Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [1]
The big question when office chair purchasing is ‘to swivel or not to swivel?’ I would love to find out how many of the great literary works of the twentieth century have been written by swivelling writers. Were D. H. Lawrence, J. R. R. Tolkein or Virginia Woolf slightly dizzy when they penned their finest works? I tried out several swivel chairs in Habitat on the Finchley Road for so long that I got told off. I realized a swivel chair would be a mistake. I’d have too much fun. I might as well put a slide, a seesaw or a bouncy castle in my office. So I settled on a chair whose biggest selling feature was that you can sit on it.
With my chair, desk and view sorted, it was time to address the décor. The previous owner had painted the walls of my new office orange. I’ll try to be more specific. They were Tangerine. No, they were more a Clementine or maybe a Mandarin. Come to think of it, they were Satsuma. Now, there was no way on God’s earth I could write this book with a Satsuma backdrop, so I went to Farrow & Ball on Hampstead’s high street. Farrow & Ball is the latest in a long line of successful high street double acts (Marks & Spencer, Dolce & Gabbana, Bang & Olufsen). It’s basically paint for posh people. I don’t know who Farrow was, or indeed Ball, but I bet they were posh. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Ball is Bobby Ball from Cannon and Ball, who tried his luck in the paint industry encouraged by Cannon’s success manufacturing cameras.
I perused the colour chart in Farrow & Ball. There are so many colours, it makes you go a bit mad trying to decide. It’s also very hard to distinguish between many of them. A quick googling of the Farrow & Ball colour chart reveals ten different shades of white. All White, Strong White, House White, New White, White Tie … you get the idea. I once bought a white sofa from DFS. It was white. If you asked a hundred people what colour it was, I would say that a hundred of them would say it was white. In actual fact, they would all be wrong; it was Montana Ice. I would suggest that even if you asked a hundred Montanans during a particularly cold winter what colour it was, they would say, ‘White.’
After a brief discussion with my wife (she’s actually colour blind, but I find it hard to reach decisions on my own), I popped for the unmistakable colour of Brinja No. 222. A slightly less pretentious description would be aubergine. Most people call it purple.
My surroundings were now nearly complete: new desk, new chair, lovely view and Brinja No. 222 walls. I placed my Mac on the desk and lovingly peeled off the see-through plastic that protects the screen, took a deep breath and sat down. Unfortunately 27 inches of screen meant that my view was completely obscured. Panic. Why didn’t I think of that? The whole window was blocked by this enormous piece of technology. I was forced to move the desk to the opposite wall. I now had a face full of Brinja No. 222 and my back to the view. I would have to turn the chair around at regular intervals to be inspired by my view. I should have bought the swivel chair.
OK, I’m ready. I’m ready to start my book. It’s an autobiography, although I prefer the word ‘memoirs’. I think it’s from the French for ‘memories’, and that pretty much sums up what this book is going to be. A book about my French memories. No, it’s basically everything I can remember from my life. The bad news is that I don’t have a particularly good memory. You know when someone asks you what you did yesterday, and it takes you ages to remember even though it was just one day ago – ‘I can’t believe this, it was just yesterday’, you’ll say before finally remembering. Well, I’m like that, except sometimes it never comes to me. I never remember what I did yesterday. Come to think of it, what did I do yesterday?
‘Memoirs’ just sounds a lot