The detail

   Foodies are fanatics.

   Like techs and musicians they care about their work and that it’s done properly (ie, exactly their way) and they believe that results count. Fanatics, see? Unlike the rest of humanity, fanatics do their stuff not to pay the bills and put a bit of cash aside but because it matters.

   Take marinades. Sure; you can flavour meat with sauces and tenderize it with hammers but that overnight soak is the difference between a motel and you own home. Fanatic? Perhaps. But I’m also a people person and marinating simply works; especially with vocal chords and thumbs. 

Night watchmen

  ‘This is the BBC Breakfast News. Good evening.’

   ‘The House of Commons passed the third reading of The Hate Crimes Mental Health Bill yesterday, which will now pass to the Senate for its final Upper House reading. Commentators agree that there is little likelihood of the Upper House making any serious amendments and it is likely to go online for the People’s Assent just before the midwinter recess.

  The BBC’s Social Affairs correspondent Sylvia Kennedy has this report’:

  ‘In an almost unanimous vote, MPs passed the historic bill at a little after 4 AM yesterday. In an increasingly common pattern of crossbench unity, the Leader of the Opposition, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Appointed Members backbench Public Health Alliance all spoke in favour of a measure praised by experts as ‘the beginning of the end for hate’ in Anglia.

   ‘Crossbench spokesperson for science and ethics and leader of the Appointed MPs, Victor Jarvis, thanked the House for supporting the popular bill: “No longer will the mentally ill peddle hate and create division and strife by lawless media access and spread the poisons of bigotry and pseudoscience. While committed to preserving the sacred British tradition of free speech, this House has just taken an historic step towards bringing our law in line not only with our European partners but also with the American government’s bipartisan Health and Security Administration. We now expect our own health professionals, in conjunction with the civil police, to move swiftly after the expected Assent to stamp out the terrorist cells that have been ruthlessly abusing the media to spread their message of intolerance and murder. This is a gentle dusk for the peoples of our islands and we look forward to the peace and health that ending hate speech will bring.”

   ‘The Bill was draughted on the recommendation of the all-party Plenipotentiary Commission into Violence after the so-called ‘Survival Riots’ of last summer when over thirty public servants, leadership cadre and diurnal support staff were murdered in terrorist dawn raids against private homes and health facilities throughout Anglia, Scotland and the Shared Sovereignty Counties of Ireland. Right-wing militia and religious fundamentalist terror cells were universally blamed for the violence and though the civil police and Health Service Security responded effectively and promptly, both pulsed and unpulsed lives were tragically lost.

   Then-Prime Minister, Douglas Hart, made legislative reform the centerpiece of his Resignation Speech before he went to the country to ask for a new electoral mandate. Although he was defeated after a hotly contested count amid widespread accusations of server tampering and poster intimidation, his successor had offered a more flexible proposal - for a Plenipotentiary Commission - which he mooted immediately after Hart’s funeral. Assent was granted by an unprecedented landslide. The final draught of the Commission’s findings was introduced to Parliament barely a month ago. The swift passage of the Bill through committee and two reading stages by members of both parties: elected and appointed; backbenchers and Ministers, pulsed and unpulsed in each House has been praised by observers as an epochal show of unity in the face of unforgivable violence by anti-health, anti-reform extremists determined to return to the days of division, disease, hatred and daylight timekeeping.’

  ‘Meanwhile, European aid workers came under intense terrorist attack across North Africa and the Middle East again yesterday; from the Anglo/Spanish area of anti-infection operations in Western Sahara and Morocco to the Turkish/German aid cities in Syria and Egypt. In a joint communiqué the Secretary General of the United Nations, Victor Jent and EU Health Commissioner-General Sigfrid Jaeger tonight announced that voluntary codes of co-operation between local civil and military authorities had served their purpose but must now be replaced by a more robust and flexible regime to overcome the scientific challenges and to defeat anti-health terrorism across the region.

   ‘Herr Jaeger announced a detailed plan to “- eradicate infection and those who harbour it throughout this deeply troubled and strategic part of the world. Air, land and sea elements of the Eastern Mediterranean Joint Health Command will move into Infected and Infested areas of the Northern Galilee Quarantine Zone of the Lebanon Directorate. Operations against Infected holdouts in the Samaria/Al Quds Demilitarized Zone have already begun under authority granted to the UN by the Cape Town Treaty of ’43; starting with an anti-virus bombardment by medium- and long-range missiles from naval assets and Egyptian launch platforms. Disinfection-in-detail is expected to follow shortly once it has been established that it is safe for ground troops to be deployed against any remaining criminal gangs.”

  ‘And finally, it’s good news for cricket fans.

   Panhaemon Pharmaceuticals announced in York tonight that its sponsorship of the Floodlit Championship will be renewed at the end of the season; bringing much-needed security to the finances of the sport in Northern Anglia for a further three years. Newly-appointed Panhaemon Chairman, Seward Jennings, explained: “Panhaemon plc is proud to announce a boost for the region’s favourite game. Starting in May this year, the site of our former filtration plant and regional headquarters near Skipton will be redeveloped as a Cricket Academy and multi-pitch sports village where the cream of Anglia’s cricketing youth will mix with and be tutored by the best players from the Northern Hemisphere, as well as training alongside the best of the Southern Hemisphere’s disinfected veterans. The first clearance work at Skipton has already begun thanks to our architects’ timely completion of the Minster Remodelling Project and our recent relocation to our new corporate headquarters in Constantine House in the heart of the Shambles Redevelopment. On a personal note I’d like to pay tribute to my predecessor - who was also my mentor, friend and sire - Colin Johnson. The Cricketing Academy was his personal passion and it seems only proper that the place of his tragic death in the chemical fire earlier this year should be the location of his dream come true and also bear his name. The loss of the Pacific and Trans-Himalayan Regions to infection and insurrection need not be more than a temporary lull in cricket’s renewed rise to global status, and CJ would no doubt be overjoyed to know that his vision and industry will surely play a large part in the sport’s resurrection after the loss and suffering of the Changes.”

Round and round

   I volunteer as a rear gunner on a school bus.

   Monday to Friday; 8.15 AM and 3.30 PM, I guard the back windows as the City’s elderly armoured Routemaster burns oilseed or, after a bad harvest, sand-filtered Lard along the river road up to the Castle. It’s riskiest when the infants are disembarking or clambering on young, malnourished legs up the too-high step.  Warmed by hours of daylight, Johnny Zeb is at his most active at those times and I get far too much practice firing the Mouth Organ.

   Still, it breaks the monotony of potato farming and halberd drill.

Compound

I shot the drug addict upstairs tonight. He’d tormented me with his comings-and-goings: out the back window one day: returning home filthy, smelling of drink and whorehouses the next. And his visitors! A stream of young women and lowlifes clattering up the stairs at all hours keeping me awake; the police were always there. As for the twitchy, pistol-packing war veteran flatmate…

He scrutinized me minutely; as if identifying an insomniac Classics scholar scraping a clerk’s living far from my native Dunbartonshire could expose the homicide in my soul. Baker Street used to be such a peaceful place to live.

Pawns

   “I know what you are.”

   I love that because it saves me breaking things and the tree climbing that has become so fashionable lately but inconvenient here in treeless Norfolk. There’s sometimes a hopeful little smile too as though I was offering an invitation to some Regency valetudinarian’s paradise of health, well-being and longevity. Not so, of course; and these silly girls should stick to the Victorian pot-boilers that at least acknowledged the existence of evil. There are many names for what we are and many variations of how we survive, but what we truly, madly, always are is thirsty.

On the train

  “You dropped your phone behind that suitcase.”

  “Thanks. Why not join me? These seats aren’t reserved.

   “Come and meet my family after your business tomorrow. I’ve never met anyone so knowledgeable about the Nineteenth Century, and you so young. Come for dinner; my wife is interested in history.” As interested as a husband so enchanted he never noticed his reflection sitting next to no-one.

  “No thanks. I have an evening meeting.” I patted my throat. “Drink problems.” I liked him.

   His home address was in his phone, but not password protection. If I changed my mind these invitations are irrevocable. 

A sympathetic ear

   I love call-outs.  

   I hate them too, which gives you some idea of the emotional roller coaster this job really is. But 24/7/365 support is what we’re about and if a call comes in at an inconvenient time such as during a staff review or a personal development meeting, then it’s ‘hey lads, hey’! Down with pens and notebooks and on with the uniform and into the field.

   Cue Thunderbirds theme.

   The operation has got call-outs down to a fine art because; let’s face it (no false modesty just between you and me) we’re the first and we’re still the best. When that bell rings, no matter what footling after-sales task the outfit thinks we ought to be doing at any given time, it’s our long-standing policy that the customer and the customer’s needs come first. We can worry about the paperwork later. The customer comes first, no matter how trivial or silly their wants are.

   Don’t get me wrong, the customer’s needs can be silly indeed. From the harassed housewife who’s locked out of her house with thawing ice cream flooding her shopping and a baby crying his heart out in the car as the cold gets in and a neighbour’s dog barking and snapping at her heels to the stressed middle manager who’s just seen an envelope with his name on it on the HR manager’s desk and whose software just refuses to send the report his boss asked to be ready for this morning’s meeting when he was heading out to the gym at 5.30 the previous night, Technical Support will be there for them. 

   Take those two. They’ve paid their dues over the years; having seen the advertising everywhere they go. But they’ve never believed they’d ever actually need us. Insurance is just that; something you consider, sign up for and then promptly forget all about as they get in with their lives; caring for family, career, making money, looking after each other, paying the rent and so on. But when it hits the fan and they absolutely, positively need help with the slings and arrows then boy, oh boy do they remember us then. 

   And that’s what our Management just doesn’t get.

   I don’t blame them really; they’re Big Picture guys and so it’s fair to say they just aren’t aware about what it’s like in the field; what the punters are really like and what it takes to do the job. Oh, they try: every now and then they’ll come up with some simple notion; some ten-point plan the customers should follow to sort everything out, and then they promptly go back to long-term planning, strategic reviews, the annual audit and so on. But if the customers could follow a ten point plan, don’t you think they would? If that housewife had the grit and the brains to handle the troubles of life all by her lonesome then she wouldn’t have to follow Steps One, Two and Three. It didn’t work for Eddie Cochrane, did it? Or take that middle manager. He’s been doing as well as his limited intelligence will allow; neither tyrannizing his staff in some micromanagement hell nor ignoring them in the hope that freelancing them will let them flourish all by themselves. But his bosses notice that he’s a little lacklustre in the results department and so they wonder aloud if he’d be happier elsewhere. And that’s the exact moment when his POS laptop goes Hal 2000 (and whose upgrade or replacement request has been with the Budget Team for the last eight months) but when his company’s Directors all have state-of-the-art everything with full service packages and comprehensive, professional training from the get-go, Little Mister Meek is faced with a patronizing Microsoft pop-up informing him he’s been A Very Bad Boy, that’s when he calls Tech Support out.

   He just wants a little sympathy as do we all (myself included) and someone to fix this insane, blood-pressure skyrocketing hassle and make it stop. Just you try describing that to my Management in words of one syllable or less. They’ve tried to see the small picture but I honestly believe they don’t stand a chance. The last time one of them went out into the field to show how the customers can be trained to fix their own shit it didn't end well. It’s only human nature to face grief with anger and denial rather than practical self-help and teamwork and Valuing Other People’s Opinions and all that blah, and so on, etcetera. Talk to the hand.

   That’s really why I quit the management training programme in the first place. I just couldn’t see how the bosses would ever discover the slightest possibility of hunting down the location of a hint about where to find a clue.  

   But I believe; I truly, hand on heart believe that we at Technical Support can make a difference in the world in our own humble, bumbling, pragmatic way. And sometimes we get the opportunity to upsell the customer at the same time.

    So there’s the baby screaming the paint off the people carrier and the tattooed moron next door’s pit-bull going for her ankles while a half gallon of chocolate chip is flavouring an entire week’s groceries and Mrs. Mum just wants it to stop - nothing fancy.  The muddle manager just needs the break that he’s morally certain Fate and his bosses won’t provide. That’s when they call me out, quick as you like.

   And there I am in the spotlight; centre stage and ready to do my thing and save the day. Not only will I soon get that feeling of deep satisfaction of a job well done but I might - if I can only get inside their heads and really see their point of view - talk the deal up from, say, finding the front door key or the drop-down menu that’ll email the report all the way up to them actually wishing that the dog’s bastard owner would come out of his house at that very moment and be savaged by the little brute, or that the middle manager’s fucking boss would suffer a heart attack so Mr. Meek will be needed ASAP to take over and prove his worth and thus keep his own job. With a word here and a hint there they can be persuaded to sign up for the Deluxe Unlimited Lifetime Total Cover Plan: payment deferred to the end of the contract. They’re usually so stressed and relieved when I show up they don’t even smell the sulphur.