Compensation With Menaces

I've had two now.

Two text messages on my phone advising me that I am entitled to a huge wodge of cash for the accident that I just had.

The first time I was at work and wondered if it just was a veiled threat from a work colleague. Yeah, that's right Blakey, you're gonna have an accident real soon, something nasty and anally invasive with a museum artefact - probably that South Sea Island carved spear you admire so much or the narwhal tusk. You're gonna get it. Right up to the hilt. And then - ultimate insult - we're gonna offer you a measly £325 in compensation.

Because that's all the first text offered me.

£325.

Honestly. It's not worth getting an in-growing toenail for £325.

So I deleted the text. I binned it. I ignored it.

But a second one came today whilst in the car, driving back home from town. £3250 this time.

They've added a nought.

The threat has plainly increased exponentially. We're not talking about mere impalement now. We're possibly talking the loss of a limb. Maybe two. They may even throw in the loss of a testicle just to drive their point home.

They're out to get me and I don't know who it is.

I've a list of suspects as long as the staff list at work (funny that).

I'm unsure of how to play it. I mean, do I hold out for 6 figures but accept that this may mean lifelong dialysis and a Stephen Hawking voice box? Wheelchair access in the cinema?

They may even blind me, for God's sake. The Archers. Radio 4. The shipping forecast. Shit. What do I do?

I shouldn't have deleted that first text.

Maybe I could strike a deal? Accept their first offer. I mean, £325 ain't bad, is it? It's a caravan holiday in Cleethorpes. The weather might be nice that week. The kids love ice cream by the seaside. And I could get used to never sitting down again. There'd be an iPhone app for that surely?

Oh God! What do I do?

Shit. My phone is beeping again. It's another text...!

Oh God!

One For Sorrow

It’s not a common occurrence for me to feel like Rolf Harris (even when I am humming-and-harring along with my wobble board) but this week I felt like I’d stepped into the old man’s Blundstone boots good and proper.

A member of the Great British public, always so ready to immerse themselves full-bodiedly into the foaming waters of sentimentality, came rushing into my workplace on Wednesday to report an injured magpie lying in the park outside. Could we ring the RSPCA because they didn’t have a phone on them?

We’re not hard-hearted psychopaths here where I work (*cough*) but even the most soft hearted philanthropist among us rolled his eyes (read that as: I rolled my eyes) because inevitably this would mean us chasing our tails with the RSPCA recorded messaged, fully automated, call centred screening device. Or, “sod off and take it to the vets” as it is known for short.

Now, I’m not having a go at the RSPCA here. They do a fab job and they’re one of the jewels in the British crown. But from past experience I know that they are always heavily subscribed and naturally have to prioritise their cases. An injured magpie was not going to take priority over Mrs Brady’s Pekingese that had somehow found itself the prize fighter in a badger baiting ring. To a lot of people – not me, I hasten to add – magpies are seen as vermin.

Personally I think they are wonderfully majestic members of the crow family and I have a soft spot for them.

Which is probably what motivated me to dismiss my initial objections and get involved with trying to rescue Albert (as I secretly christened him) in the first place.

Albert, when I went out to locate him was in a very bad way. Another magpie was pecking at his head (I’m pretty sure this was not a form of CPR) and was trying to flap his attacker way rather pathetically. In fact, I’m not even sure that Albert was aware of what he was doing – the movement could simply have been an automatic response at the motor neurone level. Poor Albert’s head was pecked clean of feathers, bloodied and I couldn’t really discern where his eyes were.

In true hospital TV drama parlance: I didn’t think he was going to make it.

Nevertheless, I put him gently in a box and a colleague persevered with the RSPCA’s telephone version of musical chairs. Eventually, when we got through, the verdict was what we’d expected. No free operatives in the area, please take Albert to the local vets.

We rang the vets. They agreed to take him, though said the RSPCA was naughty to pass the buck onto them.

Whatever. Neither I nor Albert cared. He was doing nothing more than breathing and I figured every second lost was less chance of Albert being able to find his Victoria again.

I took him straight round to the vets. The vet did actually apologize – apparently she’d given me the wrong information. Vets are meant to take wildlife; but they don’t get paid for it.

Whilst I felt sorry for the vets, I felt more sorry for Albert. I could feel his life ebbing away inside the box.

The vet had a quick look at Albert and her diagnosis was: “Oh he is poorly, isn’t he?” She then took custody, thanked me for bringing him in and said she’d “do the deed”.

From this I assumed that full CPR and an iron-lung were not on the cards for Albert. And after many dedicated years of service to his country too!

I left the vets feeling oddly flat. Kind of in limbo. I felt like I should have said goodbye. Or offered to give Albert a decent burial. A horse drawn carriage and rose petals on the roads.

Our association had been all too brief.

So.

Now I know how both Queen Victoria and Rolf Harris feel.

It’s an odd feeling. One can’t quite see what it is yet.

Heads-Up

A quick heads-up to the following bloggers:

Bringing Up Charlie
Skybluesea
D-Scribes
Where's My Effing Pony
Selina Kingston Is Forty*

I'm currently unable to leave any comments on your blogs as Blogger repeatedly logs me out every time I attempt to do so. Apparently other blogs and bloggers are having the same problem and the matter has been reported (about 2 days ago) to Blogger. Blogger is "actively working towards a resolution".

Ho hum.

I'm not ignoring you, honest!

*There may be other blogs affected.

Poisoned Pen Pal

I must congratulate you on your penmanship. Every curlicue and flourish is so expertly performed. The ink smooth and satin fine. I don’t know what pen you use but it must glide across the page without any friction at all. The lightest, most deftest touch.

Every word on the surface there to soothe and comfort and assist.

Your sentences constructed so artfully make you appear essential and crucial to all operations. Whatever would we do without you? You have shoehorned yourself beneath your writing desk and appear immovable. One of the fixtures and fittings.

But I have turned over the page. I have taken a look at your ink strokes from the back.

The side where it bleeds through black, black, black. The side where the paper is punched and ripped; where your hate-filled pressure has perforated the bleached wood pulp like claw marks in flesh.

Here one can see the almost cuneiform cut of your lettering. The short sharp slashes of invective that lurk beneath the niceties. The subtle jibes that lie behind the acts of support.

I know how you work. How you compose your dark poetry.

Your sunny hand builds scaffolding, lays foundations, holds itself open to be taken or to offer advice and help.

But your true hand, your wizened crone hand, is black with dirt and tar from where you’ve been digging; from where you’ve been tunnelling under the protective walls of those who you profess to befriend; from where you have been literally undermining them, pulling the ground out from beneath them.

No wonder your ink stinks of brimstone.

I think I would respect you more if you were more honest in your machinations; if you didn’t prettify or disguise your siege engines with lipstick or the blush of friendship. It would be better if you let your nastiness shine forth au naturel; if you signed your letters with your true hand. Your blackened hand.

Because we all recognize your penmanship now. The disguise, the pretence is pointless. The affectations, the blonde moments, the senior moments, the gauche moments... we know they are distraction techniques. Fake similes. Oxymorons.

The central metaphor of your life is rotten.

We can smell it a mile away.

And so now, we confer. We discuss. We compare notes. We compile lists.

We write letters of our own.

Letters which we will send to you.

We hope you recognize the ink.

It is black,

black,

black...

The Crapture

Yeah. You felt it, didn’t you?

You felt the beginning of the end.

The Great Endgame has begun. Our days are numbered. Numbered, in fact, as if some great Brainiac from the past had calculated how many days our planet took to fulfil a complete orbit around our sun and then broke this incredible number up into periods and weeks and days and then assigned these days a number so that we could keep track of where we were in the big countdown to what I have been instructed to call – The Crapture.

I ain’t telling you who instructed me. Let’s just say it involved me, a mountain and some stone tablets. Or was that tablets that made me stoned? I can’t remember.

It’s not important. What is important is that The Crapture has begun and it will affect everybody. Every dirt sucking sinner. Every the-sun-shines-outta-my-ass righteous dude.

E.V.E.R.Y.B.O.D.Y.

You got that?

‘Cos I don’t recall reading a clause that says bloggers are excused so you can wipe that self satisfied smug look off your face. You’re gonna get your shit and then some just like everybody else.

So. What are the signs of The Crapture? I know you’re all wondering.

Well, they ain’t so hard to read.

I’m talking oil famine. I’m talking global economic meltdown on... er... a global scale. Hell. Maybe even galactic. I wouldn’t be buying shares in the moon right now even if I had the money.

I’m talking times when the rich and famous are given the tools to cover up their dirty deeds by buying bits of paper from lawyers that prevent the likes of you and me even talking about the bits of paper they’ve bought from their lawyers.

I’m talking about times when the people we richly employ to safeguard and maintain the infrastructure of our societies offload the maintenance back onto us under the guise of The Big Society.

Or as it is called in Be’elzebub’s Old Soul Farmer’s Almanac, The Big Shit Sandwich. ‘Cos we’ll all be taking a big bite out of that one, I can tell you.

And there ain’t nowhere to run people. There ain’t nowhere to hide.

All you can do is hope that you’re one of the righteous and not one of those scum-sucking sinners who are going to be spending an eternity roasting in the devil’s own AGA.

And how will you know which you are?

Well, people, that’s easy to divine.

The sinners, the scum, the rotting festering pusillanimous sonsofbitches who are gonna burn in hell will, during the time of The Crapture, have power over you. They will have power to lord it over you. To direct your days. To work you hard. To make you dance for the bread of life. To whup your ass when you fail your annual appraisal or mess up a pitch. To beat you with the rod of humiliation when you try and waste as much time at work as you can by going to the toilet every half hour and then pretending to be constipated when you get there. These people will hold up a wage packet above you – just out of your reach – and make you beg for it.

‘Cos it’s a foregone conclusion that the righteous are gonna find The Crapture hard to get through. But you gotta consider it a little test. A way to temper your resolve.

You gotta see it through, brothers and sisters. You gotta bear with it. ‘Cos the good times there are a-coming.

Early retirement. A decent pension. Medical breakthroughs which will not only see you live longer but will actually see you living life to the full longer.

OK.

I’m talking crap. I’m just trying to make you feel better.

There ain’t none of that shit.

All you got is the shit sandwich.

Tuck in, people, and shut your whining.

It’s called The Crapture for a reason.

Deal with it.

Super Junk

There’s a lot of talk in the papers and on the TV at the moment about super injunctions. I have to say that I haven’t read any of it nor listened to any of it – apart from a few gags about it on Have I Got News For You. Gags being the operative word, of course.

There’s a reason for my lack of interest which will become clear later.

Now, it strikes me that the whole situation is like finding a knot that someone has tied in a length of poo and then spending an unfathomable amount of time trying to unravel it.

Why bother? Why does anyone want to get their hands dirty with it?

Because, on the whole, there is very little moral high ground to be seen no matter which angle you approach the subject from.

I’ve heard lots of guff about freedom of the press and freedom of the individual to a private life. Which do you discern as being of greater value? We are all of us – celebs and Royals included – entitled to privacy. It is a basic human need. A basic human right.

But if some celebrity moral arbiter is then caught doing as he does rather than as he says, don’t we have a right to know about it?

We do. But that rather implies a moral imperative behind the exposé – and, let’s be honest, the only imperative behind most news stories these days (especially those that feature celebrities) is to sell more copy and make more money. There is nothing moral or edifying about that.

So then we have injunctions and super injunctions. Small, insidious cogs inserted into the gross machinery of the law to enable individuals to protect their interests / privacy from the rapacious, undiscerning appetites of the press.

I think I’d be more inclined to see these as a tool for individual human rights if they were freely available to everyone. They don’t appear to be. They seem only to be available to the super rich or the super influential. The superfluous man on the street can go and take a running jump.

At least, that’s how it appears. I don’t know. I haven’t read much into it or researched it.

Because, at the end of the day, I don’t think much to the press and I don’t think much of the politicians and the celebs they orbit. All of them have too much money – money that they all screw out of us one way or another – and too much say on things that matter to us more than it does to them.

I’d quite happily hang the lot of them.

Hence, I am exercising a super injunction of my own and am avoiding all news stories and articles about super injunctions. I don’t want to think, critique or in any way talk about them. They are off limits. Verboten. And if you feel the same way I will understand why you have bailed out of this post before this point.

Because even just talking about them is a waste of time, energy and money.

Super injunctions are the thief of time; the media wait for a court order from no man...

Tossing My Bionic Caber

I’m a cheapskate.

No, really. I am.

I drink water at work so I don’t have to contribute to the tea kitty. Not only that, I buy a 1ltr bottle of water from the local newsagent, drink it, and then hijack the water cooler in the staffroom (paid for by one of the other operators who share my work’s building) and refill it from there every day after.

I tell you this as a precursor to the main subject of my post.

Because yesterday, it occurred to me that it was time for me to buy a new bottle of water. Not so much for the water but for the bottle. Because mine was starting to look green around the rim. Not only that, despite emptying it out and refilling it, I noticed that there was precipitate in it.

Small furry occurrences of matter that hung in suspension around the mid-point of the bottle.

So I decided that my immune system had been exercised enough and trotted off to acquire a new bottle of aqua vitae (narrowly avoiding Cap’n Jack Sparrow in the queue at the newsagents).

I settled on a bottle of Highland Spring.

I took it back to the office whereupon I was so bored by my surroundings that I distracted myself by reading the label on the bottle.

“Drawn from Organic Land”.

That is what it said under the product’s name. It’s obviously a major selling point, this organic land.

But what exactly is it?

See, I figured that all land is organic by default. Or is this a subtle way of telling me that Highland Spring Ltd haven’t just collected up the run-off from a landfill site to the northwest of Birmingham and bottled up the resulting sump?

What is non-organic land? Concrete? Plastic? Bacofoil? The main arena at the NEC? Are there whole fields comprised of polyester and Kevlar that I have missed on my many travels around this (not so green and pleasant) land?

Do these places feature natural springs whose water might be confused with that drawn from real, mud and soil, land? You know; old school terra firma, made the old fashioned way by nature and the slow laws of geology?

Because, given a choice, I’d quite like to try some “bionic water” (my phrase and, yes, I am going to copyright it) drawn from non-organic land. It’s the type of thing that could well turn somebody into Spiderman or Swamp Thing provided it contained the right amount of genetically modified contaminates and unintentional ingredient X’s.

And that would be pretty cool, you must admit.

I could wreak havoc on the masses, not to mention the misses in my office. I’d have an excuse never to come into work again. I could become a crime fighter or even a master criminal. I could be on the telly every night.

Aqua vitae indeed.

It would also be a far more permanent and exciting way of alleviating my terminal boredom than by reading the label on a sodding water bottle.

Pharaoh Toot’n’Pootin’

Apologies in advance for the scatological nature of this post but sometimes you just have to deal with the crap as it hits you.

OK. I’ll just come out and say it. I seem to be retaining more wind as I get older. Or generating more wind. One of the two. Maybe even both.

Now I don’t want to give the impression that I am someone who drops their guts at the, er, drop of a hat. Because I am not. I am, in fact, legendary in my house for not farting. My butt is, by and large, a smokeless zone.

Tight as a steel drum. The Royal seal unbroken.

This is great. Because when someone drops a 10lb silent but deadly in my house no one dreams of accusing me of doing it because, well, hell would freeze over first.

There is a downside though.

See, I still produce gas. The methane seams are still there and rich in ore. The pressure has to be released at some point.

My wife, Karen, says I just save it all up for “proper” toilet visits.

And this is true.

Prior to the main performance the orchestra will tune itself up nicely and noisily – wind instruments first – and a great trumpeting clarion call will signify the commencement of the William Tell Overture.

I swear to God I could probably play a trumpet with my butt and hold a single note for a good 10 minutes.

And the older I get the longer the duration of the air exchange seems to get.

This is fine when I am at home. When the kids and the wife are busy downstairs and are deafened by the sounds of life. It is not so fine when I am in the toilets at work. Because at work I prefer to run on silent. It’s like an unspoken rule. Processes of the bum shall be neither seen nor heard. It is a brave man indeed who lets his ack-ack gun blaze away in earshot of his work colleagues and cares not a jot who hears.

I am not that man. Which makes my ability to store up vast quantities of methane gas a distinct disadvantage.

What I need, people, is for someone to invent a bum silencer or a butt muffler. Like the kind of thing assassins attach to their long range rifles so they may do their nefarious deeds without alerting anyone to their presence.

It needs to attach with an air-tight seal but be non-invasive.

It needs to be easy to clean and portable. The kind of thing one could keep in a man-bag (or even a handbag) without arousing smirking curiosity.

It needs to be affordable.

So. All you inventors out there. Consider yourself duly commissioned. Think outside the box. Have some fun.

Even better: have a blast.

So that, unbeknownst to my work colleagues, I can have one too.

Small Unremembered Acts Of Unkindness

I’m sure it’s not deliberate but this has happened with galling regularity during my time “here” as corporate slave. And it makes me hit boiling point every time because, in all honesty, I’m never quite sure how to handle it.

An engineer turns up in a company car. Or his own car. Whatever. The car is not important. But he needs to get parked and doesn’t want to use the Pay & Display spaces in town. This is fine. I lower the bollards and allow him to drive into the fiercely guarded enclave of the building’s footprint. I direct him to the staff parking bays down the back of the building. Off he drives with a cheery wave.

Pleasure, mate. I’m here to be helpful.

And then I wait by the entrance doors so I can chaperone the poor bewildered engineer to wherever he needs to be in the building. Usually a urinal which is behaving like the gateway to Hell.

And I wait.

And I wait.

And he stays in his bloody car. He doesn’t move. He just sits there in the warm, sealed cockpit of his worksmobile.

And I stand there by the front doors feeling like a jilted groom.

What do I do? ‘Cos I’m getting narked. I’m getting annoyed. I’m stood there like the proverbial last sausage and he’s rubbing himself off against his walnut dash.

Logic and the laws of dynamic motivation (is there even such a thing) dictate that I go up to the car and knock officiously on the windscreen and ask very loudly if he’s going to be joining me anytime soon because the vicar is getting impatient and the reception is booked.

But I worry that this might precipitate a faux pas of monumental proportions.

You see, he could be delayed for a very legitimate reason...

He’s taking an emergency phone call from his wife: “Darling, little Terry has found your stash of crystal meth and he’s bouncing off the walls with grandpappy’s pump-action assault rifle – the nanny is pulling her hair out and the nursery looks like a bomb site! What shall I do? What shall I do?”

Or – and this is the scenario that I fear the most – I storm up to the car, violently yank open the driver’s door and have a paraplegic engineer fall out onto the pavement like a newborn lamb from its mother’s womb.

Oh God. I am so sorry. Do you need a hand? Oh shit. I didn’t mean that the way it came out, honestly.

You get the idea.

So I wait.

And I wait.

And eventually the engineer shuffles out of his vehicle – not panicked in any way, with a full complement of limbs, wiping the foam of a take-out cappuccino from his top lip.

Utter. Git.

On The Prowl

You’ve had the same meat, week in, week out for the last God knows how many years. The same meat cooked the same way, with the same sauce. Vanilla vanilla vanilla.

You get to the point where you fancy a change. Something a bit different. Something a bit spicy, perhaps. A bit exotic. Something that resurrects your old enthusiasm for the dish. Reminds you of when you were young and it was all fresh, new and exciting. Before the ennui set in. Before you became over-familiar. Bored. Before you had to fake it.

How was it for you, dear?

Yeah. Yeah. Great. Are we done? Good, ‘cos I really need to sleep now.

And you hit the z’s knowing full well you’ll have to go through the same charade again tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that.

Unless you do something. Unless you find, I don’t know, ingredient X. A new flame.

Well, I’m on the hunt for ingredient X. I’m on the prowl. And all offers will be welcomed, considered and one might even be accepted.

I’m not quite sure what ingredient X is but I know it has some of these components:

a) A better wage. No point making a change unless I get more money.
b) More kudos. That would be nice. No more poop-scooping or shoving buckets under leaky urinals.
c) Less crap responsibilities and more good responsibilities. Hell, we all want that but that doesn’t devalue the demand.
d) The ability to leave work at the office at the end of the day and not get rung at home, without fail, every holiday and 2 out of 3 weekends.
e) A better class of workmate. Could write oodles here but can’t, if you see what I mean.
f) I’m prepared to bargain-plea with most of the above but a) and e) are non-negotiable.

Trouble is, for all my hunting skills, my flint headed spears are finding scant prey to be launched at. New job opportunities are a bit thin on the ground.

I know that, in theory, this means I should turn back to the bony carcass of my existing job, make peace with it, cuddle up to it like we’re a couple of old spoons and be reconciled.

But. I. Just. Can’t. Do. It.

I’m sick of the same old bitter meat. The same old bitter meat topped with poisonous gravy.

I fancy an Indian. Or an Italian. Or a Chinese. Hell, even a vegetarian moussaka would do the trick. Anything.

Anything but this.

I’m shrivelling up. And I’m going to lose it if I don’t use it.

So I’m on the prowl.

On the prowl for something new. Something exciting.

I just need a decent shot at it.

Just one.

Gimme Some Of Your Attention

As I get older I am getting more intolerant.

Shit-intolerant. Stress intolerant. Niggle intolerant.

I confess as I wend my way through the narrow, dark, dank passages of life it is the little things that annoy me more. Which isn’t to say the big things don’t bug me. They do. But they’re so big I can philosophize about those. Make them part of a theme of moaning that actually gives my life journey a bit of impetus.

But the little things trip me up. Make me gnash my teeth. Make me spit feathers.

A ridiculously pimped up car is one of those things. And I realize that by definition a pimped up car will always be ridiculous. You know the type I mean. Hub caps with chrome spokes that look like something off Ben-Hur’s racing chariot. Fins on the back that look like they’ve been designed by a Great White shark but applied by Harry Hill’s tailor. Windows so black you suspect the occupants have coughed up all the tar from their lungs at a single sitting.

Now I know what you’re thinking.

These idiots have a right to spend their hard earned money how they like. I mean, it’s not easy selling drugs to kids these days or keeping your bling up with the Jones’s. Why should it bother me?

It bothers me because the drivers of these prattmobiles cannot drive past another car or pedestrian without slowing down or gunning the engine so loudly it sounds like a consumptive bull elephant.

They want people to turn around. They want people to crane their necks and eyeball the daft-punk homage to moulded plastic that they have created with their ill-gotten gains and they’re GCSE in woodwork.

They want to be noticed.

And I refuse to notice them. Refuse to.

Well. Strictly that’s not true. I refuse to acknowledge them.

Call me petty. Call me silly. But when one of these souped-up cock-wagons rolls past I deliberately turn my back on it and look the other way. I have also been known, on occasion, to randomly select a blade of grass from the verge before me and admire it intensely and theatrically as the baseball capped driver behind me desperately ups his rev count in an attempt to snare my attention.

It’s not happening, mate. I’m in love with photosynthesis. On your bike. Oh, and by the way, your exhaust needs sorting out.

And thus they drive away, their curses and imprecations drowned out by the high decibel dirge that invariably emanates from their in-car speakers. Some R&B bollocks sung by a woman who can’t sing a simple “oh” but has to sing “oooo-eer-urgh-ewww-oo-o-o-oh” instead.

They might look happy as they nod their heads in time with the music and take a toke on that scaff-pole sized spliff.

But really they’re crying inside.

Crying, sobbing and bleating: “Why is he ignoring me? Why is he ignoring me?”

And that makes me pimptastically happy.

With bloody great fins on.

Survival Tactics

Welcome fellow hunters to the wancid world of big game hunting in the office enviwonment... Now this is a dangerwous activity, not for the faint hearted or for those of you with a nervous admin portfolio. So be warned. Things could get vewy twicky.

So. Popguns at the weady, pith helmets firmly ensconced... let’s pwoceed on our way deeper into the office undergwowth...

First off, let’s see what we can spy at the watering hole. Shh, now. They’re easily spooked and you don’t weally want to be caught in the middle of a buffalo stampede. As Simba fwom Lion King well tell you, a violently thwust bulldog clip to the face can quickly end anybody’s woyal ambitions.

Ah, here we have the lesser spotted Stationewy Cupboard Gazelle... a nervous and flighty beast that is easily startled and that can often be seen gwazing on Bic Pens and those Tippex mice things that make your cowections look like they’ve been snogged by Michael Jackson. This beast is welatively harmless and is perfectly happy pwovided it has a steady supply of paperclips and camewa battewies. At the first sign of twouble it will merely wun and wun and wun. It’ll just wun away, take my word for it. It’s a big softie and hardly worth the twouble of hanging it’s doe-eyed head over your mantelpiece so we’ll move on.

OK. Now we’re in dangewous tewwitowy. The office mangwove swamp. This is cwocodile countwy, folks, so watch where you step. In fact, there’s one there, wight now. Lurking by the photocopier machine. Its big career mashing teeth weady to wend any wary twesspasser limb from limb. The photocopier is a much sought after wesource in the jungle and the beast that contwols the copier contwols the entire food chain. You set off a pwint-wun without the say-so of the cwocodile and you’ll find yourself on the wrong side of those big flesh wipping teeth before you can say “photocopy subsidy”. It’ll be no good you complaining that evewybody takes fwee photocopies evewy now and then, that some beasties pwint off entire web sites of shoes and handbags... you cwoss the cwocodile and you’re gonna get cwapped on from a gweat height. Twust me on this, fellow hunters, it just ain’t worth the wisk.

Let’s climb up now into the twopical wain fowest. The lair of the Stabu-inthebak Snake. This particularly venomous serpent is never ever seen until the last few seconds before it stwikes and even then you may be so blinded by the clouds of venomous mist that it exhales awound itself that all you'll see is the pitiful flutter of your own blood dwenched P45 as it splatters down to the undergwowth. Game over. Cuwiously the Stabu-inthebak Snake doesn’t actually eat the prey it kills but pwefers to munch on Müller fwuits of the fowest. It kills purely for the fun of it which makes it a far more dangewous animal than those cweatures that do actually kill for food.

Lastly, we have the kings of the jungle. Those at the very top of the food chain. Now, I know you’re all expecting it to be a lion. A mighty lion like the one Elton John sang about that had the voice of Darth Vader. But you’re wong. Completely and utterly wong. The jungle is wuled and contwolled by a team of monkeys that spend the entire day chattering and arguing and picking fleas out of their own backsides in air conditioned offices poised on the tallest peaks of the fowest and never actually weach an accord about anything. Hence all the tumultuous chaos and wecidivistic naughtiness that occurs among the lower orders of the jungle. It’s totally wild in here, folks. Wild and fewociously dangewous!

The only option is to get the hell out of the office environment and take a job in much less vicious suwoundings. Guantanamo Bay perhaps or even as a bodyguard to Osama Bin Laden.

Trust me: your chances of survival will impwove gweatly.

This concludes your tour with Corpowate Jungle Tours. Please tip the dwiver as you disembark from the shit covered vehicle.

Pre-Ops Briefing

OK, soldier.

You better listen up and listen up good. You've had it easy so far. Trips to the beach. Trips to Birdland in Bourton-on-the-Water. Trips to Legoland. You've lived the high life and battered that ol' credit card pretty good.

But now it's payback time.

Here's where you start paying in sweat - and I ain't talking 'bout no dirty dancing with Irene Cara.

Tomorrow, you're going in. Behind enemy lines. Deep into enemy territory. You knew this day was coming. Hell, we knew this day was coming; that's why we cut you some slack. But the leash is back on now and yanked tighter than a nun's gusset.

Now, don't panic none, soldier. We're gonna get you kitted out with the finest hardware the military can buy.

I'm talkin' an assault action poker-face that you can don at any time. Any of those admin lovin' mofo's try to slide some red tape up your ass... well, you just don this and stare the suckers down. I guarantee they'll buckle and shit staples.

I'm talkin' ACME "couldn't give a shit" body armour. We got you the full body suit straight off the production line, son. You got balls to brain protection. Shoot, those tie-pin wearing nerd-busters can spend all day firing 'high responsibility' rounds at you and you ain't gonna feel nothin' but a pin-prick. You give them the finger and send them home to mama.

But most of all, I'm talkin' secret weapon. I'm talkin' something so ball-breakingly big and meaningful those mealy-mouthed sons and sonesses of bitches are gonna lactate pure devil-deep frustration. I'm talkin' life and drive and ambition for something way beyond that hell box they call the office.

And we're giving you that in spades.

So you dig deep, boy. You dig deep and tomorrow... you go back to work.