London Calling

The first in an esteemed series, submitted by reader 'Mr. Eugenides'

He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath—"The horror! The horror!"
– Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Depending on your personal cultural compass, Kurtz was either talking about the killing fields of Vietnam or alluding to a darker, more Freudian exploration of consciousness. I believe however, that he was simply describing the agonising period at work before you depart for a holiday you booked almost three months ago.

You are no stranger to the pre-vacation battle trenches. You too have crawled, knock-kneed and bent like beggars through this exact same no-man's land. You too have realised that no matter what you do to avoid it, a holiday always comes two weeks too late.

The first sign is the loss of one’s short-term memory. You probably miss the odd meeting with the Global Head of Sales/Marketing/Trading, the kind where there’s a new sales matrix/model being launched with important ‘co-sponsor’ and ‘navigator’ functions. You probably neglect to tell the person opposite you that his wife called five minutes ago to say she was going into labour eight weeks premature. Little things.

You obviously ramp up your caffeine intake from the nicely balanced Milan-approved ‘morning cappuccino/afternoon macchiato’ combo into a full-blown mainlining of triple espressos and a simultaneous application of raw coffee-bean paste to the inside of your eyelids.

The alarm clock ‘malfunctions’ on a regular basis and irritability during your commute enters a phase in which you’re tempted to research precisely how much ammunition certain automatic weapons hold and carefully input this information into a spreadsheet for future reference.

Personally, as I enter the final, Sisyphean days, my OCDs get worse.

(Please don’t dwell too long here on the pluralisation of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, because pedantry has no place when a man confesses to you that under pre-holiday stress, he starts discarding anything in his apartment which he believes to be extraneous to basic body function).

For example, I like to remove the labels from Evian bottles: I know its water, you know its water. No need for a label.

Shampoo bottles. She’s using Frederick Fekkai Protein Rx and I’m using an anti-psoriasis product that smells (and looks) like bitumen. I become aware that the two bottles are half-full. I siphon one into the other and discard the redundant bottle. She may not be entirely happy, but I’ve removed a little bit more of life’s flotsam and jetsam and that feels good.

Clearly if I continued in this way, I’d end up inhabiting an apartment furnished only with a single toilet roll and a jar of pickled onions. But eventually, finally, that glorious last day in the office arrives. I know I’ve made it to the finishing line when I click on the ‘Out of Office Assistant’ and type the following:

‘I am currently out of the office. Given how unbearable the last two weeks were, I may never come back. If you call any of my mobile devices, I will eat your entire family on my return. Please forward your usual requests to a rival financial institution, assuming they’re still in business.’

Have a great summer break.

Mr Eugenides