Another long afternoon trying too avoid my colleagues and their endless requests for me to take on even more work during my last month, while I’m sneakily browsing Wikipedia for the umpteenth time. I’ve convinced myself it is all research for my forthcoming trip to the States and not simply to waste my employers time and the precious time I have left to finish the work I originally started for them.

I hear a distant shout from behind closed doors, possibly from the stairwell that acts so well as an echo-chamber when you are secretly trying to use your mobile phone during offices hours. I dismiss it this time and continue working. For a second time I hear a shout and this time I know it’s definitely from the stairwell. I get eye-contact with someone from across the open-plan office and we convey facial expressions to each other as if we‘re in an early 1900‘s silent film. Our exaggerated points to the closed doors and our mouthed one-syllable words leads us to the conclusion that we should go and investigate. There is a sense of urgency as we both stand up, I’m thinking that someone may have fallen down the hard concrete stairs and that the echoing chasm at the bottom was acting as an amplifier for this persons cries for help. At the very least, this interruption is giving me another excuse to stretch my legs.

Before I even get to the door, it opens and a middle aged woman steps through. I smile at her and she smiles back and I turn around and walk slowly back to my seat. I assume that the shouting was actually just this woman talking loudly to a friend in the stairwell and my overactive imagination had presumed that the noises I heard were screams of someone in pain and not of someone laughing and joking with another work colleague. If it was something more sinister then surely this woman would have gone to the aid of whoever it was needing assistance.

I sit back down to stare back at my screen and remember what it was I was actually doing before being distracted when suddenly there is another loud shout which startles me away from my malaise, but this time it’s coming from inside the office. The timid looking woman who had just walked through the doors had silenced the whole office with her roar and although I can’t quote the exact words she screamed at the top of her lungs, it was along the lines of “Jesus lives, I love Jesus, he blessed us and this world, amen”. Now this was the sort of behaviour you’d associate with someone who was particularly fond of the New Testament part of the bible, and possible one of those sects that prefer to be a bit more outspoken in their optimistic sounding beliefs and love for a certain man. It’s also the kind of behaviour you’d associate with a church to worship such beliefs or in the comfort of your own home but not quite what you expect on a Tuesday afternoon in a local authority office.

I hear Lizzie from behind me say quietly “It’s ok, just ignore it?, She does that occasionally”.
“And everyone just accepts that?” I reply, not so quietly.
“She’s very religious” was the whispered answer to my reasonable question “She’s one of ‘them’” she says, with emphasis on the ‘them’”
“Them?” I say
“You know, like Hope at the other end of the office.. They like to sing and dance about it….A lot” she says, allowing herself to laugh.
“I can see” I say surprised and slightly exasperated but still allowing a smile to emerge on my face.
Miles from across the office had slid across the office for his few pence worth “That’s a mental health issue that. Everyone just ignores it because they don’t want to deal with it. It’s not right”.
“Maybe it’s just mild, selective Tourettes?” I say, so as to not be too hasty in our diagnosis of our fellow work-mate.
“As in Religiously selective?” snorts Miles
“Erm, maybe” is the best reply I can come up with.

Everything has already settled down again apart from the odd cry at the other end of the office from our very vocal friend before I have a chance to present my full analysis of what I thought had just occurred. Everyone is already ignoring it after just five minutes and they will have completely forgotten about the incident by the time they are on the tube, on their way home, digesting the poor excuse for news in one of London‘s free evening newspapers (that‘s a whole other blog there).

My initial reaction is yes, it could be a mental health issue. If I was to walk round the office screaming “I believe in the collective Human Consciousness! We are all one!” or “We’re all Holograms!” then I’m sure someone would stop me from doing this and I also believe they may recommend that I seek professional help of some kind. But I also think that the fact that she is shouting out Christian beliefs is preventing someone from approaching her and asking her to stop or from thinking that this could be caused by a small mental health issue.

I had also considered the thought that this woman may have had some strong beliefs or an incident indoctrinated into her which has led her to start shouting out her beliefs in her workplace. Now I know most of us may consider this to be some form of brainwashing but others may just consider this cultural differences or just another alternative lifestyle. If a belief has been taught to you from an early age then it can be programmed into your mind as normal or the correct behaviour. It can be said about all of us with regards to something in our lives.

Maybe a sinister religious cult IS on the verge of taking over this busy London Council I work for? Can I expect see this kind of behaviour much more widespread from now on until I, myself find that I am doing it too? I’ll have to keep my wits about me from now on and treat any mundane office conversation with the utmost suspicion as I may unknowingly be being brainwashed.

As you can see from the previous paragraph, the words “religious cult” summon up all sorts of sinister thoughts about strange religious beliefs and rituals that are carried out by people with big scary grey eyes dressed in long white robes speaking in tongues and burning wooden effigies of rabbit-men and spider-monkeys; but can we also categorise a lot of these smaller Christian groups and sects that are dotted around London as Sinister ’Cults’?

Admittedly there are lots of beliefs and religious organisations that I believe are best to avoid (including the ones that I refuse to answer the door to on Saturday Mornings - sorry!) . London is probably the most cosmopolitan City in the world embracing many different cultures and religions but not a place that you would associate with ultra or extremist Christian beliefs. I think it is safe to dispel the idea that a Sinister Cult is taking over a London Council office.

As most of us know from just reading the newspapers and watching the Television, there are religious sects or organisations that do operate more like they are in the entertainment industry but maybe this is just part of the global modernisation of the church. I suppose we do have this on a smaller scale in East London but without the aid of media like TV. They generally have to resort to other means to make us feel guilty for our actions in everyday life and fearful of the repercussions post-life. Our alternative Christians can normally only stretch to sticking small comics through our doors which depict, in graphic detail our demise in the fiery pits of hell rather than having TV stations dedicated to worship and repentance 24 hours a day. A woman came up to me only yesterday on the 38 bus and handed me a ’Jesus Forgives’ Pamphlet. I tried to politely recline her offer but she shoved it back in my hand saying “You need to repent to be received in Heaven”. Instead of going for the Bill Hick’s style comical retort, I decide to be as polite as possible. I say to her “But I’m Buddhist” to which she replied “You can’t believe in something that doesn’t exist” and made sure I couldn’t give the pamphlet back which I purposefully put in the bin when I got off the bus in a manner that showed my disgust in front of the woman who gave it to me, not that this was going to actually achieve anything apart from blowing off a bit of pent up steam, I doubt this lady saw my actions and decided to rethink through her beliefs. I ended up feeling guilty because I didn’t recycle the pamphlet.

O.K. So some of these Churches have worshipping, praying and times of reflection bearing more of a resemblance to intense primal scream and hypnotherapy sessions but these aren‘t as prevalent as we might think. The lady in this story also has another friend in our office from the same church so is this grounds for thinking that they are part of a cult? I think probably not, I’ve spoken to the other lady in question and yes, she comes across as someone you would consider to be very religious in the Christian sense but she’s also probably the quietest lady in the office and the most unimposing woman I’ve met. I think I can be safe in saying that it’s not a religious cult taking over the council, just an isolated case of one woman over-joyed with the son of our creator who may have some issue that needs to be resolved but everyone chooses to ignore her behaviour because it only happens occasionally and maybe because the words she shouts are religiously inclined. I’m certainly no psychoanalyst but I still think someone needs to tell her to pipe down a bit.

It’s 6:30pm on a Monday Evening. I’m in my room and I’m about to write an email when suddenly there is a knock at the door. I stop typing and I listen to see if anyone else is on the move towards the task of opening and greeting this unexpected guest. There is no mad scramble for the door so there’s obviously no one downstairs. Consequently as my room is closest to the door, I know that I will have to go.

I walk down the stairs and only now do I hear movement but I’ve already made the first move towards the door, whoever else it was on their way to the door has stopped and turned back figuring that I am much closer to completing this chore. I look through the glass of the front door expecting to see one of my housemates who have forgotten their keys but I can only see two young girls.

I apprehensively open the front door and I say “Hello” and wait for a response
A short awkward silence follows before the girl to the left speaks.
“Good Afternoon, I mean Good whatever time it is” the girl says in a tone that had an enthusiasm that equalled her enthusiasm to know what time of day it is.
“I’m trying to help my friend here who has Cancer” She points to her young friend who says “Hello” in an unconvincingly weak voice. “Basically we’re collecting money by singing a song. We’ll sing it for you.”
Without a breath, the girl launches into song with her friend joining in a couple of syllables behind. The song, which I haven’t heard before, had a chirpy melody and an optimistic tone and a very simple structure. In hindsight, it sounded not too dissimilar to songs that I would have been made to sing at Primary school and so I think there’s a good chance that this is where the girls had learnt it.

I stand there feeling slightly taken aback by what I am witnessing. I look round to see if anyone else in the house may be nearby listening who I might be able to coax into helping me asking them to stop but I’m all alone. I know there are people listening to this and I also know that they aren’t stupid enough to be visible in case there was the distinct possibility that there would be a situation like this and that they may be coaxed into helping deal with the aforesaid situation by the person who had answered the door. We’ve had strangers with strange requests before therefore we are always apprehensive about opening the front door.

I realise that I’m on my own with this one, taking one for the team, so to speak, and so I decide enough is enough and before they get to the chorus I raise my hands and I say in a slightly cynical voice “Is this for real?” They lower their singing voices but I can tell they still have the beat going, they shake their heads and go to launch back into song but again I quickly interject and say “have you been here before and sung to us?”. This time they stop and explain that this is the first time they have done something like this. They offer me a book which is divided up into three columns; names, addresses and sponsorship amount as if to offer some form of proof that this is a genuine appeal for charity.
“What charity are you helping out again?” I say, pretending not to notice the pen and notepad being pushed up my nose.
“Oxfam” they say in unison.
“Oxfam” I ponder
“Yes Oxfam, the one in Dalston. Not the one that’s closed down The one that is open”
“Right, of course the one that’s open. You wouldn’t want to be doing it for the one that had closed down”
“No!” They both giggle.
“So you’re not doing it for a Cancer Charity?”
“Erm, no” they say despondently
“I see, do you have any official notice or identification to say you are collecting for Oxfam? Or are you doing this through your School?” They both shake their heads and the one to my left starts walking away.
“I’m not saying that collecting for charity is a bad thing, it’s just that you should really have some identification to prove that you are collecting for Oxfam when you are knocking on people’s doors. If you come back with Identification I will gladly sponsor you”
I decided to say this before they were out of earshot, mainly because any good impartial person would do the same. Also, even though I felt certain that the girls were pulling a scam, If there was the remote chance that these girls were telling the truth, I didn’t want to be known as the guy who wouldn’t help the child with Cancer.
“The girl who had been standing to my left offers up her defence, “We’re just the singers” she says with a dejected look and a shrug of the shoulders.

I close the door and walk back upstairs and knock on Mat’s door as I know he’s there and had been listening to the whole thing. He beckons me in and I ask him if he heard what had just happened. He smiles and says that he heard some of it and that he’s glad that he didn’t have to deal with it. We talk some more and trade in our high horses for even higher ones. when we both notice out the window that they have cornered another neighbour who is getting out of his car. He looks totally bewildered and also strangely out of his depth. We watch him as he signs the book and passes over some money to the eager hands of one of the girls. We shake our heads and mumble something about our neighbour having a very low horse for falling for this scam and watch as they knock on another door and start singing for another neighbour. Again, the neighbour signs the book and passes over some coins to this two entrepreneurial whiz-kids who appeared to have hit on to the 21st century version of a paper-round. The neighbour looks just as bewildered as the previous victim as she hands over the money, says goodbye and closes the door.

I can’t believe for one minute that my neighbours have all fallen for this, or am I the cynical one for not helping these two young children, one inflicted with a serious life threatening disease and the other one who quite innocently is using her spare time to admirably do good deeds for charity and her ailing friend?

OR, are my neighbours weighing up the pros and cons and deciding that the quickest way to deal and forget about the problem posed to them on their front doorstep is to give theses to girls money because a few pounds is a very small price to pay to guarantee a completely clear and guilt free conscience.

Now if somehow they had incorporated that spiel into their shady sales-pitch, I would have signed up in an instant and would probably have bought their CD.

Another week passes and the furore over TV-based phone competitions continues. People are outraged, shocked, and dismayed. They have been left fuming by the fact that they have been duped into ringing premium phone lines due to the lure of the big prize and the TV presenter’s optimism that the chances of winning are really quite high. TV Executives, presenters and producers are aghast at the fact that they too have been tricked by phone companies so that they themselves are tricking us poor, witless viewers and customers into wasting around 30,000 – 50,000 pounds a day on competitions that are impossible to win or on an uncounted vote for your favourite plate-spinning monkey. For years we’ve been duped into thinking that there really are some generous companies out there that really do want us to win big.

The whole scandal becomes even more absurd when you consider the fact that the multiple choice questions to these predetermined quizzes were normally as demented as ‘What’s the Capital of England? Is it A) London, B) Mordor, C) a spoon or D) a sleeping white dog??’ or ‘What was the name of the Ship in Titanic? Was it A) Titanic, B) Titinus C) Al Qaeda or D) Celine Dion??’

These preposterously easy questions have been posed to us every day by grinning, fresh-faced hollowed-out TV presenters shaking their heads at how foolish their bosses are for thinking that the good British Public are stupid enough not to know the answers to these questions; they are giving their money away! We scream and shout as we rush to the phones. They positively glow with optimism as they beckon us to call the number on the screen to win some cool hard cash. We seem to be living in a world of Modern day Executive Robin Hood’s who do not care about their shareholders or profit-margins, They want us all to be rich and/or be the star. Reality TV may seem like cheap programming but that’s what it is, Reality TV. Interactive TV where the public can vote to see what happens next week, who gets voted out, voted in, gets a forfeit or who gets to be a racist next. Who doesn’t want programmes where the good British public decide what happens next?

A two pound phone call in exchange for £10,000 now seems a fair gamble to me, and it will pass the time until the next hourly lottery draw. And who in the world doesn’t know the answers to these questions? Do people get them wrong? Pfft - only a complete idiot would let this chance slip by.. Actually, surely only someone stone dead would not ring up and gamble two pounds.

Who doesn’t want to make a tactical vote on Celebrity Big Brother so that Jade is kept in the house long enough so that she offends 1 Billion people? I jammed the phone lines voting for the other evictee on that night, I can tell you. But I suppose the one positive out of this incident is that we’re now more likely to see Gary Glitter on TV before we see Jade Goody again.

When the news that some of these competitions might be ‘fixed’ or that technical hitches meant that you hadn‘t entered the draw or your vote hadn‘t counted, Did the nation stop to ponder? Could it really have all been too good to be true?

Maybe most of us are demented or even dead to have let these chances slip by, that may also explain why I don’t feel ‘outraged’ like the rest of the world does. But how can something that is so obviously a scam and a way for rich people to make even more money be such an outrage? Are you trying to tell me that none of you had the slightest inkling? I can imagine Richard and Judy finding out the awful truth now for the first time, Richard who would dearly like us all to think that he was one of ‘us’ would have been flabbergasted to find out and so to avenge us all, he quickly sets to work in his shed, hidden from Judy’s prying eyes, on some ingenious plan to win all of our money back in an attempt to scam the scammers and finally be accepted as a voice of a generation. We would run up to him in the streets, hug him and hoist him above our heads and wave him around a bit. "Good King Richard!" we will Shout. We all know Judy would have known it was a scam all along. She is the not to be trifled with, always watching behind the curtain Jabba the Hutt to Richard’s naïve and irritating C3P0.But ulitmately and Ironically it was C3P0 who ended up being worshipped like a God by the Ewoks and Jabba ended up being Strangled on a barge in the middle of the desert. Draw from that what you will.

Anyway the fact of the matter is how can we be outraged about something that was so blatantly a shady deal in the first place? Who are these people that are outraged? Who would admit to actually being outraged? An admittance would surely mean that they would have rung these phone-lines, hoping to get rich quick and so then they’d be in their right to be outraged. The problem is, is that I’ve not actually met anyone who has entered a phone-in competition. Everyone knows it’s a scam, right? Well that’s the general consensus I get when I speak to my friends and colleagues. But someone must be ringing these phone-lines for them to be making so much money. Is it a case of the Outraged public doesn’t actually exist or are there now lots of people too embarrassed to admit that they have rung these telephone lines?

This draws a parallel to many other ‘stating the bleeding obvious’ articles in the media that have caused outrage amongst us. When Kate Moss was caught spracked up and shellacked on goofballs, we gasped, shook our fists and grabbed our pitchforks to hunt down this drug quaffing evil bitch. How can we have a role-model who is a drug addict who has a basic disregard for the law and her own health amongst other damning things?

But why are we so surprised? Did no one guess that she might actually be taking illegal substances for recreational purposes? Did we all think that she lived a quiet life and went to bed at 9 every night? I’m assuming people don’t like to accept the obvious unless the obvious has been caught on camera with a rolled up £20 note up her nose about to blow what appears to be sherbet across the table. - I’ve taken drugs and not inhaled too.

This then got me thinking about the 60’s and the Rolling Stones drug-fuelled narcotic heyday. Everyone’s favourite hell raisers who are globally accepted as being real life drug fiends; they‘ve even been to prison for it albeit briefly. We even chuckle and laugh at the fact that Keith Richards can still play guitar even though he’s been clinically dead since he was 35. He’s just so stoned that his mind hasn’t caught up with the fact that his heart has stopped way back in the day.
This would have been an appropriate time in the blog for a pun about a Rolling Stone and Moss but I really couldn’t think of one.

However, after all these drug-fuelled years, I can’t actually recall ever seeing a picture of a Rolling Stone taking drugs. I did an image search for ‘Rolling Stone Drugs’ and yes lots of pictures came back in the search but not one of them showed any of the Stones taking drugs. So, in my reckoning, if a picture of Mick Jagger taking a drag on the mother of all ‘crazy-eddie-king-sized-spliff-doobies’ was published this weekend in a tabloid then the laws of basic media Physics should mean that we will all be outraged and disgusted at this man’s despicable behaviour. Right?