It's very rare, these days, that I have something that I can honestly describe as a nightmare. I have weird dreams, sure, and I occasionally have zombie dreams, but it's not often that a dream plays out like a horror movie... Which is probably a good thing, all told.
One dream I had last week was quite interesting, in that it was rather graphic in places, but included certain recognisable elements. I am, however, kicking myself for not making a few notes about it on my way to work the following morning, because I'm sure I'm not going to do it justice now...
It all seemed to revolve around the house from the TV show Being Human (that's the original one, in Bristol, in the BBC version), which was all boarded up following some horrific events - ritualistic murders, I gathered - at some point in the past. Two men seemed to be involved, one apparently a local vicar of Indian descent, the other I don't remember anything about in particular - he was just 'some guy'. The story seemed to go that some kind of TV journalist was looking into the story, and broke into the house, but ended up getting caught when the vicar and his partner somehow returned.
The graphic part involved the journalist getting tortured while tied down to some kind of makeshift altar. The main implement of torture was some kind of long fork - a cross between the sort of thing you'd use to keep a joint of meat still for carving, and the large spork-type thing you might use to serve a salad - the flat of which was applied to the journalist's eyeballs. It was about this point that, mercifully, I woke up.
Weirdly, though, this wasn't the most disturbing dream I've had lately, as there have been two separate instances - days apart - of dreams involving a former colleague (notable at the time for his somewhat aberrant behaviour - everything from deliberately cocking things up to ensure people came back to him to ask for his help in fixing it to outright threatening behaviour - and a creepy obsession with me, briefly alluded to in my very first post). In the first, sometime during the week before last, he boarded a (thankfully crowded) tube train I was already on, forcing me to hide behind my book and the crowds of people to avoid being seen, only for a mutual acquaintance to attempt to draw attention to me. In the most recent one, I think on Wednesday night, he decided to tag along - basically stalking me - while I was having a day out with my best mate, my sister and, for no readily apparent reason, Richard Branson. Bad enough that my mate was upset about Branson's presence... for my erstwhile stalker to have returned made it all distinctly uncomfortable.
The weirdest part is how and why these dreams have occurred at all - I've not seen or even heard of this guy in something approaching a decade, and he hasn't crossed my mind in years, so I'm a little freaked out by his appearance in two dreams within about a week of each other.
The first busy period of the year at work is now out of the way, and we're now in to a complete lull ahead of one of our bigger annual projects. On the upside, this means I can get in a bit of training with my colleagues. That's the idea, at least... we'll have to see how it goes...
Saturday, 27 February 2016
Sunday, 7 February 2016
Playing Politics
Even these days, having had a variety of office jobs over a period of a little over 20 years (when did my job become a career?!), I harbour a small disquiet that, sooner or later, office politics will be my downfall. It happened in my early 20s - where a misunderstanding of the dynamic between me (essentially a newbie in the office) and a (senior) colleague led to some poor decisions that made my position untenable (and led to me seeing a shrink for a while). Nothing like it has ever happened since - I've made mistakes, certainly, but never the same ones - yet there is still a nagging sensation that I'm bound to fuck up again sooner or later, which has me almost constantly on my guard and not very trusting in an office environment. So when one of my colleagues recently fell foul of office politics (or, in a way, someone else's misunderstanding thereof), I started feeling quite uneasy.
The situation is this: the structure of the company changed recently, with our bon vivant boss departing (ousted, I suspect, due to other, unrelated office politics), with the void filled by the head bean-counter. Having an accountant officially in charge of a company is, in my humble opinion, never a good idea because their only concern is keeping the company solvent, at the expense of keeping the employees happy, and the client/provider relationships healthy. Running an entire company requires that a balance be found - generally in favour of the finances, but a balance nonetheless - and I really don't think he's going to manage that. The problems experienced by my colleague are both evidence and symptoms of this.
Part of the problem is that the guy who now runs the company has a certain manner about him - abrasive, but generally humourously so - and, with my colleague being still quite a recent addition to the company, this has led him to believe that a certain amount of backchat/banter is permissable. Of course, if that were true, that was before the restructuring. Now the guy is running the company, he clearly feels he's entitled to everyone's respect and deference. That's all well and good but, as the head of the company, he has to be equally cautious about how he treats everyone else. Or he would, if it weren't for the fact that he's also the closest we have to Human Resources.
But I digress...
A few months back, my colleague (and I, as I can hardly claim to be blameless in this particular matter) failed to check a certain element of a job, which made it rather more costly than it needed to be. He decided - off his own back - to personally apologise for his slip-up, and was met with rather childish scorn. It's possible - due to his perception of the level of banter between them - that he said something unwise in response. Based on the conversation I had with my head of department last week, I strongly suspect that all the complaints that have arisen about my colleague stem partly from there. Nothing in that meeting was new, and the fact that his somewhat costly cock-up came up at all, along with another, only slightly more recent cock-up where he didn't think to double-check the quantities provided for an order, tends to suggest that the company's newly promoted head holds grudges.
Another side to the issue is that our head of department isn't in anyone's good books. While my own promotion is ostensibly intended to take certain pressures off our boss, there are other factors at play. Just one of those factors is a sustained, harsh, and only partially deserved campaign of criticism. But when our boss is criticised, that invariably gets passed on to the rest of us.
There was also some discussion on the subject of 'common sense' - which some feel my colleague is lacking - but, these days (evidence of a certain mellowing of my attitudes in my old age), I tend to say that 'common sense' is common only to a specific individual, and that it comes from their background and experience, so expecting someone else to display the same 'common sense' is ridiculous.
Needless to say, I have advised my colleague to be on his guard, and not engage in any further office banter, while also assuring him that I am hearing good things about his work as well (strange that it doesn't seem to get communicated to him directly, but hey...). I've also restated to our boss that he feels he has been assigned some tasks which are outside his current skill set, and that they are passed to him with insufficient instruction. Our boss acknowledged this, at least.
There's probably more I could write about, but this has been a bit of a struggle - I don't much like writing about office politics, and it all gave me a couple of sleepless nights last week.
Instead, I shall start writing about telly.
The new series of Gotham, for example, which started to lose me from the outset. Gordon becoming just as corrupt as the city he had originally vowed to clean up (it comes to something when Bullock is less tainted by misdeeds than Gordon!), Bruce being pretty stupid (blowing up a secret door rather than figuring out the password, which was his own name!), and a new villain, intent on taking over the city by means of some ridiculously theatrical, staged criminal activities, starting with the breaking out of a bunch of Arkham Asylum residents, then setting them loose on the city. They were so clearly setting up one of the escapees to be The Joker, but then killed him off in a manner than suggests that the eventual true Joker will effectively be the result of a gypsy curse. Another of the escapees is Gordon's former girlfriend, who now wants nothing more than to get back together with him... I was all set to switch off permanently recently, when a new Police Captain was introduced to the Gordon's GCPD precinct, played by none other than Michael Chiklis... So now I'm slightly more keen to keep watching. Albeit reluctantly. That one event did highlight a huge cock-up on the part of the writers, though: Gordon was sacked at the end of the last series, and only got his job back by doing a favour for the Penguin, who then 'encouraged' the incumbent Police Commissioner to retire, resulting in the promotion of Gordon's erstwhile Captain to that coveted role. She was Commissioner long enough to reinstate Gordon, then got killed by the escaped lunatics on something like her second day in the new job. But why, given that the former Police Commissioner worked elsewhere, was she even still at Gordon's precinct, evidently functioning as Captain and Commissioner? And now there's no living Police Commissioner, why is the new arrival only a Captain?
Agents of SHIELD returned without much fanfare but, in its opening episode, introduced a character that looked so much like Blackheart, I'm sorely disappointed to find that it's (probably) not. It's always watchable as a show, thanks to a very charismatic cast, but I frequently wonder about the direction of the show.
Other than that, most of what I'm watching is First Dates (which may feature someone I used to work with) and Bridezillas (which constantly has me wondering why the couples it features even stay together, let alone attempt to get married and, sadly, we've had only one acrimonious on-camera split on the big day... So far), and wasting the rest of my time on the interwebs, doing very little of any import.
But this week sees the return of The X-Files, and what I hear so far isn't good. Like many people, I do wonder why they felt the need to bring it back (not least because I have the boxed set of the original series on DVD, so I'm not exactly missing the show or feeling unduly nostalgic), but it's only a short series, so hopefully it can't stray too far from the old, successful formula.
The situation is this: the structure of the company changed recently, with our bon vivant boss departing (ousted, I suspect, due to other, unrelated office politics), with the void filled by the head bean-counter. Having an accountant officially in charge of a company is, in my humble opinion, never a good idea because their only concern is keeping the company solvent, at the expense of keeping the employees happy, and the client/provider relationships healthy. Running an entire company requires that a balance be found - generally in favour of the finances, but a balance nonetheless - and I really don't think he's going to manage that. The problems experienced by my colleague are both evidence and symptoms of this.
Part of the problem is that the guy who now runs the company has a certain manner about him - abrasive, but generally humourously so - and, with my colleague being still quite a recent addition to the company, this has led him to believe that a certain amount of backchat/banter is permissable. Of course, if that were true, that was before the restructuring. Now the guy is running the company, he clearly feels he's entitled to everyone's respect and deference. That's all well and good but, as the head of the company, he has to be equally cautious about how he treats everyone else. Or he would, if it weren't for the fact that he's also the closest we have to Human Resources.
But I digress...
A few months back, my colleague (and I, as I can hardly claim to be blameless in this particular matter) failed to check a certain element of a job, which made it rather more costly than it needed to be. He decided - off his own back - to personally apologise for his slip-up, and was met with rather childish scorn. It's possible - due to his perception of the level of banter between them - that he said something unwise in response. Based on the conversation I had with my head of department last week, I strongly suspect that all the complaints that have arisen about my colleague stem partly from there. Nothing in that meeting was new, and the fact that his somewhat costly cock-up came up at all, along with another, only slightly more recent cock-up where he didn't think to double-check the quantities provided for an order, tends to suggest that the company's newly promoted head holds grudges.
Another side to the issue is that our head of department isn't in anyone's good books. While my own promotion is ostensibly intended to take certain pressures off our boss, there are other factors at play. Just one of those factors is a sustained, harsh, and only partially deserved campaign of criticism. But when our boss is criticised, that invariably gets passed on to the rest of us.
There was also some discussion on the subject of 'common sense' - which some feel my colleague is lacking - but, these days (evidence of a certain mellowing of my attitudes in my old age), I tend to say that 'common sense' is common only to a specific individual, and that it comes from their background and experience, so expecting someone else to display the same 'common sense' is ridiculous.
Needless to say, I have advised my colleague to be on his guard, and not engage in any further office banter, while also assuring him that I am hearing good things about his work as well (strange that it doesn't seem to get communicated to him directly, but hey...). I've also restated to our boss that he feels he has been assigned some tasks which are outside his current skill set, and that they are passed to him with insufficient instruction. Our boss acknowledged this, at least.
There's probably more I could write about, but this has been a bit of a struggle - I don't much like writing about office politics, and it all gave me a couple of sleepless nights last week.
Instead, I shall start writing about telly.
The new series of Gotham, for example, which started to lose me from the outset. Gordon becoming just as corrupt as the city he had originally vowed to clean up (it comes to something when Bullock is less tainted by misdeeds than Gordon!), Bruce being pretty stupid (blowing up a secret door rather than figuring out the password, which was his own name!), and a new villain, intent on taking over the city by means of some ridiculously theatrical, staged criminal activities, starting with the breaking out of a bunch of Arkham Asylum residents, then setting them loose on the city. They were so clearly setting up one of the escapees to be The Joker, but then killed him off in a manner than suggests that the eventual true Joker will effectively be the result of a gypsy curse. Another of the escapees is Gordon's former girlfriend, who now wants nothing more than to get back together with him... I was all set to switch off permanently recently, when a new Police Captain was introduced to the Gordon's GCPD precinct, played by none other than Michael Chiklis... So now I'm slightly more keen to keep watching. Albeit reluctantly. That one event did highlight a huge cock-up on the part of the writers, though: Gordon was sacked at the end of the last series, and only got his job back by doing a favour for the Penguin, who then 'encouraged' the incumbent Police Commissioner to retire, resulting in the promotion of Gordon's erstwhile Captain to that coveted role. She was Commissioner long enough to reinstate Gordon, then got killed by the escaped lunatics on something like her second day in the new job. But why, given that the former Police Commissioner worked elsewhere, was she even still at Gordon's precinct, evidently functioning as Captain and Commissioner? And now there's no living Police Commissioner, why is the new arrival only a Captain?
Agents of SHIELD returned without much fanfare but, in its opening episode, introduced a character that looked so much like Blackheart, I'm sorely disappointed to find that it's (probably) not. It's always watchable as a show, thanks to a very charismatic cast, but I frequently wonder about the direction of the show.
Other than that, most of what I'm watching is First Dates (which may feature someone I used to work with) and Bridezillas (which constantly has me wondering why the couples it features even stay together, let alone attempt to get married and, sadly, we've had only one acrimonious on-camera split on the big day... So far), and wasting the rest of my time on the interwebs, doing very little of any import.
But this week sees the return of The X-Files, and what I hear so far isn't good. Like many people, I do wonder why they felt the need to bring it back (not least because I have the boxed set of the original series on DVD, so I'm not exactly missing the show or feeling unduly nostalgic), but it's only a short series, so hopefully it can't stray too far from the old, successful formula.
Sunday, 24 January 2016
You Win Some, You Lose Some
Back when I was temping, I had to set myself up for self assessment on my income tax because some of my employers didn't deal with that on my behalf (which would mean I owed money), while some dealt with it in the most basic way available (which meant I was owed money), and it generally worked in my favour to get it all evened out. The last year I worked as a temp, for example, I was owed a few hundred quid because my main employer that year did my income tax at the emergency rate - 20% on everything. For the tax year 2015-16, since I took a permanent position within a company right at the start of April, I should have taken myself off self assessment as it was no longer necessary. I couldn't do so for 2014-15 because one of my empoyers back in 2013-14 neglected to pay me (claiming eventually that they'd 'lost' my invoice, but never bothering to query it with me, or respond to my enquiries until my agency got involved), so that money only materialised (untaxed) in the 2014-15 tax year. I also put off dealing with my tax return until yesterday (a whole 8 days before the deadline) because I'm very good at procrastinating, and I find the experience of filling in my tax return somewhat... ahem... taxing.
Annoyingly, had that late-paying employer given me my money at the correct time, its impact would have been negligible. That is to say, the rebate I got was so unexpectedly large, the reduction caused by the additional money I was owed would still have left me with an unexpectedly large tax rebate. Unfortunately, due to my change in circumstances, my self assessment for 2014-15 revealed that I owed basically 20% on those late earnings...
Now, because I neglected to take myself off self-assessment, I have to file a return for 2015-16 in April... but at least I now have plenty of time to sort out taking myself off self-assessment for 2016-17, and this year's tax return will be far more simple. I'll aim to call them tomorrow evening, to get it out of the way... This is one thing I really don't want to put off. [EDIT: Having called them, they've taken me off self-assessment and I don't have to do one for 2015-16 after all... Starting the year off with a pleasant surprise (except for having to pay extra on 2014-15, that is).
In other news, I've had a couple more weird dreams lately. The first, from last week, was basically a Doctor Who story: the Doctor (Capaldi - nice that my dreams are keeping up to date) and companion (not one I recognised) arrived on a space station which, to cut a long story short, was operated by androids who didn't know they were androids. Think Blade Runner-style Replicants. I don't recall what the resolution of this story was, but there seems to have been some grand controlling intelligence running the space station and rebuilding its staff as androids without actually letting them know. Whether they were replaced after their lives ended naturally or through accidents, or whether they were being deliberately killed and replaced, I don't know... But I do recall there was some element of reconstructing some additional characters based on the memories of others so, for example, if someone died and got replaced by an android, that android might suddenly find their childhood pet was aboard, or an old flame, or a child who had died... So there was an element of benevolence to the grand controlling intelligence's machinations, whatever its overall game plan.
However, when the Doctor tried to leave, and found himself in what seemed to be a new location, it was actually just another section of the same space station (or perhaps a newly-built section just for the Doctor). Before this became apparent, however, he ran into River Song, already investigating the location with a companion of her own (or just hanging around with someone who lived in the station). Since the details of this dream have become a little vague - and I'm still not sure whether this bit was a continuation of the same dream on the same night, or whether the previous part happened some other night - all I can really remember is that this River Song somehow revealed herself to be an android built out of the Doctor's memories of her. This evidently upset the Doctor on a number of levels, as he ended up dismantling the River android and throwing the pieces out of the airlock, before announcing to the grand controlling intelligence that he was coming for it... at which point I woke up.
Last night's dream wasn't a Doctor Who story, but it easily could have been. Taking place on a version of Earth that had been conquered by aliens, I was wandering around with a couple of other people, and we happened upon an alien equivalent of frogspawn in a sewer/river overflow pipe. It transpired that one of the greatest strengths of the diminutive alien invaders was that any we killed were immediately replaced... So finding their egg sacs was hugely important, as it meant we could kill off the potential replacements before killing off the mobile aliens, and thus reduce their numbers more effectively. Of course, we needed to determine how best to destroy the eggs - gunshots would only take care of one at a time, and blades or bludgeons would take too long. We eventually determined that fire was the most effective weapon, as it would spread naturally throughout the collection.
Weirdly, we went into a nearby hotel's bar, and I convinced the barmaid to hand over a cigarette lighter. One of my companions revealed that she and the other companion already had cigarette lighters I could have borrowed but, treating the barmaid's disposable lighter with somewhat undue reverance, I told her I'd not only get it back to her, but that I'd try not to use it in the first place, as fire (and lighter fluid, evidently) were going to be critically important to the efforts to reclaim our planet from the invaders. We went back to the egg sac in the pipe and set about preparing to destroy it, only to be discovered by a group of the (surprisingly cute-looking) aliens, and I don't remember anything more before waking up.
2016 is off to an interesting start at work, with my boss now keen to pass on to me a lot of what were her responsibilities. From what we've discussed so far (not much) it almost sounds as though it will soon get to the point where our overall manager is manager in title (and propensity for telling people what to do) alone, while I'm actually doing the day-to-day management. We were supposed to have a meeting about it last week but, following my extended absence, she seems to have decided that she's due some attention/sympathy and, despite sounding and acting fine, is claiming to be very unwell. After skipping the meeting for the three days she was in last week because we were all so busy, she suggested phoning me on Friday to discuss it all... but then didn't. Still, there's plenty for all of us to discuss next week, with a big project fast approaching its deadlines. Somehow, I doubt it's going to go according to plan...
Annoyingly, had that late-paying employer given me my money at the correct time, its impact would have been negligible. That is to say, the rebate I got was so unexpectedly large, the reduction caused by the additional money I was owed would still have left me with an unexpectedly large tax rebate. Unfortunately, due to my change in circumstances, my self assessment for 2014-15 revealed that I owed basically 20% on those late earnings...
In other news, I've had a couple more weird dreams lately. The first, from last week, was basically a Doctor Who story: the Doctor (Capaldi - nice that my dreams are keeping up to date) and companion (not one I recognised) arrived on a space station which, to cut a long story short, was operated by androids who didn't know they were androids. Think Blade Runner-style Replicants. I don't recall what the resolution of this story was, but there seems to have been some grand controlling intelligence running the space station and rebuilding its staff as androids without actually letting them know. Whether they were replaced after their lives ended naturally or through accidents, or whether they were being deliberately killed and replaced, I don't know... But I do recall there was some element of reconstructing some additional characters based on the memories of others so, for example, if someone died and got replaced by an android, that android might suddenly find their childhood pet was aboard, or an old flame, or a child who had died... So there was an element of benevolence to the grand controlling intelligence's machinations, whatever its overall game plan.
However, when the Doctor tried to leave, and found himself in what seemed to be a new location, it was actually just another section of the same space station (or perhaps a newly-built section just for the Doctor). Before this became apparent, however, he ran into River Song, already investigating the location with a companion of her own (or just hanging around with someone who lived in the station). Since the details of this dream have become a little vague - and I'm still not sure whether this bit was a continuation of the same dream on the same night, or whether the previous part happened some other night - all I can really remember is that this River Song somehow revealed herself to be an android built out of the Doctor's memories of her. This evidently upset the Doctor on a number of levels, as he ended up dismantling the River android and throwing the pieces out of the airlock, before announcing to the grand controlling intelligence that he was coming for it... at which point I woke up.
Last night's dream wasn't a Doctor Who story, but it easily could have been. Taking place on a version of Earth that had been conquered by aliens, I was wandering around with a couple of other people, and we happened upon an alien equivalent of frogspawn in a sewer/river overflow pipe. It transpired that one of the greatest strengths of the diminutive alien invaders was that any we killed were immediately replaced... So finding their egg sacs was hugely important, as it meant we could kill off the potential replacements before killing off the mobile aliens, and thus reduce their numbers more effectively. Of course, we needed to determine how best to destroy the eggs - gunshots would only take care of one at a time, and blades or bludgeons would take too long. We eventually determined that fire was the most effective weapon, as it would spread naturally throughout the collection.
Weirdly, we went into a nearby hotel's bar, and I convinced the barmaid to hand over a cigarette lighter. One of my companions revealed that she and the other companion already had cigarette lighters I could have borrowed but, treating the barmaid's disposable lighter with somewhat undue reverance, I told her I'd not only get it back to her, but that I'd try not to use it in the first place, as fire (and lighter fluid, evidently) were going to be critically important to the efforts to reclaim our planet from the invaders. We went back to the egg sac in the pipe and set about preparing to destroy it, only to be discovered by a group of the (surprisingly cute-looking) aliens, and I don't remember anything more before waking up.
2016 is off to an interesting start at work, with my boss now keen to pass on to me a lot of what were her responsibilities. From what we've discussed so far (not much) it almost sounds as though it will soon get to the point where our overall manager is manager in title (and propensity for telling people what to do) alone, while I'm actually doing the day-to-day management. We were supposed to have a meeting about it last week but, following my extended absence, she seems to have decided that she's due some attention/sympathy and, despite sounding and acting fine, is claiming to be very unwell. After skipping the meeting for the three days she was in last week because we were all so busy, she suggested phoning me on Friday to discuss it all... but then didn't. Still, there's plenty for all of us to discuss next week, with a big project fast approaching its deadlines. Somehow, I doubt it's going to go according to plan...
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