Contracting out.

I’m reminded of my time in a drawing office. The job I was designing needed graphics doing. Tom said he could do it in his spare time at home. The manager took against this offer and employed a graphics agency to do it, a shame because Tom knew the project better than any agency artist. So we briefed the agency guy, he went away and he returned some weeks later with their efforts. They were great, we were pleased and the manager proudly pointed out, “See, if you want a good job you need to go to the professionals.” We agreed. We also noted that the style of the graphics was strangely similar to Toms’. Nothing was said but we all knew. Tom got paid a better rate for his time, the agency added a fair percentage so it cost three times as much and took a fair bit longer to deliver. You only have to consider the cost of contracting out you evening’s washing up. You ring Washingup-R-Us Inc. They send a washer upper round and you pay for time, travel, agency staff, phone calls, paperwork, petrol etc and it’ll cost around £40 for 15 minutes work. That’s £280 a week! So you shop around for a cheaper quote. One comes in at £199. This agency takes the same cut but doesn’t pay its cleaners travel time, sick or holiday pay and only pays them for 10 minutes per job. You’re over charged, the workers are over worked and the MD of WrU drives an Audi. And the washing up isn’t great either. But then it’s a lot easier than doing it yourself and it somehow feels sort of classy to have a professional come and do your washing up, and if you were the manager it’s not your money anyway. So there you have contracting out in a nutshell. As a manager it’s easier than organising it yourself, you have the kudos of dealing with all the nice manager types from the agency, you don’t have to care about the hoypoloy workers and you’ve someone to blame if it all goes tits-up. And it’s not you money anyway or your washing up. Cost saving’s got nothing to do with it. 

To Sleep.

On this November night two or three days after the full moon he lay on the bed, covered himself with the cold duvet and set about getting warm. Though the moonlight was bright when he closed his eyes he could see only darkness. Perhaps because he had absented himself so abruptly from the warm silver light the darkness seemed somehow perfect darkness. He began to muse. It became no longer the darkness of closed eyes in a warming bed but the darkness of space. He looked out into it as might an astronaut whose broken tether has set him adrift alone in the depths of space still warm, breathing, but he was not at all beset by the fear of that situation. He looked at the black infinity from the comfort of his suit. How far was he seeing? He even wondered if there was such a thing as the distances he’d left behind. And then as if by some magic he had no suit, he was at home, a natural being in its element swimming as do fish in the sea, supplied of all his needs by this element of space. The darkness swaddled him, wrapped him in the strange safety of a perfect matching ambience. Though there was nothing to see, no sound or touch he was not alone. In this infinity of dark nothingness he did not feel alone for there was no other that he might be with or separate from. Fast or slow, here or there had no relevance, he just was. And then he wasn’t. Gone was the body being, the arms, torso and dangling useless legs. From this point that he possessed as observer, he was an observer of nothingness by a being of nothingness from this position of anywhere and nowhere. From this state of dwindling existence he began to meld inexorably into what he had so far only seen. He became the space, the darkness and though he persisted he also became part of the nothingness. And so, pleased with his nights journey, he drifted off to sleep. 

A Tale.

In 2014 the grapes of the Marne Valley underwent a subtle change.  Hautvillers Benedictine Abby, the ancestral home of Dom Perignon, is in the heart of this Champagne region. It would be a good year, a great vintage; everyone was excited. Richard Geoffroy, Chef de Cave and creator of Dom Perignon’s finest vintages studied the slightest bloom on the grapes that would go unnoticed by most and remembered. This had happened twice before, both times before he was born, but there were accounts in the Abby’s registers. There had been accounts elsewhere in France of bread baked with a certain local flour that had caused the same effect. Geoffroy was not as excited as everyone else. Even today scientists can only guess why a whole village in a certain week of a certain year went crazy. Something in the process of growing and baking appeared to produce a natural hallucinogen, a form of LSD. It couldn’t be proved but that’s what the evidence seemed to suggest. Geoffroy alone had read the Abby’s records, he alone surmised what might happen, but the harvest was good, the grapes were gathered, an excellent vintage forecast and a large profit estimated. When Geoffroy said they should not produce wine that year he was rudely overruled as succumbing to some old wives tale. Production went ahead. Sample tastings pronounced the wine excellent and, being tasted only in small sips, proved to have no ill effects. The bottles were left to mature and a launch date announced. Demand was high as expectations grew for this magnificent vintage and on the due date it was shipped all over the world immediately. The complete stock of 2014 Dom Perignon sold out in a week. What happened next was only foreseen by one man. Needless to say Dom Perignon champagne is only drunk by the elite, the wealthiest and most powerful, leaders in politics, industry, advertising and the media, and needless to say they didn’t just take a sip.