High powered business negotiations

Brad and I have spent today and yesterday with Emily Wemily and her lovely man. I really love the weekends we spent with our two special friends and we always have such a nice time. It tends to consist of a lovely assortment of eating yummy food, talking, laughing and plenty of general silliness. Whenever we arrange one of these weekends Emily and I always like to pretend beforehand that it will be a fantastic opportunity to "have indepth business meetings" and "do some brainstorming". I think we just like the sound of saying this really and it makes us feel important. The reality is that we have never yet actually done any of these things during our weekends together. However agreeing this in advance makes us feel highly professional and so without fail I will arrive with my work bag full of files, notebooks, and carefully sharpened pencils. The fact that I have never yet even got as far as unzipping the bag does not dampen the enthusiasm for this decision in any way.

Actually the truth is that we do chat about ideas, make plans for the campaign, discuss ongoing projects, etc but it just isn't in a form that most people would instantly recognise as a business meeting. This may be because to an outsider it appears that most of the time is spent playing with Daisy (my dog), eating food and dozing. But that's what is such fun about what we do and also, I believe, why it works so well. An "Em'n'Em" style work process goes something like this:

Sunday:

1. Arrive at Emily's house. Dispense virtual hugs to each other and blow plenty of kisses across the room.

2. Have a cup tea and a slice of pink cake with obligatory sweetie bobbles

3. Sit for an hour admiring Daisy (my dog) and discuss such essential matters as the fluffiness of her nose or squidgyness of her paws.

4. Debate whether it is normal for a child to eat a dictionary, four glue sticks and a swimming float

5. Time for us both to have a sleep

6. Panic when phone rings at 8pm in case it is Harefield calling Em for transplant (sadly not)

7. Eat gorgeous supper whilst gossiping and putting the world to rights

8. Eat delicious fruit pie and custard whilst debating the value of the mince pie as a quintessential part of the festive yuletide culture in Britiain in the 21st centuary.

9. Sleep

Monday:

1. Arrive at Emily's in time to consume mid-morning rations of chocolate croissants and tea

2. Discuss organ donation issues, research on internet, debate ways of taking campaign forward

3. Get exceptionally over-impressed with ourselves for our productivity and decide that we are both worn out so decide to continue the high level discussions in a horizontal position with our eyes shut and without speaking (some may call this sleeping but they are so ill-informed...)

4. Eat lunch

5. Debate what a potato galette is

6. Drink tea and eat more cake whilst looking through photos

7. Leave dispensing profuse quantities of virtual hugs and kisses

Now I think that this method of working is actually highly productive whilst being very employee friendly so I think that Em and I should become the founders of a radical new style of management theory. We will call it the "Pink and Sparkly Management Technique" and will advise all managing directors to ensure the following working conditions:

- Continuous supply of pink cake and cups of tea

- Allow employees to snooze whenever and wherever they choose

- Ensure a small and cute dog in every workplace to provide cuddles on demand, regular employee exercise (via squeeky ball playing) and general counselling skills

- Encourage employees to congratulate themselves at every opportunity and award themselves self-made gold stars for even the tiniest amounts of productivity and upon thinking of every new idea

Hmmm, actually think Em and I should publish a new management guru stylee book called "Who moved my pink iced cake?" It can become the management bible of the 21st century and will be sure to make us a million. Wow, I'm exhausted from such a great idea. Time I joined Emily in another snooze......

Last Wednesday saw me back up at the hospital at clinic, where it was decided that I needed another 2 week course of IV antibiotics. The appointment involved having my lung function tested, seeing the consultant, waiting to have an IV line inserted and the accumulation of five carrier bags of drugs/syringes/needles/etc, which meant that I was at clinic for five hours, during which I engaged in some very interesting people watching activities. Let’s face it, no one really wants to hear about the other stuff do they? So here goes…

This entry is about the McSmellers family, who I had the joy of spending a (far too lengthy) period of time sitting opposite as I waited for an hour after having my first dose of IV’s (the hospital prefer you to be in the waiting room rather than on the M4 if you are going to have an anaphylactic shock reaction for some reason…).

Now I have to admit here to some use of poetic licence, as I have no idea what their real names were. But I have called them the McSmellers family because, basically, they smelt. A lot. A sort of unwashed stinky smell. There were three members of said family present that afternoon…Mrs Mcsmellers, Mr Mcsmellers and Master Mcsmellers.

Mr and Mrs Mcsmellers were both in their late fifties and were, not to put too fine a point on it, huge. Now I’m not fattist or largist (or even enormousist) at all, but I need to paint a picture here, so forgive me for a slight lack of political correctness. Mrs McS was so wide that she had to sit with her legs a mile apart to accommodate her enormous belly and Mr McS looked like he had been inflated with a bicycle pump and was shoe-horned into a wheelchair. Strangely enough Master McS (who was in his 20’s) was the opposite….thin, pale and gaunt looking, sporting a hoodie and a distinct attitude problem.

Now our clinic is very small…just a little waiting room with the basic NHS chest clinic entertainment matter for members of the public who find themselves stuck there. These comprise: a tatty copy of Readers Digest from Xmas 1987, a free local newspaper from August 2003, plenty of leaflets on the British Lung Foundation, and an assortment of posters all around the walls on the dangers of smoking and where to get advice on giving up.

Always eager to engage with the NHS in its patient-entertainment provision, I had started with the Readers Digest and spent a while trying to decide between the relative merits of the “Wendy” slipper (pink floral pattern with clever opening Velcro top) or the “Susan” slipper (blue floral pattern with free matching shower cap). I’d then avidly analyzed the debate over the proposed closure of Kwik Save in West Chinsingbury (and oh the suspense that three years on I still don’t know the outcome!) before moving on to researching Sarcoidosis, courtesy of the British Lung Foundation. After whiling away at least 47 seconds in this way and having found the reading matter somewhat sleep-inducing (probably the intention) I opted for resting my head on Brad’s shoulder and closing my eyes. But only for a second.

“Are you a sleeper too then?” came a voice from opposite me. Ever so slightly opening one eye, I saw the voice had come from Mrs McS herself who was having a good old stare at me. For some reason the image of a railway sleeper popped into my head, which confused me somewhat, as I was aware this was unlikely to be relevant given the current circumstances.

“She falls asleep all the time” added in Mr McS helpfully. “I had to come with her today because she falls asleep on the bus”.

“No I don’t” retorted Mrs McS

“Yes you do” snorted Mr McS, breaking wind purposefully and following it up with a timely belch.

Somewhat bemused by the angle of this conversation, I indicated that no, I was not an associate member of the sleeper club and attempted to shut my eyes again. However any hope of peace was shattered by the various bodily noises that were being emitted from the McS family. Clearly there was a wind problem affecting all its members and this was made clear by the varying assortment of trumps and burps that were manifesting themselves into the environment of the clinic.

“Which of us was it that was farting at the bus stop earlier?” piped up Mrs McS.

“Not me” muttered her son

“Not me” muttered Mr McS, “must have been someone else”

I was at this point having difficulty in maintaining a look of peaceful slumber as the corners of my mouth were contorting into strange twitches which I had to conceal as that well known “itchy mouth” syndrome. Silence fell across the waiting room again.

“Least I’ve never fallen asleep in my dinner” piped Mrs McS

“Yes you have” retorted her husband and son in unison.

“Have I?” gasped Mrs McS, clearly mortified by the idea that she might have missed out on a mouthful of food.

“Yeah you did it the other night” mumbled Master McS, whilst leafing through his copy of Nuts.

There was a long pause while Mrs McS considered the full implications of this news.

“Wow that could have been really dangerous” pronounced Mrs McS with concerned dismay.

The itchy mouth syndrome began to cause me problems again as I imagined Mrs McS snoring gently whist face down in a plate of beef curry.

“I’ve got a headache” muttered Mr McS, yawning and emitting another series of trumpets.

“Want some Tramadol Dad” asked his son helpfully.

Tramadol?! Blimey what else did this kid have on him? I wondered. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, Tramadol is a painkiller from the opiate family (a narcotic). Not the sort of thing the Boots pharmacist would sell you over the counter, though clearly this guy could supply it as one of his stock items from within a pocket of his hoodie.

I was slightly relieved when Master McS then thought better of this idea, though not for the reasons I would have anticipated (i.e. supply of illegal drugs in a hospital environment).

“Actually, best not Dad. I wouldn’t know if it contained dairy products”

Ah yes, dairy products. How nice to find a drugs pusher with a conciencse.

“Here you go mate, nice bit of crack for you. But I have to warn you, it may include traces of nuts as it’s been in my pocket with a half-eaten packet of KP dry roasted peanuts”

By now even the McSmellerson family were growing bored of the chest clinic’s charms and for a minute or two silence descended on the room. A silence broken only by the gentle chorus of burps and trumpets from three of its inhabitants.

However Mrs McS had now moved onto the NHS chest clinic’s final source of entertainment…the posters on the wall. And this is where she had found herself personally affronted. You see the staff in hospital chest clinics feel that it is important to educate their patients on the dangers of smoking. This seems pretty reasonable to me since if it weren’t for smoking, half of their patients wouldn’t be there and they could all go and do something much nicer like have longer lunchbreaks or an extra half hour in bed.

However Mrs McS was having none of this nonsense….

“Always going on about the danger of smoking on these posters aren’t they? Look at this one: “Secondhand smoke kills” Hurrmph! You can die of lung cancer if you live on a farm all your life”
A minute later she was off again….

“I’m fed up of these posters. Always going on aren’t they? I’ll smoke if I want to”

“I ain’t never givin’ up smokin’” retorted her son defiantly

“No, I don’t blame you either, you do what you like” Mrs McS replied.

A minute later the posters were still playing on her mind and now she was really getting into her stride.

“Just look at them! All going on about the dangers of smoking. They should take them all down. I don’t want to have to sit here looking at them, that’s for sure”

I had a quick peek at the various posters that were causing her so much concern. There was a blue and yellow cartoon with a picture of a cartoon man with a cigarette for a head that announced “Butt Head!”, a picture of a cigarette rolled open with fat as its contents and an advert for NHS Quit Smoking Services. All seemed very dull and uninspiring really.

But clearly Mrs McS had more on her mind that just the artistic quality of the posters. After another minute’s silence she announced:

“These posters are just getting on my nerves. Always nagging at me wherever I look. You know what this preaching is?" Here she paused for dramatic effect. "It's an infringement of my CIVIL LIBERTIES that's what it is!"

At this point my itchy mouth syndrome became particularly severe and I had to rub my cheeks vigourously and stare intently at the floor. Fortunately at that point the nurse walked in and asked Mrs McS to go into the doctor’s room. Where presumably he was about to interfere still further with her civil liberties by suggesting that in order to get better she might be advised to lose weight, give up smoking and engage in some physical activity.

Ah, the world’s a funny old place isn’t it?!