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Pigs In Hats

I work in an office. Most days I sit at my desk for 10+ hours. Looking at a drab desk for that length of time, sometimes you do stupid things to brighten the place up. So when I acquired (they were given them away at all the mainline London railway stations) a little foam rubber pig that was advertising pigsback.com it seems natural to garnish my desk with it's presence. Especially since you could also play catch and football with it when the boss was out... Oh how we chuckled in the office.

Anyway, with this creative feat accomplished, the little pig remained on my desk, some what forgotten. That was until December when Innocent Drinks adorned all their juice and smoothie bottles with little woolly bobble hats. "How cute" we all thought as we supped our nutritious fruit based beverages at lunchtime, but what do we do with the little hats once we have consumed 2 of our 5 fruit/veg portions for the day?

This is where Graeme's warped brain kicked into gear. I looked at the seemingly useless mini-bobble hat. I looked at my until recently forgotten pig type desk ornamentation. With stunningly fast mathematical equations zipping through my brain I reasoned that with a minimum of stetching that little hat would fit over the ears of the pig. Bingo! It worked. With one stroke of genius I had created the ultimate winter desk accessory for the bored web developer. See my pig in a hat creation in the picture above (in a very abstract way that's my desk in the background).

Well obviously I was very chuffed with myself. My desk was adorned with a one off artistic masterpiece which was a talking point among all my colleagues. I had fused together random items found in the course of a working life in London to produce something that was a physical commentary upon the modern man's working desk environment, through the medium of a pig in a hat. Brilliant. Perhaps I should take it down to the Tate Modern down the road to see if they would be interested in exhibiting my work?

Anyway, as always in the office, time moved on. Within a matter of a couple of months everyone had forgotten I was an artisitic genius and expected me once again to earn my living developing and installing intranet systems. So it was on a cold February day that I found myself in one of London's fine black cabs making my way to Fenchurch Street (home to many of the biggest names in International insurance - if you've travelled on a plane, a ship, or a space shuttle it's insured here - I kid you not).

Arriving at the client's fine offices (don't even get me started on their view), I was offered the choice of doing my work either a). In a super chilled server room with no human contact and the possibility of death by halon, or b). Sitting at a nice comfy desk, near the coffee machine, with a window view (damn that view!). Having discovered through many past experiences that while the cold is bareable, and halon infrequent, in server rooms, they almost never feature a chair. And certainly not coffee. Coffee is frowned upon when you are surrounded by thousands of pounds worth of business critical servers. I found that out the hard way. So I opted for "b"; the desk.

So I've done my job for a while now, and I know if I concentrate hard I can get all my files copied, web server configured, database set up, etc, in under half an hour (personal best: 4 systems in an hour), and head out onto Fenchurch St. where I know for a fact that there are at least three quality coffee houses within a 5 minute walk (Lloyds of London started as a coffee house fact fans), even though one of them has "bucks" on the end of it's name.

Thinking hard about coffee primarily, getting the job done quickly, and, I suppose, not looking too much of a g33k in front of actual business people, I barely noticed the desk I had been assigned, home to some poor grunt that was not in that day. So it was a good 10 minutes or so later (while I was still waiting for remote access to the server) that my eyes settled upon a curious object on the shelf in front of me. What was that? Surely it couldn't be? A pig. A pigsback.com pig. But wait. What was that stetched accross it's little foam rubber ears. Nooooooooooo. An Innocent Drinks bobble hat, maybe not the same jaunty yellow number that my little porker sported, but certainly from the same line.

Step one was to snap the evidence with my phone camera - see the pic below. Step two was to find out who the regular inhabitant of the desk was - perhaps they were a member of the project team I was delivering for? Perhaps they had visited my office to view the prototype system? Perhaps they had stolen my invention???!!! No. I had never had heard of them. That could only mean one thing. They had independently created the pig in the hat! Or perhaps someone had told them about my pig in a hat, and they thought it was such a great idea they made there own. No. That was ridiculous. So they had independently created the pig in the hat! You could have knocked me down with a feather. Who knows how many other people in London had seen the possiblities enshrined within these two simple objects? Perhaps it had spread further afield? Where would it end?

And so folks, there you have why pigs in hats are this season's "must have" item for your office desk, and why it's a good idea I just stick to posting games most of the time.

G:o)

PS. Of course I encourage you to send me pictures of your "pigs in hats". Bonus points if you use the same construction materials as I (and mysterious Fenchurch St Worker) used. Double bonus points if you had one before reading this.

Entry 1745, Friday, March 3rd 2006, Filed In Diary

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