Here, very near but not near enough the end of another bloated, lengthy website build – with too much padded ‘down time’ scheduled for which the agency will bill the client, ostensibly in retribution for that old chestnut ‘delayed feedback’ – the parallel between Doberman pinschers and nine-month digital projects becomes devastatingly clear: the results would always be made much better by simply cutting off the tail. But here we are, forced to linger in the corporate gulag, consuming valuable time, oxygen and space for the next 32 working hours.
It’s Monday morning. Since last Tuesday, my direct involvement in what I’m supposed to be doing has literally amounted to exactly the sum of zero plus its square root. Really upping the insult/injury ante, for the agency’s client, anyway, is the fact that there are two of us here drifting on this stone-dead, glass-calm sea in the same lacklustre boat. The main difference between me and the other freelancer, other than a few years, a few kids and a few London transport zones, is the way we cope with our enforced idleness: He uses two video monitors, the larger of which displays a relevant-looking document at all times, perhaps fooling someone into believing he’s actually working while he reads an endless stream of Wikipedia articles on the smaller. I just feel guilty, for, even though I can feasibly assume little control over my current short-term situation, what’s left of my Midwestern Protestant work ethic is seriously ashamed of me.
Unfortunately, as I’ve gotten a bit older, I’ve become no better, in fact worse, at filling rare downtime with something, anything productive – to include walking through an exhibition, reading a book, switching over to energy-efficient lighting etc – and have understood that what appears to be in those I admire a rare talent springing from an innate fecund core could only exist in me through acquisition and mastery of a new and rather foreign set of skills. For I am rarely motivated from within to produce. And so in times like these, when the void pangs painfully, I seek consolation in the modern day desktop equivalent of heroin: online shopping.
I am too often a complete sucker for the sorts of marketing communications I produce. Some would call this ‘justice.’ I think it’s just rather astonishing that a normally hyper-self-aware person who knows better than to swallow either the red OR blue pill can be so instantly swept away on a tide of digi-drug false love, credit card to sweaty hand.
Nowhere is this more convincingly demonstrated than with email marketing. In the last four working days, I’ve fallen prey to the schtick of schmucks like me as follows:
The Royal Opera House has thought it through very carefully and, on my behalf, scientifically derived a trio of productions that suit my quasi-highbrow artistic tastes, at least where the opera is concerned, and emailed them to me. Seconds later, I joined an electronic queue that felt at once vexing in a ‘why am I, my Louis Vuitton bags and my first class ticket being held outside the Executive Lounge?’, as well as exclusive in a ‘yeah, but at least I’m ahead of you’ sort of way. A half hour of hypnotised page refreshing later, the velvet red curtains were flung open to me. By that point, there was no effective reconsideration facility available. I was down the rabbit hole and into the matrix.
Fifteen minutes and £127 later, I was booked to see three operas between December 2009 and May 2010. I’ve bought attendance at cultural events that will occur so far in the future that diaries to note them down are not yet available in WHSmiths. I’ll no doubt miss La Cenerentola on March 18th, or whatever/whenever it is, through involuntary attrition, the ticket sliding about a kitchen drawer under a calculator, my passports and a big zip bag of euros that followed me back from Germany last year.
Southbank Centre, at 21 acres, is Europe's largest contiguous cultural facility. It is situated on the River Thames at the Eye, fully within the boundaries of my London Borough, Lambeth.
Since their 're-brand,' Southbank Centre emails are more colourful, more frequent and as tempting as chocolate-covered cocaine cookies. Well, I was looking for incentive to walk up there and have a sniff around more often, which illogically but automatically translated into a problem at which I should throw some money. Southbank Centre membership benefits include priority information and booking for major events and festivals, free entry to exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery, access to the private Members Bar, access to members-only events and private views and exclusive offers, such as a 10% discount in the three Southbank Centre Shops.
One Full Membership then, please.
Once in awhile, the odd ‘thing I’ve been wanting that costs less than £100’ comes to mind. This week, it’s happened a few more times than once. In fact, it’s happened four times since Thursday and will shortly yield three books and a pair of Sennheiser MX-660 earbuds landing with a satisfying smack on my living room floor. Something to look forward to every day of the week, I reckoned.
The piece de resistance du merde was born of a spiritual snit-fit against the boredom last Friday. High street retailers like Marks & Spencer and John Lewis proceed unabashed at selling clothing online and seem to do all right. And there are the online-only shops, such as Asos and Net-A-Porter, that seem to be revolutionising the business model. Somebody must be buying clothes online.
But for me, buying clothing – especially jeans and shoes – off the internet makes as much sense as buying a flat off-plan before the ground has been broken. The price may be right, but god knows what piece of fiction/science fiction you’re going to get on delivery.
So what lapse in good sense it was that led me to order a grey, sorta-mostly-wool funnel-neck winter coat after becoming obsessed with studying its online image on Tesco.com is well beyond me. Any takers? That's right: a shiny, pretty email.
What’s worse, I was actually so embarrassed to click the ‘Buy’ button that I arranged to have the accursed item shipped to my flat, where I will of course not be when the DHL driver arrives. I’ll then be forced, yellow card and life in hands, to trek into the darkest reaches of industrial Vauxhall to a soulless depot designed to accommodate only motorised vehicle traffic, at an hour convenient only to fish market traders, to fetch the damned coat, which I will no doubt loathe on sight.
I’ll return it and enjoy watching my card balance go into credit…until I buy a polar bear cub or a Ford Ka off ebay, which should nicely round out Thursday. Fingers crossed.
