Sunday 22nd October 2006

Today is the first day since (at least) July 14th that I’ve not worn shorts out of choice. I have been forced on three prior occasions.

The first was my first day at Google, for which I thought turning up with a beard and then wearing shorts every day for the rest of the summer would be shock enough (which it turned out that it was: my boss described my meticulous observance of the relaxed dress code as “taking casual very seriously”).

The second was for a meeting with an important Google comarketing partner, which I’m now no longer in breach of my non-disclosure agreement to mention was British Airways. It was an entirely unnecessary gesture, as it turned out, because people at BBH (the ad agency where we met) have an even lower bar for their dress code than Google do. It was also slightly annoying, because the taxi which myself and Google’s PR chap were meant to be taking didn’t turn up or hadn’t been booked or something, and so we had to traipse across the capital for half an hour on what was one of the hottest days of the year. And, to get home, I had to catch the Tube in trousers, in conditions so overwhelmingly overhot that transport of livestock at such temperatures would have been against the law. And livestock don’t have to wear trousers. Eurrgh.

The final forcing was only for an evening, at a friend’s proposed birthday party which was projected to continue, after mediocre Newport pub “The Phez” to proceed to crappy Newport pub “The Barley”, formerly “The Barley Mow”, whose new owners seem to think that extended opening hours, a trendified name, leather sofas, overenthusiastic bouncers with a heavy-handed anti-trainers and anti-shorts policy and a charge for entrance after a certain time can turn a drinking hole for local agricultural students into not a drinking hole for local agricultural students. My dutiful long-legwear-wearing was this time utterly unnecessary because I thankfully never made it as far as The Barley.

Today, it was just a bit chilly.

I also found out that what I’d thought was a hard-and-fast rule in 24 was not so. I had observed that you could tell goodie from baddie by the fact that only the super-slick good guys used speed-dial on their mobiles, and the incompetent terrorist bastardos used slow-coach, long-hand dialling. Unfortunately, Jack Bauer blew it by typing in a full number whilst making a ’phone call. I had expected better.

 

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