Elb in a blue funk...

Having been embroiled in a very frustrating job at work for the last few days, (a client had been, as we say in our business, "Buggering About With Things They Shouldn't") I find myself in an extremely negative state of mind. Combined with my domestic crises of last week, my morale is so low I can't find it. (Or was that my morals?)

In my workroom, I retreat into my headphones and blast my already questionable hearing with VERY LOUD MUSIC, my customary therapy for a bad mood. The treatment fails. Foul tempered and equally foul-mouthed (my room isn't called the Tourette's Room for nothing....) I play Green Day at full whack whilst using highly scientific instruments (a hammer) to dismantle stubborn assemblies.

I try to decide which track best suits my evil mood: perhaps "Basket Case"? Or maybe "Brain Stew"? As I belt precision components with my hammer and throw the offending parts across the room in a fit of pique, I fear "Redundant" and/or "Good Riddance" may be my swansong if I am fired for mistreating customers' property......

I change the CD but not artist, and decide that I need Billy Joe from Green Day to "Give Me Novacaine"..... played loud enough, it may render me unconscious until this awful mood has gone... My musical Prozac failing to have a significant effect, I toil on in a little dark cloud like some sinister goblin, muttering under my breath. The trouble is, whilst wearing headphones, I forget that other folk can hear me, and a passing colleague receives the benefit of my extensive knowledge of early Anglo-Saxon verbage. With the glow of embarrassment to add to the simmering mix of vile temper and menopausal overheating, my face radiates sufficiently to register on the lower reaches of a Geiger counter.

I need to go and kick something/somebody and scream to let the demons out of my head, and broodingly contemplating DIY trepanning, I try to gauge whether my head would fit in the nearby vice. I discount that method, and consider having a manic boogie to try and ease the situation, but it doesn't figure as part of workshop protocol, and would give the lads far too much entertainment than is good for them. Besides, my dancing is classified as dangerous, as friends on the dance floor can verify.
Why is it that whilst flinging myself around a dance floor, I see myself as the girl in "Flashdance" or like Kevin Bacon in "Footloose", or Patrick Swayze's partner in "Dirty Dancing", whereas in reality, I look as if someone's just tipped a bucket of ice down my back and am making frantic efforts to remove it by jumping around like a lunatic. Not to mention the adverse effects it has when someone of ample boobage like myself leaps up and down repeatedly.........black eyes, bruised knees and a nationwide alert of earthquake activity.

I take my wee black cloud for a walk into the workshop, giving my ringing ears a rest, under the pretence of using the cleaning machines, but really to have a therapeutic whinge with the lads. Amazingly, it works a treat, and after much mutual moaning about our respective problems, the cloud disperses amidst bawdy banter and the plotting of misdeeds for a forthcoming occasion. Lighter in demeanour, (but alas, not weight) I return to my onerous task a happier bunny, and decide to look on the positive side. It'll be payday soon. My smile however, is shortlived as I remember the impending invoices from the Saviours of Gas and Electricity, but then I brighten again as I also remember that I now have HEAT again, thanks to the lovely Marcus.......

I am easily pleased..........

And it's lunchtime.