The end of my isolation

After two days hidden away in Sparky Towers from the snowy wasteland that I like to call outdoors, I finally went back to work today. To be honest, I was actually working during my isolation (no, really I was), but there's something inherently wrong with the term 'working at home' that makes you feel a bit guilty - like you know the minute you step back into the office someone is going to say "working at home, eh?" and make the annoying quotation sign with their fingers and the only thing you can do is punch them square in the face laugh it off because if you protest too much it just makes it sound like you spent the entire time sitting on the sofa in your pants watching This Morning with Phillip and Fern.

Outdoors wasn't actually too bad, really. Admittedly the snow that's left has turned to ice and my road is thus incredibly icy, but once I got out onto the main roads everything was relatively groovy. Oh, except for some dumb woman who pulled out of a side road without looking, causing me to have to swerve rather violently to avoid smashing into her car. I should've beeped her, but I was so incensed that I forgot. To be honest, the location of the hooter buttons on first generation new Minis like mine aren't ideally placed for immediate, rapid-fire incensed beeping; instead of being in the centre of the steering wheel they're off on either side which isn't exactly the first place you think of hitting when rage boils to the surface; while I could punch the centre of the wheel furiously all that would happen is that she wouldn't notice and I'd probably set the airbag off. And quite frankly the last thing I need first thing in the morning is an airbag detonating in my pretty pretty face.

I just found some headphones in my pocket…

Anyway, so the journey in was reasonably decent, and fortunately I got to work very early so no one saw me tottering down the icy side road that leads to the office like a newly-born Bambi.

In a related matter, I'd like to talk about snowmen; quite frankly the standard of snowmen this year has been dreadful. The kid across the street from me made one that looked more like the elephant man, and the ones near the office were no better. Even the one made by some colleagues outside the office looked like it was having an aneurysm, which didn't really help its case when I got the urge to roundhouse its head into one of the neighbour's gardens. About the only decent snowman I've seen was made by the lady on reception at the office I park outside - and she faced some problems because a well-known fruit juice company located opposite stole her snowman's bottom half while she popped out to get some lunch, so she had to start all over again when she got back. Cheeky bastards.

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Lunchtime was very exciting. Not only did I have my first Starbucks in five days (unprecedented!), but Secret Starbucks has undergone a refurbishment. After weeks of seeing it stripped of paint and with bare floorboards underfoot, my Starbucks of choice was reborn today, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, or an Alien from John Hurt's stomach. And to make it even more exciting, the little place where I usually sit (which previously was just a worn cushion plonked on a wooden ledge) has been outfitted with a faux leather seat - especially for me! I felt privileged to christen this leatherette perch with my arse cheeks, and the indentation I left behind gave me an inkling as to how movie stars feel when they sink their hands into the cement on Hollywood Boulevard.

On the plus side, I didn't spill any coffee on it either, though I expect it's wipe-clean.

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I was supposed to meet Marcosy after work and christen him in the ways of Westfield, but it turns out he couldn't make it so I went anyway. Ha! In hindsight, this could've been a very dangerous thing because I felt like buying some new clothes, and for some inexplicable reason I could feel myself turning back towards my old ways of just wanting to buy something for the sake of buying something - which meant that if I did buy something I'd probably end up regretting it, or never actually wear it so it would just be a waste of money. I checked out those jeans I looked at on Sunday again, and thankfully managed to resist the urge to try them on because I just know they'd look awesome and I'd have to buy them. In another shop I saw a jumper that I liked that was actually a bit of a bargain, but got so pissed off with various members of staff asking me if I wanted any help that I just gave up thinking about it and walked out; seriously, people, headphones in ears - I CAN'T HEAR YOU!

I did actually buy something, though. In Foyles bookstore I found a newly-released movie tie-in edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and seeing as I love the sound of the film I thought I'd give the book a whirl first (apparently they differ quite substantially). OK, £5.99 for a 52 page book is a little bit ridiculous, but I wanted to read it - and read it I did. In Westfield's newly-opened Starbucks (yeah, today's totally made up for the recent lack of coffee hasn't it?), where I read it from cover to cover. In fact, I was very tempted to take it back to Foyles and get my money back, as I'd only had it half an hour and the receipt promised that I could as long as I did it within 14 days and it was in a saleable condition. But I thoroughly enjoyed it, and will definitely want to read it again at some point, so I thought I'd hang on to it; it really doesn't make much sense to keep buying copies and taking them back whenever I want to read it. It'll be interesting to compare it to the film, which I do believe I'm seeing on Friday…

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On my walk back to my car I was surprised to notice that the building that used to be home to the Goldhawk Road's most reputable and blatant knocking shop is now housing some sort of Bible club-thing; from one extreme to another, eh? It was kind of like the end of an era when the, um, 'massage parlor' closed - another victim of the credit crunch, I expect. Either that or the Police. Either way, it was one of those places that made the Goldhawk Road so … disturbingly unique. The closest anyone I knew ever got to going in there was when a load of us convinced a colleague to pop in to see if they did gift vouchers (we didn't know what to get another colleague for his birthday); turned out that while there were plenty of things they DID offer, gift vouchers weren't one of them.