Star jumps and The Goombay Dance Band

I thought I felt a pang. I was wrong. Not composing a blog yesterday held no regrets. After all, your first wedding anniversary shouldn't really yield to online mutterings, twitterings and assorted yabberings that find their way onto the smorgasbord of the web. A daily blog is a commitment only outdone by the slightly weightier undertaking of marriage. The self flagellation stops here.

Today brought a disc full of highbrow business academia sent to Wonkana HQ by Cumbrian alumnus and all round real ale quaffer Mr Steph. Knee deep in research and paperwork for his Open University M.A, the Lad from the Lakes saw fit to fire 101 keen minded questions at me to test my new business mettle. He even used terms like "core business" and "exit strategies". Or at least he may have done. In my pursuit of one upmanship, it could have been me. The words "market segmentation" may even have crossed my lips. I put it down to my competitive streak. Losing is no good to man nor beast. In truth, the blame lies with middle school tennis coaching. If ever there was a pretender to the McEnroe behavioural throne it was me.

I am serious.

After a bout of business-ese was duly traded, I enquired after the state of Mr Steph's workplace. My grasp of his precise role within the Japanese car manufacturer may be described as nebulous. He works with CAD, I think. A fulsome job description if ever there was one.

Wanted : person to work with CAD and err other stuff.

Notwithstanding the gaps in my knowledge of his day to day professional life, I asked whether kaisen or any other pan Asian sytem of working had been parachuted in, to use the de rigeur phraseology.

What he told me shook Japanese efficiency to the core. Or at least my take on it.

Every morning at a set time, a track by the Goombay Dance Band wafts over the company public address system, presumably to imbue the workers with a sense of purpose and joie de vivre. Either that or foul and murderous intent.The Goombay Dance Band?!

As an irritant, that's got to be up there with dust mites, sulphuric acid and James Blunt. Anyone who doesn't have the decency to stick with their bona fide family name of Blount only brings ridicule on themselves. The connotation and rhyming potential of Blunt plays straight into the comedic hands of any self respecting satirist, whereas Blount gives off an almost Chaucerian air.

Full Blount he was, as it were a mede; al ful of fryshe flours whyte and redde.

It seems like he's learned to live with it. Perhaps there's a company sanatorium handily located with ample parking and friendly, helpful nursing staff. It's all a sliding scale; Mr Steph did look very uneasy when I explained that an acquaintance was made to perform star jumps at one internet banking call centre as penance for failures in procedure. It may be spelt "Egg", but it's pronounced "humiliation". The strains of the Goombay Dance Band - perhaps it was what Maslow was thinking when he theorised on self actualisation. There I go again. Blame the tennis. I promise there's none here

http://www.wonkanaproductions.com/waitingfordeath.php

And besides, as the juvenile joke always had it, "abstince makes the fart go Honda".