Moscow, Scotland

Eiljert (to newly returned Planner in My Own Image): How was Moscow?

Planner in My Own Image: Like a Glasgow housing estate. All of it.

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War

I have decided to up my war of passive aggressiveness with Box-Ticking Account Guy.

The last victory was a blank refusal to fly Alitalia at something like 4.20am (going, instead, for the LUXURY of BA at 7am) – but it was hard-won. It involved repeated pretences of “Plans Not Finalised” and “Not Sure About the Agenda” scams, and necessitated the enlistment of Temporary Replacement for World’s Greatest P.A. but I triumphed – and I flew to Italy some two and a half hours later than I was due to. Naturally, I was exhausted from all the chicanery and double-dealing I had had to engage in, but I am sure that in a few weeks, it will proved itself to have been worth it. On the other hand, it does strike me that if I spent half the energy I spend on simply not doing what I’m told on things like “Brand Planning” or “Advertising”, I’d be the best and most efficient Planner in the world.

However, that experiment cannot be planned yet, as there is another operation to be managed: it is Operation NotGoingToMoscow. Now: I don’t mind Russia. I liked the 1980s the first time, and so it’s good to see them again, unironically and with Russian accents whenever I can be bothered with a five-hour flight. As it happens, my enthusiasm for this must be higher than I imagined, because I find myself going there with eye-rolling regularity – and that’s OK, because I also like vodka and (whisper it) I like Russians. But NOT this time!

Moscow isn’t the problem: the problem is the “W word” – workshop. The Client has fixed a three-day workshop in Moscow and I have decided I am not going to go, for a number of reasons:-

1. I might still accept this new job, and if I do, then I really should be absenting myself from meetings and letting some of my minions fill my loafers.
2. It is a workshop: the opposite of work.
3. But most importantly: Box-Ticking Account Guy wants me to go – and thus it follows, it follows as Night follows Day that I shall not go.

My only sadness is that I shall not be able to try out my new workshop technique. I have, until now, fallen back on the classic armoury of eye-rolling, tutting and sotto voce murmurings of “Fucking HELL” to signal my involvement in the proceedings, but I think I might have hit on something better.

Waiting until audience participation is requested for the first time in the session (this is important, as there is a fair amount of reticence at these things, and so if you appear to be willing to make a contribution, you are received as enthusiastically as a tray of croissants at a hypoglycemic conference), I would make a very clear show – possibly even going as far as raising my hand – of having something to “contribute”.

“Yes? YES?” the enthusiastic and nervous-of-silence moderator would encourage me.

“No, it’s nothing, it’s probably wrong or stupid…”

“NONSENSE – no such thing! Remember – this is a workshop: there is no place for quality here! What did you want to say?”

At this point, apparently emboldened by the fact that my contribution was genuinely being sought, I would sit erect in my chair, eyes shining and, pausing only to glance round the room with a show of shyness mixed with awareness that Something Good Was Coming, I would say:-

“I just wonder if we could do something about vaginas.”

Any “Sorry, I don’t think I understand” work, would be countered with my nodding my head enthusiastically and saying “Just something with vaginas.” fading to a different angle, disappointed but still convinced of my rectitude with “I really think that there’s something we could do with vaginas. They just FEEL right for us.”, which I would say while looking around, searching out the eyes of my fellow workshop attendees whom I just KNOW will get it and be right behind me. When the moderator went past me (even if he was foolish, but expedient enough to scribble a poorly hand-written “Vaginas” (?) on the flip chart, I would make it clear for the rest of the session that I had put my neck on the line, and it had not (in my opinion) ended well, and that I was now pretty wounded.

I might not have the guts to see this through – but I bet Best Friend has: and it might be better coming from her – so I’m going to try to train a small, elite team to get this kind of thinking at the heart of workshop management as soon as possible.

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Moscow Beckons

Saturday, 10th November 2007

The city of terrible food (well, one of them: anywhere in Germany is probably still worse…) beckons with its -6C temperature, unattractive women and aggressively laughter free culture.

I am there for a conference on The Semiotics of Evil and Goodness in Modern Russia. Honestly.

Wife is keen that I buy her a fur hat (which I won’t, for many reasons), and the children are keen that I get them A Cinderella Coach, A Robot, and A Shark: the odds on this are also low, although for very different reasons.

I don’t have a clue what to wear: I don’t know if I can find a single-breasted suit made out of 15 TOG duvets, but if not, then I am going to be somewhat “fucked”.

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Weather Report

Friday, 16th November 2007

The flight from London to Moscow was three and a half hours.

The journey from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport to the centre of Moscow was three and a half hours.

The reason? Six inches of snowfall, which (as with British Rail and leaves falling in Autumn) appears to have taken Moscow by surprise – to the extent that all the traffic lights failed. It was interesting to watch their response: a combination of utter indifference and stoicism, but at intervals men left their cars to direct traffic, returning to their cars to drive on and hand on the baton to the next man.

Was this evidence of the regularity of this kind of systematic fuck-up? Or was it pure socialism in motion?

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Raisa’s Not A Laugh

Friday, 16th November 2007

Pointless Things I Have Done No. 445,763: “Visit a “Typical Russian Housewife in Her Home To Understand Her Attitude To Hygiene”.

Blanketed in six inches of snow, the housing estate (which must have accommodated over 40,000 people) looked less bleak than it otherwise would have done. But once we got inside the stairwell there was no disguising how horrible it was, with litter and food waste in the bottom of the stairwell playing host to a nest of rats, who appeared to be staging a dance, by the amount of movement going on.

We got upstairs and a woman the size of Bella Emberg, clad in a patterned Camberwick dressing gown that was fighting a losing battle to swathe her enormous and blue-tinged bangers, came to the door. She showed us into her kitchen, where her daughter and nine-month old granddaughter were sitting at a table. Her neighbour was smoking, leaning against the wall. Three cats of various sizes were on the kitchen work surfaces, eating the food out of their dishes that had been laid out for them there.

The representatives of our Russian office started talking to them, but it was unnecessary (fortunately) for me to be able to understand . Here was a home that had been cleaned, but was clearly a germ fantasia. I learned later that the cats use the bath as their litter tray, because the owner was able to use the shower head both to wash her hair and to rinse the faeces down the plug.

As we left, one of my Russian colleagues said to me “This not typical Russian housewife”, ashamed of what had been apparent. My guess would be that she was very typical for that estate, and many more like it – but she didn’t need packaged goods from the West: she needed someone to tell her (and the others) how to be safer. So that’s what we’ll spend the money on.

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