’t all that clever anyway.

  The tone may have made you sleepy. After all, it is very late now.

  Try and stick with me as I wind my way towards dawn though, as we’ve got lots more to talk about - including a nasty divorce story that’s squatting at the front of my memory like a big, bug-eyed toad.

  I’ve always been a man who likes his sleep and I’m trying to ignore the imperative to slope off to bed and go gently into that dark night.

  I can hear my bed calling to me from across the hall:

  ‘Nick… come to me Nick. Roll the duvet around you and forget the world outside.’

  Evil temptress, she is.

  I enjoy my sleep and yet I suffer from insomnia.

  That’s a fairly dreadful irony, isn’t it? One that once again proves God is a practical joker - the kind that loosens the top of the pepper pot and puts cling-film over the toilet bowl.

  Insomnia is one of those uniquely modern diseases that exist - at least in part - due to the lifestyles we lead.

  Our old enemy the clock has his role to play in the life of the insomniac.

  Having to live according to a schedule that is fundamentally alien to our mental architecture causes no end of problems.

  I’ve laid in bed many times, knowing that the damn alarm clock is going to go off in three hours, and my brain won’t shut down despite the lead weights on my eyelids.

  There is nothing so exquisitely horrid than the sense of frustration you feel at this moment.

  You’re caught in a catch-22.

  You can’t sleep, which makes you frustrated and angry, but you won’t be able to sleep in that mood. No matter how hard you pound the pillow or turn it over to the cool side, sleep will just not come.

  There are commonly two types of insomniacs:

  Those who suffer from early waking syndrome, where you can quite happily pop off to sleep at a reasonable hour, but find yourself snapping awake at four in the morning, with no chance of drifting off again.

  Then there’s the type I suffer from, which is delayed sleep: when no matter what you do, sleep remains a distant fantasy, until you eventually drop into an unsatisfying slumber just as the birds start to sing outside.

  Sleep tends to occur in cycles of three to four hours and if you don’t complete those cycles, you spend the next day walking around with sandy eyes and a grumpy demeanour.

  I get insomnia when I’m stressed.

  I have an overactive brain - by no means a bad thing all the time, as without it I very much doubt I could be writing this book. But there have been occasions when I’d gladly trade my imagination in for the cool empty serenity of an inactive mind that slips into sleep as easily as a hand slips into a velvet glove.

  It’s not like the stuff my brain occupies itself with at four in the morning is important. It would be ok if I was thinking up stunningly original ideas for books, or working out ways to make my life easier.

  Instead, the silly lump of grey matter ponders such vital problems as:

  ‘How old does someone need to be exactly to die of old age? 60? 70? 80?’

  Or:

  ‘If we didn’t have bottoms, would we need chairs? Or would we stand up all the time? It’d certainly save space in trains, wouldn’t it?’

  Or:

  ‘If the entire government was killed in a freak yachting accident, how long would it be until anyone noticed any difference in the way we live our day to day lives? A day? A month? A Year? Never?’

  These thoughts run around my head, chasing their tails like hyperactive dogs. All the time there’s a part of me screaming at them to just sod off and leave me alone, so I can get to sleep and wake up refreshed - ready to go into work the next day and apologise for shooting a fat sweaty bloke with a paintball gun.

  The moment I dread more than any other is when the first bird starts to sing. I’m convinced the feathery little bastard is just waiting for me to start dropping off before commencing his twittering - letting every other bird in the area know just how tough he is.

  Pretty soon they’re all at it, a collection of strident high-pitched warbling, set at just the right tone to drill into my brain.

  And the little gits never sing the same tune. Oh no.

  It’s always a discordant set of musical phrases overlapping one another, ending up as an incoherent jumble.

  For the sake of variety in the orchestra, a wood pigeon starts a low monotonous hoot that wouldn’t be too bad if it was timed at regular intervals. It’s not though. Just as I think I’ve got the rhythm - a hoot every five seconds or so – he’ll change to once every seven, then every two, then every ten.

  Bastard!

  I’ve tried earplugs.

  They either fall out after ten minutes or prod my eardrum when I roll over on the pillow, giving me earache.

  Wanking doesn’t help much either.

  It’s supposed to leave you drained and ready for sleep, but all it tends to do is make me sweaty, cross-eyed and still wide awake.

  Thankfully, I only go through short periods of insomnia.

  Maybe a month here, a couple of months there - not a constant thing.

  If it was, I’m sure I’d be locked up in an asylum by now, twitching and chasing birds around the asylum garden with a look of hatred on my face.

  There are a million and one home made remedies for the condition, none of which work.

  Countless over the counter medicines are available as well that seem to have equal levels of failure. These are different from the home made stuff, because they’re useless and contain lots of horrendous chemicals that won’t help you fall asleep, but will probably make your hair fall out.

  Here’s something I never understand about sleeping pills. Invariably, written somewhere on the box or in the instructions is this:

  Do Not Operate Heavy Machinery.

  What a fascinatingly redundant thing to put on a bottle of pills designed to make you fall asleep.

  I can’t think of anyone who’s thought:

  ‘Here I am, about to drive this enormous truck through a complicated oil refinery, where the slightest of prangs could lead to an explosion that would wipe out half of Dorset. I think I’ll take a couple of Sleepy-aid pills to keep me going.’

  Some of the most terrifying reading you can ever do is to scan the instructions in medicines - even the apparently harmless ones. It’s enough to give anyone a heart attack as you read about possible side effects:

  Nausea, vomiting, skin rashes, diarrhoea, spasms, blindness, deafness, leprosy and rickets.

  …yeah, I think I’ll just put up with the mild head cold actually, it sounds a much safer bet than popping aspirin into my mouth.

  I even saw death described as a side-effect in something.

  Death!? Death isn’t a bloody side-effect!

  How miserable a disease do you have to catch for death to be a more pleasant alternative?

  Between the list of horrifying side-effects and the fact they don’t work, I avoid sleeping remedies like the plague.

  Therefore, I suffer in silence, until the period of stress and insomnia passes and a more normal sleeping routine re-asserts itself.

  Without the experience of sleepless nights, I’d really be struggling by this time to write anything coherent. Lucky then that it’s not too much of a trial for me to write through the night - otherwise this book would only qualify as a short story and I’d be half blind from sleep depravation by now.

  Sometimes it’s hard to make people appreciate the seriousness of insomnia. Explaining your condition to those who have never experienced it is a real trial. It’s especially difficult when you’re dealing with someone who can fall asleep at the d
rop of a hat and can’t sympathise at all.

  I’ve had a few conversations with people who think that I’m overdoing it a bit and can’t really be feeling all that bad.

  After all, it’s only a few hours kip I’m missing. I’m not ill or anything, am I?

  Grrrr.

  My wife was always the type of person who could nod off quickly and never appreciated the misery I was in. I’ll give her credit though, she never complained when I paced the floor at four am and never told me to pull myself out of it in a condescending manner.

  That’s the nasty thing about insomnia.

  It’s a psychological condition and there are some people out there who believe all such maladies are easily solved if the sufferer just pulls up their socks and deals with the problem.

  These people need to be roasted slowly at about two hundred degrees and served with new potatoes in my opinion.

  If you’re lucky enough to be a sound sleeper and an insomniac crosses your path, try to be as sympathetic as possible and believe them when they say life has become a living hell. If not, you’re likely to have your arm ripped out and be beaten to death with the soggy end.

  Just a friendly warning.

  If you’re unlucky enough to be like me, then the only piece of advice I can give is to examine what’s happening in your day to day life. Chances are it’s having an effect on your ability to drop off and you may need to address any issues you have before the insomnia will pack its bags and leave you feeling like a human being again.

  There was a client at my firm - one of the nicer ones - who ran an art gallery. He confided in me over a liquid lunch one day that he went through a period of insomnia for two years - non-stop.

  It nearly cost him his marriage, did cost him his job and made him seek psychiatric help. He told me that every night since he has offered a small prayer to God in thanks for the uninterrupted seven hours he gets.