All Your Third Sector Magazines Are Belong To Us

I have a strange and tortured relationship with Third Sector magazine. With many other things and people too, obviously, but we’ll save those for later. I have a subscription and I receive copies with what seems like astonishing regularity – mad propz to Third Sector for the efficiency of their subscriptions department – and do not read them because I am too busy, until I have a pile in my intray which is threatening to topple over and kill people when they come in to remind me to do all the things I ought to be doing with a good grace and am not. Yet not only have I just renewed my subscription, I saw a familiar-looking wrapper in someone else’s intray the other day and felt briefly mad with jealousy. Was that my Third Sector Magazine? Why had he got it? Clearly Third Sector Magazine represents something psychological I am unable to let go of but I am not going to analyse it. (There is a woman in it who writes a column which I like very much, it is about HR or Management or similar, I can’t find her on their website. Most of her advice seems to boil down to, don’t be so silly, and I find it inordinately refreshing, plus she has a jaunty scarf and a cheerful, slightly manic expression in her picture.)

I have now had ‘workplan meetings’ in every café around the Mill Road area of Cambridge. It’s like, difficult conversations on tour, and perhaps I should have a t-shirt made. This week has been challenging again ( ) so today it was Café de Paris, and as we sat shuffling our Rocky Road and White Chocolate Biscuit cakes respectively I was put in mind of the following. How pretentious am I, eh? Answers on a postcard.

Déjeuner du matin

Il a mis le café
Dans la tasse
Il a mis le lait
Dans la tasse de café
Il a mis le sucre
Dans le café au lait
Avec la petite cuiller
Il a tourné
Il a bu le café au lait
Et il a reposé la tasse
Sans me parler
Il a allumé
Une cigarette
Il a fait des ronds
Avec la fumée
Il a mis les cendres
Dans le cendrier
Sans me parler
Sans me regarder
Il s’est levé
Il a mis
Son chapeau sur sa tête
Il a mis
Son manteau de pluie
Parce qu’il pleuvait
Et il est parti
Sous la pluie
Sans une parole
Sans me regarder
Et moi j’ai pris
Ma tête dans ma main
Et j’ai pleuré.

(Jacques Prévert)

Mais bien qu’il y avait sans doute du café au lait, il n’y’avait aucun homme, aucun pluie, et moi, j’pleure jamais…