But I Only Had Four

Possibly I am being paranoid. Possibly I am being over-sensitive. Possibly I have developed a heightened siege mentality that is even now interpreting everybody’s cheery salutations as ballistae and cannon set upon bringing about my imminent downfall.

But this is chocolate we’re talking about here and it don’t get more personal than that.

My addiction to the cocoa bean is legendary. Not just around the workplace but worldwide too. I have in my possession a personal letter of apology from the Kraft MD for their callous take-over of Cadbury’s and a promise that they will not (upon pain of death) fudge the recipe for Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.

Actually I faked that letter but that’s not the point.

A big bag of chocolates were brought into the workplace on Monday for all us office types to share. I did, I admit, feel a slight modicum of guilt as I threw one of these chocs down my throat for I had actually paid Cadbury World a visit the previous week with my wife and kids and I had brought nothing back for my work colleagues at all. Not a bean. Literally.

In my defence I had limited funds, don’t give a jot for my work colleagues and tend to put my loved one’s first in matters of chocolate.

So sod ‘em.

But plainly there is a work colleague here whose grip on their chocolate is weaker than mine. The bag of chocolate was deemed fair game.

By the lunchtime of the first day though it had disappeared. It had been locked away to be “preserved for those work colleagues who were not on duty today but would be in attendance tomorrow”.

The unspoken accusation being that people currently on duty would, if given continued carte blanche, wallop the entire supply of chocolate down their masticating gizzards without a second thought for those colleagues who couldn’t be arsed to come into work today and grab themselves a piece with their own fair hands.

Well, tough. I say, sod ‘em again.

However, being of known chocoholic persuasion it was hard not to take the withdrawal of chocolate privileges as a personal attack. Infamy, infamy, they’ve got in for me, etc.

Now, I know for a fact that in the particular bag of chocolates that had been brought into the office there must easily be approximately 40 pieces of chocolate. I know this for a fact because my wife and I made our way through an identical bag at home last week (over the course of several days I hasten to add) and kept a rough tally on how many were in there.

I only had 4 chocolates out of the bag in the office. 4, goddammit. 4 out of 40+.

There are 7 of us in the office which means, if we were being mathematically fair, we were each entitled to 5.71 pieces of chocolate. 5.71. That’s practically 6 each and I doubt if even Professor Brian Cox would quibble with my maths.

I only had 4.

I had less than someone else in the office. But I feel like I am the one being persecuted.

Why? Why do they persecute me?

I hope they all find themselves on the road to Damascus soon.

I am more sinned against that sinning.

Honest. Now I feel so low I could do with a Boost.

Love Plus One (Then Minus One)

I’m not quite sure when the affair started. Certainly the love crept up on me unawares. It was a shock. Unexpected. I hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary; hadn’t gone out of my way to be especially nice. There were no longing looks, no flirty comments. If anything I was as perfunctory as I’ve always been; as I still am.

But gradually I noticed the mysterious extra comments on my blog posts. Comments that no blog reader had left.

Sounds strange, doesn’t it? But it gets stranger still. Because there were no actual extra comments. Not unless they were invisible.

I checked and I rechecked. But the result was always the same. At the end of my blog posts, the link to the comments page always reported there being one extra comment than there actually was. I’d follow the link. I’d count up the comments. 40 for example. But on the bottom of the post it would say 41.

It had been going on for months.

A form of internet baksheesh. An electronic backhander.

And then it hit me. Blogger must be in love with me. It’s giving my blog a boost. Bumping up my comments totals.

I began to be a little more considerate of Blogger. I stopped swearing when the Dashboard froze on me or the spam filter stopped working. I entered my comments on other people’s blogs and pressed “Publish Your Comment” with a new reverence. Perhaps hoping to spread the love.

But it couldn’t last. I did something wrong. I don’t know what it was. Possibly reading blogs published on Wordpress? I can’t fathom it. But on Saturday morning, mysteriously, when I followed the comments link to my last post Blogger suddenly announced that a comment had been deleted – even though I hadn’t sanctioned it. I checked. I counted. All the comments were there that I had moderated and published.

And then it hit me.

Blogger had deleted its own magic comment. The invisible comment of love had been removed. Withdrawn. Withheld. Possibly given to a new blogger; Blogger’s new paramour. I don’t know who you are but I hope your blog fouls up and you lose all of your posts and have to type then all in again. Curse you! My comments now tally with the total that Blogger is reporting.

From Saturday’s post onwards everything is back to being as it should. Perfectly perfunctory. Correct. Cold. Austere. Functional.

My heart feels a little bit broken this morning. Somewhere, somehow, a love that I never even knew I was experiencing has died.

I may have to go and slip Wordpress a nice long, lengthy post or two just to make myself feel better. Just to prove to myself that I don’t need Blogger’s love, that I can get over this.

See, I don’t need you, Blogger! Do you hear me! It meant nothing! Nothing! It was I who played with you!

Oh what’s the use?

*sob* *sob*