Introducing The Hardline, Volume One

(I hasten to add that this is not 'hardline-unfinished' which I referred to yesterday. This is different and new.)

During the course of my ‘professional’ employment, there was a time when I had a few people whose boss I, notionally, was. During that period I lost count of the number of emails I sent using the abrasive subject ‘Introducing The Hardline’. These emails were usually intended to put right that which had once went wrong – to outline new practices and procedures designed to lay out exactly what I wanted people to do, and how I wanted them to do it, in order to prevent whatever had just happened from ever happening again.

I do recall that most of the time, these emails were roundly ignored and never made even the slightest bit of difference, but it did at least make me feel like I was doing something like proper work and fulfilling the duties of a manager. I mean, I really was trying my best. Somewhere in the ‘Big Book Of Management’ there probably is a chapter entitled ‘Always reference obscure album titles in your email subject lines’, and while this was not necessarily my conscious intention in sending my ‘hardline’ emails, I do have to admit that there is a part of me which just loved the title of, if not the music on, the 1987 album “Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D'arby”. There’s just something so terribly self-reverential about such a title, sounding like the product of a wildly out of control, super boosted-up ego. (You can see how it would therefore sound exactly like something I would say, and say often.)

Such egotripping was probably not Mr D’arby’s intention, I’m sure – just as the unintended implied threat of George Michael’s “Listen Without Prejudice... Volume One” suggests that listening in an incorrect manner will result in further and further volumes being sent to your door, like mail-order encyclopaedias, until you finally submit and behave more reasonably while operating your stereo equipment.

This is really all I have to say on the matter, so as blog posts go, this idea has come up a little short. That said, there is precedent for short writing, as not so long ago I chanced across a copy of “Blood, Sweat and Tea” by Tom Reynolds, a book which has no less than TWO HUNDRED AND SIX chapters, perhaps because they are mostly recycled blog posts. Just like my little blog, and the best-selling book which no doubt it will one day become.

I take this all to be a very good sign. And although I clearly have prior claim to - in fact, maybe even invented - the idea of turning a blog into an actual proper book (if we ignore Belle de Jour,) I am perfectly content to let that slide. It’s much easier to blaze a trail if someone has already set fire to most of the trees ahead of you. My style of writing is clearly in fashion, and I shall be off to Harper-Collins in the morning to collect my advance.

Another couple of hundred chapters and we should be good, I reckon.