And another thing--: the world according to Clarkson by Jeremy Clarkson Read Free Book Online Page B

over a plate of something big in pastry. Now everyone gets their lunch from the Grab ’n’ Go shop.
    Do they have Grab ’n’ Go shops in Italy? I rather think not. Over there, they’re still downing a couple of bottles of wine at lunchtime, and then sleeping it off until six.
    If we do go out for lunch in Britain, it’s only an excuse to get some more work done. And so is dinner, and so, increasingly, is breakfast. In fact, we’re running out of meals over which we can do deals. Soon, people will be buying and selling products over a midnight feast.
    And who drinks at lunchtime any more? The other day, in a Notting Hill restaurant, where people were planning TV shows and new ad campaigns, I ordered a glass of wine, and a deathly hush descended.
    ‘I could never drink wine in the day,’ said my horrified guest. ‘I’d never get anything done in the afternoon.’
    And there you have it. Back in the early 1980s you worried about your performance at work because you knew that if you were kicked out, you’d be jobless until the end of time.
    But now people worry about their performance at work because, unlike the continentals, we no longer work to live.
    We live to work, and you can’t function properly with a glass of Chablis swilling around your arterial route map.
    Ten years ago you knocked off at 5.30, irrespective of what you happened to be doing at the time. Shops went in for half-day closing. You always took your holidays, and if you felt a bit peaky you went to bed for a month.
    Oh, how times have changed. Now, when the guys on
Top Gear
call a car firm in the sticks at 7 p.m. and get a message saying, ‘I’m sorry, the office is closed for the day,’ they slam the phone down and spend the rest of the evening muttering about what they call ‘provincial sloppiness’.
    People go to work, having been savaged by Bengal tigers. If you catch ebola, you must get the deal done before your liver liquefies. And half-day closing? Now, you can buy arugula at 3 a.m. seven days a week.
    Today, and this has nothing to do with Mr Brown or his warmongering boss, the entire British workforcesuffers not from absenteeism but presenteeism. When I began in local newspaper journalism, it was 1978 and the country was a complete shambles. Dead rats, big piles of rubbish and a limited choice of crisp; salt, vinegar, or neither. And I was happy to contribute to the general feeling of malaise by working a 3½-day week.
    No really, we were out of the door on a Thursday lunchtime when the paper went to bed, and we didn’t start again until Monday.
    If the news editor wanted me to cover a parish council meeting in the evening, I’d spend the whole day harrumphing and lobbying my union representative to get me time off in lieu. Now, I work seven days a week, every week.
    And how did Gordon Brown effect this change? Well, it’s hard to say really, since he was on paternity leave at the time.
    How can this make the country strong and prosperous, for crying out loud? A dad’s role in the birth of a child is to ensure the infant has the right number of fingers and toes, then get back to work. If we all took a week off to mop up baby sick and do night feeds, we’d be back to 1978 in a jiffy.
    It’s not just blokes, either. My wife, who is also my manager, found time during her third caesarean operation to discuss a new contract she’d been sent that morning. I’m not joking. She was lying there, with her stomach open to the elements and needles in her spine, wondering if 15 per cent of the back end was good enough, or if she should push for 20.
    That’s the sort of attitude that has made the countrystrong. We work now, all the time, even during childbirth. We go out at night with Borg-style mobile phone headset attachments in case the office wants to get in touch, and as a result we make more money, which we spend at a greater rate than at any time in history.
    And are we thanked? No. Brown comes back from his paternity leave, or his