If one whiffles the trousers of history, you shall discover many disturbing incidents involving the humble shower. The Germans were guilty of some reprehensible alternate uses during the war, Janet Leigh suffered something sharper than shower gel in Hitchcock’s Psycho and “ if you were privileged enough to attend public school “ one was expected to uncomplainingly endure the repeated rogerings from the Head Boy.

Being a comprehensive lad, thankfully that vignette of education passed me by, but now I’m adding my own “ admittedly somewhat milder “experiences to this pantheon of misery.

Remember last week when the ratio of queue to showers attained the hitherto un-scaled irritation ratio of 10 to 1? The situation was sufficiently dire to inspire the apathetic grumblings of the shower room to take direct action. A torrent of emails bombarded the Facilities help desk with our list of outrages demands including working showers, a non sticky floor, removal of old clothes and dead bodies and “ pushing it a bit “ the occasional refill of the hand towel dispenser.

Our reward was action, well the promise of action anyway which for Facilities (Motto stop whinging, it’s shit for everybody here“) constitutes the same thing. Dusty parts were retrieved from back order, the jet wash hosed down ready for use and a flange of boiler suited engineering types were summarily dispatched into the land of the unshowered. Their promises were legion “ bounteous hot water, non fetid environmentals and a reduced risk of typhoid.

And in the meantime, we bathed in the warm glow of finally getting one over the hidden denizens of our property group. We showed ˜em, they can’t stand up to mass action, typical bullies “ snap like twigs when facing a bit of English backbone. You could almost hear the strains of Jerusalem as we indulged in a bout of metaphoric back slapping. Although that could just have been the onset of post sprout rectal music, you can never be too sure.

The signs of actual activity were all around me this morning. We had a new bin, a strongly worded note re: weapons grade socks and a small patch of cleaned floor. On the downside, they had disconnected the boiler. You see this is their standard response, you ask us how much worse it can get and we’ll show you.

Apparently the boiler has been eaten by one of the carbonised socks which now have taken upright form and show the beginnings of a personality. It’s hard not to cue up a joke about offering them the shower maintenance contract but there’s probably little point. After the bracing nay heart stopping experience of a freezing shower this morning, it’s clear the facilities group are looking to solve the problem more cheaply by simply killing us all.

And I see the weather forecast predicts an onset of wintry conditions layering frosts onto the icy wastes of Aylesbury Vale. Now I was born in Yorkshire, we’re meant to be good in cold conditions but even with the genetic thick skin of my birth, freezing cold showers have pushed me over the edge.

I shall, therefore, be found at my desk naked displaying the message Smelly Non Showered Person Appeal “ Please give generously” on a strategically placed sign .

This is not a new type of bestiality inspired cigarette, rather a sad tale of suicidal bagers taken from that irreverent electronic daily, The Register:

Reginald Perrin would love it: rail services near Tonbridge, Kent, were yesterday disrupted by “a smoldering badger on the line”, the Daily Mirror reports.

Said disruption was not, however, on the same apocalyptic scale as that commonly caused by the wrong kind of leaves on the line, as watch manager Peter Brown explained: “Somebody had reported an electrical fire on the track at 8.30am. It [the badger] was on fire and every time a train came past it reignited.

“The flames would die down, but when another train passed the wind would cause the fire to start up again. I wasn’t going to have trains stopped because the badger was already dead.

“We just told Network Rail there was a smoldering badger on the line. It didn’t present a further danger.”

A maintenance crew was duly dispatched to remove the fried badger from the tracks. Brown noted: “Thankfully I should think it died very quickly of electrocution, and did not suffer.”

What a shame for the badger’s family; think of the children Mum, mum, can we go and see Dad’s grave? / No but if you’re good, we’ll visit his ashes?

PS
In episode five, series two of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, the hero does indeed explain his late arrival at work with: “Twenty-two minutes late, badger ate a junction box at New Malden.”

Two unrelated events and a mad coincidence nail home the hypothesis that all is not well on our planet. Firstly what is going on with the weather? I know it’s autumn, streets disappearing under crinkly brown carpets, significant lack of light during morning and evening and the strengthening of cooling winds. Fine with all that, no meteroligical issue at all with standard seasonal conditions, but the rainfall, well that’s quite another matter.

It never rains all day anymore; oh no, instead we get torrential downpours more suited to a tropical storm, and then just as the rain is properly lashing down, it stops and the sun comes out. Ten minutes later, badoom, huge crack of thunder, rain bouncing off the street to eye level, creation of inland seas. Sorry, it’s just not right and a strong letter of complaint will whiz off once the correct government department to whinge at has been established.

Secondly, Chiltern Railways have unbelievably been awarded a prize. Suspend that disbelief for a second to reconcile their being first at anything except shoddy service, when you realise it was voted for by holiday makers“. As a friend at work says i.e. old people who only ever travel off peak, have all day to kill, enjoy the scenery out the window when the train stops for hours, and rate any experience as preferable to an imminent death!“. He’s right of course but either “ and I can’t credit this “ every other train franchise is somehow worse or they’ve blackmailed the judge’s with heavily photoshopped pictures of deviant sexual practices involving goats. Goats I’d wager.

Now to the co-incidence, as the horror of Chiltern Railways being awarded anything but custard pies to the face sank in, I was reading this:

The three toed sloth rests or sleeps on average 20 times a day” [CR trains] It’s only real habit is indolence“[CR staff] The sloth is busiest at sunset, although using the word busy in it’s most relaxed state” [CR ability to get two trains off in one hour about 7pm]. It moves at a speed of 400 metres in one hour” [Yep, sounds about right unless Rickmansworth Signals are involved]. When motivated it can crest speeds of 250 metres an hour on the ground. Unmotivated it covers four to five metres in an hour” [See previous point re: Rickmansworth signals]

There’s more, oh yes. If you come upon a sleeping three-toed sloth, two or three nudges should suffice to awaken it” [CR ticket inspector]. It will then look sleepily in every direction but yours. As for hearing the sloth is not so much deaf as uninterested in sound“[sorry mate, no idea, can’t help you”]

It finishes with a jolly “How does it survive you might ask?“. You might indeed. Un-bloody-canny or what?

A small prize for anyone who identifies the blatant plagiarism of which book?

To pull together the strands of this world gone bonkers, I’m increasingly turning to the rather splendiferous bullshit generator which spits out such gems as:

Do you think he’ll mind if we repurpose the synergistic interfaces and redefine the granular channels so we can innovate global infrastructures? We’ll probably need to harness cross-platform relationships, expedite distributed mindshare, empower revolutionary convergence and scale extensible architectures to achieve our goal of world domination through the structured agenda, but it may just be possible if he gets on board!?

I’ll not let on who provided this mastery of nonsense or the original link; suffice it to say he occupies a lofty and senior position in our organisation.

Today I’m feeling a. bamboozled and b. ready for a drink. Option b, I think.