Famous

Five Reasons Why I Can Never Become Famous

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) adult, Humor, Humour, Photos, sophistication, Swindon, Uncategorized, Young Professional , ,

No two words fill an office with more dread than “team” and “photos”. I mean it’s effectively a modern-day, corporate, form of torture. It doesn’t matter if you’re Angelia Jolie or if you look like the back of Wayne Rooney’s head, nobody jumps for joy when faced with the prospect of having a camera being shoved in one’s face for use in the office team chart. Just thinking about my face filling a wide angle lens makes me naturally tense up and feel queasy.

At the time a few people laughed off my concerns. “It’ll be fine!” they said, “no nobody wants their photos done, we’re all in same boat,” they reassured. But they were wrong. It wasn’t alright, we weren’t in the same boat. For while all of my colleagues were able to at least obtain one semi-decent photo for the team structure chart, these are the best I could pull off with a professional photographer…

, English Heritage, Swindon, Wiltshire, UK
, English Heritage, Swindon, Wiltshire, UK
, English Heritage, Swindon, Wiltshire, UK
, English Heritage, Swindon, Wiltshire, UK
, English Heritage, Swindon, Wiltshire, UK

Jesus Christ they’re awful.

Needless to say the hunt is now on to find a photo where I don’t look mad/confused/infected with some terrible tropical swelling disease. I’ve also decided that as a result of this I cannot ever have my photo taken for semi-formal purposes ever again. If people need to know what I look like they can ruddy well come over and say hi. I’d rather have the profile picture of a happy owl than my constipated face.

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The look I wanted to pull.

 

Five Minute Review: Five Go on a Strategy Away Day (Parody) by Bruno Vincent

My Housemate's a Mermaid (Alice E. Bennett) Book, Humor, Humour, Review , , , ,

Five little minutes, one little book. This one should be easy…

Five Go on a Strategy Away Day (hereafter “Five Go…“) by Bruno Vincent is a short story based on the original Famous Five classics written by Enid Blyton in the 1940s/50s. At only 105 pages long, Five Go… is a quick book to pick up and complete in one sitting. As a slightly slower reader I was able to read this title cover to cover during my train commute (and that’s with two train changes in between). Perfect if you want something to easily tackle in one go, less of an interest if you’re looking for a more long term investment that you’ll come back to time and time again.

The story follows Julian, Dick, George, Anne and Timmy the dog as they tackle the nightmares of a poorly managed team away day. As I read this there were certainly some laugh out loud moments. More than anything because, as someone who has previously had to help organise team building days on a budget, I can heavily relate to some of the scenarios contained in these pages (Eg, “I’ve got 485 unread emails back at the office, so why am I here?” [sic]).

Five Go… isn’t a book to go for if you’re looking for value for money, no doubt my copy will stay on the shelf for a number of months before it gets relegated to a charity shop (as per the millions of other copies in circulation around the country), however it was a nice little pick up to cheer me up and take my mind off work and world issues, even if for just an hour or two.