The Big Brother Grin

Honestly, the resemblance is uncanny.

It's been an odd couple of days in this CCTV-watched life, where self-absorption is of course as natural as breathing, and yet we're never entirely sure who sees what.

A couple of nights ago, I collected d from work, and she told me that their automated card-reading system to sign in and out of shifts had been playing up, and hadn't read her card. She'd tried again. Nothing. A third time. Nothing. My wife decided the machine needed a dose of American in its life and gave it the finger.

Apparently, a colleague had seen the CCTV footage of her doing that, and laughed their ass off. We confidently expect her to appear on a TV clip-show any day now.

As for me, I'm drowning in deadlines and simply doing what I can do in the middle. Went to Starbucks today and Harry (yes, that Harry, he works there, despite having a life) grinned at me.
'Hey man,' he said. 'Dan and I were just in the office.'
'Yyyyyes?' I asked, wondering where this might be going.
'We both independently said you looked smaller on the CCTV than you used to do, so something's working.'
I'll be honest with you - I had a bit of an Ally McBeal moment right there and then, or a Bridget Jones moment if you prefer. In my mind, what happened was that I did a bit of a Kevin Bacon-flavoured Footloosey series of hot kick-ass dance moves up and down the store, including jumping up on the counter, doing a full forward somersault, leaping and swinging on a light fixture, landing at my usual table, flipping it upside down and doing a bit of an Irish jig thing on its support strut before jumping off and sauntering back to my place in line, nodding and taking cheers from the crowd.

'Cool, man,' I said in the boring set of dimensions we somewhat laughably call Real Life.

Still, went back to my seat with a big grin. Big Brother might be watching you. Apparently, this week, he quite likes what he sees.