Yesterday at work I was asked to write a 'Roadmap' for the company website.
A Roadmap? When did this particular piece of jargonese enter the lexicon? That Nice Mr Obama has one for peace in the middle east I believe. The fact that the 2nd most powerful person on the planet (I'd put that awful Mr Murdoch ahead of him because as they say, the pen, or printed word in this case, is mightier than the sword) has a Roadmap for something didn't make the request any easier for me to understand.
'Awaydad, write a report on where we should be going and what we should be doing and how' would have been clearer, but no, Roadmap it is. I was more than tempted to reach for a box of wax crayons and start scribbling furiously on an A1 sheet, stick figures representing all the employee's with a rather dashing, flaxon haired figure representing me somewhere at the centre.
Talking of jargon, it made me wonder if I should sign up to my least favourite piece of goobledegook to help me on my way. I get various e-mails each week asking me to attend 'webinars'! Even now writing it, I can feel a silent scream echoing through my head. I do imagine 'attending' one and being asked to make suggestions at the end to help them improve their service.
Yes, learn to speak in fucking English! Oh, and some biscuits would be nice.
Talking of silent screams reminds me. A couple of weeks ago Miss Feisty announced, rather wonderfully I thought, that she was writing a sitcom. This is wholly the kind of thing I applaud in my children. 'What shall it be dear Pater' I can't hear them ask, 'the triple science exam revision or the sitcom?'
'Why darling, the sitcom of course. You can't move for out of work scientists on the streets of South East London but aspiring writers are a rare and dying breed!'
She explained the general outline of it one evening in the family home. I was, as is usual, stirring something in a pot. If you follow this blog for any length of time, you'll notice I do a lot of that. Pot stirring. My cooking isn't bad, but tends to the more utilitarian side. I leave all my creative attributes for colouring in drawings at work.
Miss Feisty took the wooden spoon from me and stirred some. This fulfils two functions I believe. It allows us both to pretend she is helping, making me feel I am passing a useful skill onto my daughter and allows her to feel she has done enough to justify the money she extorts from me on a regular basis.
'The main character is called Miss Feisty and the other characters are called'...she named several of her friends, male and female, all of whom have parts with names that bare an uncanny resemblance to their own. 'its set in record shop, but they never sell anything and one of them lives in a cupboard and they are all incredibly rude to any customers that dare to enter'.
Despite feeling that several of the main plot devices may well have been 'borrowed' from other televised, but obviously, less well thought out sitcoms, I with-held my initial reservations.
There were enough subversive, perverse and darn right obscene incidentals she mentioned to make me feel she could work on the small matter of having plagiarised several well known and successful programmes. And so what if all the characters were playing themselves, it never seemed to do Jerry Seinfeld any harm.
I will continue to encourage this activity. To my mind its much more useful than some of the gumph she is taught but has no interest in whatsoever.
Maybe if I lend her my crayons she could help me and Mr Obama......
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