Staying Alive

Niall Haye presented draft 27 of the ChocoChillout script. There was much discussion about whether the voiceover should read ‘a sensuously silky taste adventure’ or ‘a silkily sensuous adventure in taste’. After failing to reach a consensus, the group agreed to put the matter to research so that a bunch of housewives in Solihull can make the decision.

(Action: NH)

Niall Haye presented the launch media plan. The chart (consisting of the usual Xs in boxes) was generally well received. Sally Gilhooley requested that the Xs in the central column be moved two columns to the left. Betina Tofting agreed, and further suggested that the X immediately below the X at the top right be moved to the box below. Gerhard Breitmar endorsed these proposals and added a request for the Xs in the extreme left-hand column to appear in red rather than blue. Murray Colin slept peacefully.

(Action: nobody—on the basis that in two days’ time no one would remember what anyone else had said and that, besides, all the Xs could be put in a very big hat, shaken vigorously about and tipped in a heap on the floor, where they would make the same amount of bloody sense.)

Before the meeting broke up Niall Haye invited Gerhard Breitmar to climb onto the table, lower his trousers, kneel on all fours and have his strapping Hunnish behind peppered with kisses by the account team.

Murray Colin

Account Supervisor

I click send…But only after I’ve completely rewritten it to make it as dull and harmless as every other contact report I’ve ever written. My hand goes into my trouser pocket and touches the lump. Thankfully, an incoming e-mail takes my mind off it.

brett.topowlski@blowermann-dba.co.uk

to: murray.colin@blowermann-dba.co.uk

cc:

re: love your contact reports…

…reading them always makes me thank my sweet lord jesus I wasn’t at the meeting. question: is a betina tofting a self-assembly dining table from ikea? another question: fancy buying me and vin bonfire beers tonight?

Taken at face value it reads like the e-mail of a friend. I know better. Brett Topowlski is a copywriter. Vince Douglas is his art director. Together they are a creative team. I, on the other hand, am a suit. Creative teams do not buddy up with suits. We’re like the Bloods and the Crips. This is because, while it’s a creative’s job to come up with ideas that are out there, it’s a suit’s function to water them down until they’re as bland as every other ad on the box. ChocoChillout is the perfect case in point. Draft one was well out there and barely on the legal side of the Obscene Publications Act. Draft twenty-seven is wallpaper—and not even patterned, not even as interesting as, say, a magnolia-painted woodchip. Suits 1, Creatives 0.

No, Brett, Vince and I could never be true friends. They only want me for my access to expense-account beer. However, it doesn’t stop me being drawn to them, and especially to Vince. He’s an entire Victorian freak show in a single body. He’s a bad car crash, one where the firemen are cutting the corpses from the twisted wreckage: you know you’re not supposed to look but you can’t tear your eyes away.

But it’s an experience I won’t be enjoying tonight.

I hit reply.

murray.colin@blowermann-dba.co.uk

to: brett.topowlski@blowermann-dba.co.uk

cc:

re: love your contact reports…

Can’t do beer tonight because

1 I’m broke.

2 Megan is coming round to pick up stuff.

3 There’s a distinct possibility I’ve got cancer.

Sorry.

Murray

I send it, but only after deleting item three.

A couple of minutes later:

brett.topowlski@blowermann-dba.co.uk

to: murray.colin@blowermann-dba.co.uk

cc:

re: love your contact reports…

what bloke wouldn’t pass up getting ratted with his mates so he could wait at home for the bitch that dumped him? you sad cunt.

Brett is right—I would sooner hang around at home for the bitch that dumped me.

five: you’ve been wanking, haven’t you? (#ulink_37752e58-9d37-5ad7-9f78-0eb59c4ddde5)

wednesday 5 november / 7.05 p.m.

I stand in my living room and survey the rock-star chaos. The discarded Stolly bottles, the dusting of coke on the coffee table, the TV lying on its side—well, watching it the right way up is for squares, dude. And, stone me, is that a peroxide groupie wedged down the back of my sofa cushion? How long has she been there?

Actually, most of that was rubbish.

OK, all of it was.

A part of me—the deeply repressed, inner-Jimi-Hendrix bit—would love to be able to say that my flat is a temple to debauchery and that in the post-Megan fallout it resembles Hiroshima at tea-time on 6

August 1945.

I can’t, though, in all honesty.

Because I stand in my living room and see…Neatness, a pleasure dome of just-so spick and span-ness. No dust or greasy finger marks and certainly no used socks, half-empty takeaway cartons or exhausted vodka bottles. No drugs on the coffee table—just a few magazines, the spines of which are precisely parallel to the table’s edge. And while I’ve got some fairly cool CDs, they’re stacked in order. Not in some esoteric rock bloke arrangement, but alphabetically (Smith, Elliott preceding Smiths, The). This conforms to no rock ’n’ roll rulebook I’m aware of.

I could say that this outbreak of tidiness is because Wednesday is my cleaner’s day, but that too would be a lie. I haven’t got a cleaner. This obsessive order…

It’s…Me.

My inner Jimi Hendrix doesn’t stand a chance. If I were a pie chart, Cleaning Impulses would be a huge slice taking up well over seventy per cent, while Playing Guitar, Screwing Girls and Drowning in Own Vomit would be a negligible sliver. I’ve always been like this. I’m well-known for it and I barely have to clean any more—household grime sees me coming and emigrates. When we first lived together Megan found this side of me endearing and I was a talking point among her girlfriends. One evening she answered the phone to Serena or Carol or whomever to be told, ‘I wanted to speak to Murray, actually. Does he know how to remove encrusted limescale from the base of a tap?’ I spent a memorable thirty minutes extolling the unbeatable combination of Limelite (‘Not the liquid, mind. It’s got to be the Power Gel.’) and an old toothbrush while Megan looked on with an indulgent smile.

After a time however, the indulgence petered out and I became an irritant. There she was busy making the world a better place, while all I seemed to fret about was who was going to keep it dusted. Over time a nagging tension developed between the forces of Pledge and There’s-more-important-things-to-worryabout.

When she left so did her mess. Order returned. No more work files heaped about the living room like badly planned council high-rises, no more damp knickers draped on the central heating and no more scented candles dripping irksome dollops of wax on hard-to-clean surfaces. I should have been happy, shouldn’t I?

Well…No. I was devastated. After a dust and disorder-free week I couldn’t stand the vacuum (I refer to the emptiness as opposed to my excellent Dyson upright) a moment longer and headed for Wax Lyrical where I bought a fresh stock of smelly candles. Then, inexplicably, I found myself in the Knickerbox next door, six-pack of cotton bikini briefs (assorted colours) in hand. No, it was perfectly explicable. I was going to take them home, rinse and wring them out and leave them dangling from the radiators—a Comfort-fresh reminder of what used to be. As I was about to pay I realised what a pathetic gesture it was. Megan was gone and I’d have to get used to it. The knickers stayed in the shop and, though I was already lumbered with the candles, they’ve remained wrapped up in a kitchen cupboard.