October 19 (Tuesday): Operation Hell On Earth. Ouch, today/tonight I had a restless evening of only about four hours sleep and recurring dreams about the impending job I am facing today. And its not so much that job is the nightmare, it is the person from my company that I am working with on it. Needless to say, when I finally wake up, I don’t feel good about things.

I get up at 7AM and it turns out to be the usual routine of attempting to leave at 7.30AM but bouncing about like a bear with sore head and only just making it out at 7.45AM (at best). I don’t bother with the revision tapes this morning, instead I mack on Moyles on the radio making it all a very smooth ride to Mildenhall.

When I arrive at the client’s, Who is already there confusing everyone. He has hooked the laptop up to a printer and is proceeding to print off every report imaginable it seems (oh dear, it looks like he is going to get really involved today, the latest cook in the addition to spoiling the broth). I check the Sage records though and very fortunately no postings have been made since I last worked on the job last week, so the backup of the program I have brought in today with additional postings on Sage will not interfere with any postings that have been made subsequent to my trickery. While Who is talking the hind legs of this donkey (client) I quickly pull out a portable floppy disk drive out of my suit jacket pocket, slip it into a USB, restore my version of the accounts and it restores and soon the perfect crime has occurred. I now have/possess a little inkling as to how it would have felt to/for Nick Leeson. Unfortunately in this climate of working against rather than with, this I what I have to resort to.

Before work proper begins on the job, Who asks me if I want a bacon and egg roll because they are ordering in and I tuck into breakfast on the boss. Once clear, Who sets me up with reconciling the bank to manual records. This makes absolutely no sense because there is a reconciliation function on the Sage program and he knows this. However, I humour him initially but when it becomes plainly obvious that this is the biggest waste of time in the world, I switch to my plan which is a straight ahead bulldoze and tear into the job. I get even more luckier when Who has to go to another client, situated next door, and I get the breathing space that I need in order to do the job with the best method (in my belief/opinion).

I work through lunch, running at non-stop and when Who returns in the early afternoon I have really accomplished most of the work in hand and I am in a really good position. Who looks over the job and where it is at and doesn’t seem to find any fault in it (or at least he does not air it verbally). By 3.00 PM I have reconciled all the banks and by 4.00 PM all the credit card transactions are on the system, both huge accomplishments on the day.

Whilst going through the sales, I come across a sales invoice from Halliburton which old Dick Cheney’s company as featured per Fahrenheit 9/11 etc. Suddenly this company I am working on seems very global and very real to me, almost topical to the point of being hip with substance. Next stop: a Michael Moore expose?

Late in the afternoon Stevo phones up. All day today Stevo has been up in court on speeding charges with regards to his being caught doing 60mph in a 30mph area in Braintree earlier this year. The smart money was all on him losing his licence for a month and receiving a hefty fine (£500 plus?) but in the end it turns out that he has received just a £300 fine and six points on his licence but he has managed to keep/stay on the road, which in our line is paramount.

As the day reaches an end, one of the guys at Acme called Dennis (who looks like Garry Shandling/Larry Sanders) says “look at this” and he pulls out the video file that I have heard of, of a sex version of Rainbow complete with Zippy, Bungle and Geoffrey all making innuendoes and verging on swearing. It cracks me up.

This is almost my favourite client/job now, not least for the way in which I am able to crack up their staff by saying “was he supposed to leave before me?” when Who leaves the client ahead of me. I come away from this job really enthused about work and my job, I love getting out of the office and working with clients, it really would be beneficial for all parties if I did it more.

I drive home down the A14 in one of the best of all possible moods and this includes me attempting to have a race in the company Micra with an Audi TT (I fucking hate those cars). When I eventually get up the car’s arse and begin to tailgate, the motherfucker decides to brake at my expense causing me to brake in a panic. Oh it makes me so mad, I fill with road rage. Of course however I don’t see the Audi for dust, despite my best attempts/intentions, until it gets held up behind some slow coach and once more I get right behind the bastard (driving makes me a bit aggressive sometimes). All in all though, it is all good fun and it makes my ride home more interesting and a hell of a lot shorter/briefer. Joking.

For leaving Mildenhall at around 4.40 I do well in getting home to Colchester for just before 6.00 in order to see latest episode of The Apprentice. Staying in to watch the Donald Trump boys however makes me rather late in leaving for my parents and my weekly Tuesday night visit (to see The Sopranos).

On my way to Holland, Clacton I stop by at Highwoods Tesco to buy Fahrenheit 9/11 on DVD which officially makes me the biggest hypocrite in the world/history after all my ranting over the movie when I saw it in the cinema in the summer. I dunno, I’m just interested to see what he says about Halliburton all of a sudden after brushing up against the company in my work today. Michael Moore, that old edutainer.

I’m really happy to report that I actually go home this week in the finest of moods and am actually cheerful when my parents see me for a change (the first time for this in a long long time). I get real guilty about going home every week and grumbling to my parents about this and that. However this week I don’t think I could possibly piss them off as they have just sold their house after it only being on the market for a few weeks, going against the grain on current house selling trends (the current inflated prices/values of homes seems to be insuring little movement in/on the property market). I don’t really want them moving up to Colchester though (as I’ve probably already said a number of times already/before).

The evening gets better when Millwall manage to beat Gillingham, one of our dumb bogey teams who always seem to beat us up wholesale. Tonight’s goals come from Alan Dunne and Barry Hayles, first times for everyone.

Tonight’s episode of The Sopranos on E4 is The Test Dream, in which Tony B finally flips while/as a stressed out Tony lays low overlooking Central Park in New York. This is almost the big reunion episode as all the old bumped/clipped characters from the previous series show their faces as Tony has a long dream sequence to rival the season two finale dreams. I would say however that E4 really do their best to ruin the episode as they cut up the dream twice and ruin the cohesion/flow of it by inserting not one but two ad breaks disrupting what really needs to be one long uninterrupted sequence. That said, the return of John Heard is completely welcome and the random act of inserting Annette Benning for no clear reason is pretty clever. I really like the way the episode ends with Tony B doing the inevitable but the viewer does not actually blatantly see it, instead we get to see how Tony expects it. Of course I’m blabbering on now to sound/look clever, I actually saw this episode months ago when I got a moody VCD of it from Ireland but I have to say this is the/my obvious favourite episode of series/season five.

With the episode watched and now on video tape, I board my car and leave Clacton to drive home listening to Radcliffe. Tonight I am paranoid of driving fast for some reason, paranoid of hidden pandas ever since I got caught/done for speeding doing this trip in early 2003.

When I get in I begin watching the Fahrenheit 9/11 DVD and it appears to be a lemon copy/DVD as the digital blips kick in half way through and make the disc unwatchable. I wonder if the authorities (powers that be) have purposely sabotaged the disc because Moore is now a general trouble maker. It’s a conspiracy. I have some post midnight chat with Sara on MSN before falling asleep watching the documentary which is still pretty much as dull as dishwater as it was on the cinema screen back in the summer.

np: Roots Manuva - Witness