(This is the latest instalment in my protracted quest to give The Blog Digest away for slightly less than you can now buy it for from an Amazon affiliate. Or at least to give the jokes I sweated over for the chapter intros another run out)

Blood, Sweat and Beers – Work and Play

Life, as a great man* once said, is the name of the game, and I want to play the game with you. Did you know that in an average lifetime we spend around 25 years asleep and six months on the loo? We also spend about 20 years at work and 10 years eating. That only leaves around 15 years for the pleasures of drinking to excess, smoking, le cinéma de Bruce Willis and vigilante campaigns against paedophiles.

Let’s face it, work is a hateful activity. Anybody who says they enjoy their job is a teetotal sociopath with a threadbare social life. This chapter consists of a vicious critique of the bitter ennui that is working for a living. It’s tempered by a vibrant celebration of those priceless jewels of hope, joy and wonder snatched from the claws of the beast known as work-commute-sleep-work, along with other meditations on the human condition.

* Bruce Forsyth

…

November 2005 – Tokyo Times: Toilet Techno
Tokyo Times’ Lee Chapman explains how the Japanese, with their famous attention to detail, do business.

January 2006 – World Weary Detective: Stop and search does not work
The World Weary Detective, a Metropolitian Police detective in London, gives ‘a view of life from the thin layer between you and the underclass’. Here’s an account of the short-term thinking of senior officers that prevents street robbery from being tackled properly.

March 2006 – NHS Blog Doctor: The Crippen Diaries (Week 11)
If you want to know what goes on inside the National Health Service, Dr Crippen’s diaries are unmissable. And, like the World Weary Detective, he gives an insight on what it’s like on the front line, and continually buffeted by the short-term whims of politicians, managers and bureaucracy. Infuriating, heartbreaking and darkly humorous in equal measure, the diaries make for essential reading. Here’s the Good Doctor having One Of Those Weeks.

March 2006 – NHS Blog Doctor: Schizophrenia
Here is another piece from the Good Doctor; long but vital reading. The best blogging has the power to change the way you think and see the world, and here’s a fine example.

April 2006 – John Band: Healthy eating!= bruschetta-eating
Forget Jamie Oliver. John Band’s a lot less infuriating. Here he is with some advice for eating on a budget. And he’s offering to come round and cook your tea.

April 2006 – Jim Bliss: Comment Spam
The internet has created career opportunities like never before, some of which are highly bizarre. Here, Jim Bliss tells a cautionary tale of an encounter with someone whose previous job was probably hiding under a stone.

March 2006 – World Weary Detective: This is the End
There’s many a tale about bloggers getting caught out and losing their jobs or being threatened with the sack for blogging. John Band of ‘Shot By Both Sides’ fame gave up his popular blog last year after some oily little coward took exception to one of John’s posts and anonymously complained to his boss, putting John’s livelihood in jeopardy (he’s recently returned, with Banditry at www.johnband.org/blog). Petite Anglaise (www.petiteanglaise.com) was less fortunate in actually being fired in July after her bosses took exception to her ‘Bridget Jones in Paris’ missives.

Back in March, the World Weary Detective, after an edict from on high, decided discretion was the better part of valour.

May 2006 – William Shaw: The Lion
Un-made-up was started in May this year and collects short non-fiction stories from different writers. While the stories ‘don’t have to have a punchline, they don’t have to be dramatic, they don’t have to be funny, they don’t have to make a point, they don’t even have to be autobiographical…they must, of course, be true’. It’s well worth a day or two of your time, whether reading or (even) writing.

Here’s William’s encounter with the King of the Jungle.

June 2006 – Pandemian: Parthian shot
Pandemian (the blogger formerly known as ‘Green Fairy’) chronicles the soul-destroying drudge of working life with an admirable, yet weary, wit and stoicism. The following piece was actually handwritten on a piece of notepaper and scanned onto her blog [..]. The real thing will be on display in the British Museum one day, you mark my words.

June 2006 – Pandemian: Haiku d’état
Thankfully, shortly after the previous piece was posted, Pandemian was able to escape on holiday. As you might expect, a postcard and a ‘Wish you were here’ weren’t good enough for her.

June 2006 – Do You Come Here Often?: 99 Top Stains
An enviable skill of some bloggers is the ability to elevate the mundane and everyday to something rich and strange. Here Rhodri Marsden wonders if Surf’s list of 99 Top Stains covers all the basics.

July 2006 – The Eyechild: Jaspers
It was a hot, hot summer this year. Britain felt as if God, like a small sadistic boy, had got his magnifying class and was making us tiny creatures scurry and yelp in the terrifying heat. The Eyechild spotted that a traditional element of classic summers was missing.

August 2006 – poons: Anniversaries
They say there are eight million stories in the naked city. Tales of hope and redemption are my favourite. Here’s poons with his.