Twitter, And The Poetry Of Arsepuke

Before I get into the Bum Vomit Poetry that inspired this post, heres why Twitter is awesome. I dont know if anyones blogged about Twitter yet, or their feelings about it, so if this is too groundbreaking / pioneering, please take a few minutes to prepare yourself.

To best illustrate my changing relationship with Twitter, here is a conversation between 2009 me and 2008 me.

2008 Log: Twitter, I dont get it
2009 Log: Thats because youre a fucking dick

strongTwo weeks later/strong

2008 Log: No hang on, Ive thought of a reason now, its a symptom of the pervasive whittling of thinks, the stupidification of humanity, the unstable egotism of anyone who cant keep a fucking thought to themselves
2009 Log: Oh yeah, I noticed they werent making books any more, and every other communication channel has been legally limited to 140 characters, you fucking dick. And whos the cunt who thought it was worth telling the world that a he shit on his own dad?
2008 Log: That wasnt me, it was him
2007 Log: Dont bring me into this, Ive never even heard of Twitter

With Twitter, I have watched my friends casually interact with celebrities, with my mouth right-angle agape. Like a dog whos watching some cats being naughty and wants to join in – but is too nervous about the possibility of human disapproval – I looked from the cats (my friends) to the humans (celebrities), and waited for the rolled-up newspapers to come out.

Then, when I saw the humans reach out and stroke (reply to) the playful kittens, I lost control and thundered in, sending ropes of drool flying up the walls. “IS ARDAL O HANLON NICE, I BET HES A CUNT REALLY” I shrieked at Graham Linehan, in response to his link to a harrowing article about the Iranian Election. “WAS THAT MAN REALLY A PEEDO” I bellowed at Armando Iannuci, as he disclosed news of an arthritic toe.

So now, Im fully in with the hip bunch, and its all thanks to Twitter. And now, to my point.

Following back anyone who seems like theyre a human, its also introduced me to the poetry of a man called Mike. On Twitter, he’s mikeisbrill, and when he used the phrase Carry On Wearing My Anus Like A Balaclava, I had to take ten minutes out of the day to imagine how the eyeholes in an anal balaclava would work.

Gouging out holes in the tract of a man wouldnt, obviously, help you see. Instead, it would allow the mans guts to press more directly against your eyes. If, gods spare us all, your eyes were open, the constricting pressure would prevent you closing them – your pupils swivelling helplessly against the liver of your host.

And then, theres the mouth-slot. A full anal balaclava, Im fairly sure, would drive even a robust man to vomit. But that brought up its own set of logistical problems. Crafting a human anus into a gut balaclava, as desirable as that immediately sounds, is beginning to look like more trouble that its worth.

Sensing that there was unexplored beauty in this situation, I immediately demanded a poem – and thats exactly what I got. So, basically this is the longest link to a poem youll ever read.

THIS LINK WILL TAKE YOU TO A POEM YOU WILL LIKE

Back-Dated Michael Jackson Blog Shows Staggering Empathy, Foresight

I’m a staggeringly sensitive person. I’m perfectly attuned to humanity, and the energy that human emotions transmit along the fibres of the universe. When someone is sad, their sadness consumes me – unless someone is standing between us laughing, in which case I’m struck by a serene sense of balance, and can resume shopping.

But when a force as powerful as Michael Jackson is suffering, it’s like a spear landing in my chakra, and my response is an unearthly spiritual howl, a reality-shearing scream that cuts directly into the higher dimensions. You might have missed it: it’s easy, when your mind is full of the nothing mush of the physical world, to not notice someone screaming in the sixth dimension.

This is why I stood outside, screaming. People need to know what is coming. I am the only one that knows Michael Jackson is going to die.

This is my vision: a shadow spreading over the Kingdom of Pop. A child’s face in the sun, her tears extinguishing the flames. A suddenly-visible moon, presiding over the baronies and feifdoms of pop’s subgenres, basked the peasants tending the paedofields in a ghastly unlight.

The world is coming apart, Pop is ending, and there’s nothing we can do. It’s already happened in my head, and you cannot change what has already happened (in my head).

I give him two days. And that Farah Fawcett looks like she’s got a dicky tit, too

Look At What I Overheard

I’m always hearing amazing conversations. Other people say they don’t overhear any great conversations at all, so the only logical explanation is that my threatening presence makes everyone put in a bit of extra effort. It’s certainly true that spikes of conversational excellence occur at that precise time I shake my fist, drop my trousers, and make huge snarling whoops. Take this conversation, that I overheard on the bus, this very morning.

Son: I hope this bus does a loop the loop
Mother: If it does, I’ll park a tit on your leg

Bouyed by this warm cross-generational interchange, I disembarked and entered my regular morning newsagent. It is here, that I always cast my eye over the Pork Farms pasties. I imagine them in my mouth, and try to work out whether that would be a thing I’d be happy paying £1.79 for.

This is my benchmark of acceptability: every day that I decide not to buy and eat a Pork Farms pasty at 8:30am, is another day I have passed the human test. Imagine my surprise when I overheard this!

Customer: My hand’s stuck in this bag of Monster Munch.
Shopkeeper: Have you tried taking it out?
Customer: Tried for a while, but now I quite like it. It’s like a crunchy mitten.
Shopkeeper: A mitten… of monsters!
Customer: Yes!

Cheered immeasurably by this stolen banter, I wandered out of the shop, where I overheard a homeless gentleman trading bon mots with his carrier bag.

Man: Did I tell you about my time at the Danish Embassy?
The carrier bag billows out an unearthly gasp, and paisley swirls envelop the man.
Man: It was the grooviest year of my life.
The bag catches a gust of wind, and rockets into the stratosphere, where it is struck by lightning
Man: And I haven’t stopped dancing yet!
The man snakes himself around a lamp-post, where he remains perfectly still, but for the wild muddling of a lazy, prehensile erection.

Even at work, the people around me have incredible conversations, which I overhear with overstated reaction shots. Cupping my hand to my ear, blinking six times and saying “whu-uuu?”, or simply hooting like a maniac: everyone knows when I’ve overheard something, because I’m standing up, and repeating it word for word. This is a conversation that I’m overhearing right now. I’m piping directly from my ears to my fingers. It’s coursing through me like cake batter, and you are my ovens.

Gelatinous Cube: Man, HR are being such dicks about this tribunal hearing.
Halfling: Dude, I heard about that. You shat out a skeleton soldier in the atrium lift?
Gelatinous Cube: Fuck, when you put it like that, of course it sounds bad. He came out as he went in. Undead.
Halfling: He says you shat the helmet into his face. He says you did it with such deft comic timing that it could only have been deliberate.
Gelatinous Cube: Haha! I totally did that. I thought “he’s just done a double take and collected his thoughts, long enough has passed for everyone to think it’s over, now’s the time for a strong visual punchline”. The Beholder cracked up, it was awesome.
Halfling: Don’t come out with this shit at the tribunal, man.
Gelatinous Cube: You worry too much.
Halfling: You know what, I’ve always wondered why skeleton soldiers carry gold around. Why do the undead need money?
Gelatinous Cube: You still working on that open mic set?
Halfling: Fuck you.

That’s all I’ve overheard today. If I hear anyone saying anything else, I promise you, you’ll be the joint second to know.

What Burglars Don’t Steal

It’s been long enough since the burglary – and the tear-jerkingly generous response of friends and colleagues - for this post to not to seem like a begging message. So, here’s what I wrote the day after burglars nicked everything I own, and one of Stuart’s Dr Who DVDs that was in my XBox. I haven’t heard the last of that, I can tell you! ”Why don’t you put things back in their boxes; that was part of a box set; I’m not really saying any of this, you just love the idea of being henpecked”.

When you’re burgled, by people who you’ve come to suspect are French, there are six things that pass through your mind. I’ve distilled these six thoughts as the universal human stages of dealing with home invasion, possession theft, and a lack of sexual assault that’s bordering on remiss.

Thought 1. Oh hey, I’ve been burgled pretty hard
Thought 2. I’ve got so much more space to do handstands now
Thought 3. This has the familiar whiff of France about it
Thought 4. Look at all the awesome stuff they left behind
Thought 5. I wonder if they came into the bedroom and watched me sleeping before deciding against the sexual assault
Thought 6. This could be the opportunity I’ve been waiting for to use that Windsor font from The Good Life titles

Today, I’ll be focussing on point four. Here’s what they left behind. I was going to Twitter it, then I thought “hey Log, why don’t you write a fucking paragraph”

A glass of pink wine. It was like we’d laid the room out for Santa Claus. Whenever I’m stressed, my mouth becomes dry and uncomfortable. I’d hate for anyone burgling me to become irritable and lose focus because they’re involuntarily smacking their lips and wincing, so I left a glass of murky pink wine out. Clearly – not fucking good enough for them.

If I’d known we had dignitaries visiting, I’d have put out a tube of Prawn Primula and some Tia Maria. Next time, give us a bit of fucking notice, OK? I’ll leave a Tuc biscuit wedged into a little pink cushion shaped like Prince Philip’s bumcrack. I can be classy when I need to be.

A Carnival Of Monsters Dr Who Adventure. This means one of two things. Either they thought that it actually was a carnival of miniaturised monsters, that would expand to full size when the box was opened – or they’ve already watched it, and know what incoherent shit it is. Take that, Terance Dicks! In your well-respected face!

A pouffe. I can understand this one, actually. It’s perfectly rational to imagine that this is a sophisticated Al Murray-summoning burglar alarm. The first burglar to say “do we want that pouffe?” would trigger a seventeen minute sketch with Al Murray’s gay Nazi. And I think, it’d sound, something, like, this!

Al Murray: “DID SOMEVON SAY POOUUUUUFFFE”
Henri-Luc: “He honh he honh”
Jacques: “I could use a pouffe in my downstairs room”
Al Murray: “MEE TOO IF BY DOWNSTAIRS ROOM YOU MEAN ANUS”
Jacques: “Well, I probably did. The phrase ‘downstairs room’ isn’t really a common one, I was using it mainly to set you up for that exact response. I was being a dutiful straight man ”
Al Murray: “I’M A RIGHT COMMON ONE, I’LL DO ANYTHING FOR A CHOCO LIEBNIZ”
James Corden: “I just think it’s brave of me to make so many jokes about my weight, when it must be genuinely horrible looking like I do”
Al Murray: HANG ON I HAVEN’T DONE ANYTHING ABOUT STRAIGHT MAN YET
Henri-Paul: “Il y a onze oignons dans le poubelle, je veux les baiser”

[Al Murray re-enacts every conversation of the entire second World War in a hysterical gay voice, while Corden removes his top and starts pushing socks into his belly button]

Hot Naga Chilli. I’d like to think that the burglars were spice cowards, and my taste in nature’s thumpier condiments took them aback. However, I suspect the reality is one of them saw the bottle, got everyone to look at it, and said “Naga, Please!”

Everyone would have laughed for around twenty minutes, and then their stupid mate would have come through our window, and ruined the skirting-around-the-word fun for everyone by saying “Nigger, please” and expecting everyone to laugh in the same way.  Breaking the joke in this way just sped up the theft of my stuff, so you can imagine how annoyed at him I am. Even Al Murray would have to black up before saying the nigger word, and he’s very much the barometer of what is and isn’t brilliant.

Guitar Hero World Tour: Actually, I’m bored now. I’d just put the words on the image, and felt like I had to mention it in the body copy. Look at me, saying phrases like body copy, like it’s normal. I’ll be saying “page furniture” next. PRESS B TO STOP EVOLVING INTO A PRICK

Anyway, here’s a quick summary for you:

A Tragedy Cheapened Is A Tragedy Halved

The girl opposite me has just suffered the death of a beloved goldfish. It was one of those stubborn fuckers that lasts a decade, so she really had a chance to become attached to it. The fish has seen her through her exams, her sexual awakening, and now it is dead.

Suddenly, the towers of photo albums – padded with snapshots of her and the goldfish in front of all the major global landmarks – have become too painful to acknowledge. So they’re left in the spare room: unseen, but for the glowing red dot on the wireframe tactical map of her soul.

She was so moved by the loss, that she couldn’t stomach the endless recitals and eulogising of a full Catholic funeral, and asked her boyfriend to flush the fish down the toilet. This he did, and she sank into an introspective slumber. The sound of urination roused her from internal soliloquy, and she felt stirred to comment.

“Are you pissing on my dead fish?”

Stripped of guile by the grieving process, the reply was stark.

“I needed a piss”

“So you pissed on my goldfish.”

What followed was a debate between conserving nature’s resources and not pissing on a fish. It’s a debate that can never be reconciled, but I know how that boyfriend felt. If he’d flushed, he would have had to wait for the cistern to refill – and staring into a toilet, unable to move, is when most humans have their darkest, most introspective thoughts about futility.

There’s also the fear that your next attempt will be premature – triggering an ineffective splash that cruelly resets your waiting time.

And the attempts to interpret the sounds coming from inside the cistern – did that change of tone mean that the water has stopped, or simply that there’s less room for reverberation inside the pot? Why are you trying to learn the secret language of toilets?

Finally, the desperate lifting of the cistern lid, for some kind of visual clue as to when you might be able to resume your life. You are standing over your own waste, probably with your trousers still around your ankles, and staring at mouldy ballcocks toilet water. You are scum. How you even dare to survive another moment is a fucking brazen liberty.

——–

Early 2008, in the disabled toilet of Future Publishing’s London offices, I perpetrated a stool so fruity in its bombast, that a single flush barely bruised the creature. I soon found that the reflush-refresh on the toilet was incredibly long: after some impatient and irrational pumping on the handle,  I removed the slightly diseased looking square of wood that concealed the cistern.  I gazed sadly into my immediate future. The flow of water was agonisingly slow.

For two minutes, I paced that oversized room, until the image of Future’s one disabled employee on the horizon, powering towards me with a turtle’s head, became too overpowering. I flushed again. A pint of water landed on my big poo.

Bear in mind I’m trying to flush this turd out of my life, not bring it to from a swoon.

I couldn’t wait another two minutes. Luckily, this toilet was a perfectly equipped puzzle room. I threw the toilet brush to one side, flecking my shins and the wall with sodden paper and old shit, and started using the container to ferry water from the tiny disabled sink to the cistern.

At this point, I began to feel workmanlike, and a kind of shitty can-do contentment settled over me. I used the toilet brush to physically break the turd, maintaining the everything-used-once purity of the puzzle, and went back to my desk to write about some fucking real-time strategy game or other.

I never told people this when it happened, because I was full-time, and didn’t want everyone to assume that the other bodily atrocities committed in the Future disabled toilets were mine. Now, at last, the story can be told.

If there is a moral, I suppose it’s “don’t worry about people pissing on your dead fish, because it could be being sluiced around with a mixture of fresh and diluted weeks-old shit by me”.

OK, So I Can’t Blog Properly

I thought going freelance would be the kickstart I needed to maintain the blog. It turns out, I’m only really productive when I’m in a job I hate if I get paid regularly.

Does anyone have a job where I can just sit there, silently fuming into the internet at the cunts on the next desk? And it has to be in a company where no-one knows how to use the internet, or Google their own name.

In the meantime, I’m trying to develop a non-offensive Tumblr habit, so look at that if you like.

http://disappointment.tumblr.com

Hey, I’ll Be The New Doctor, Thanks

OK so let’s just take it as read that I am the new Doctor Who. Here’s the title card, which will show on the telly while a posh bloke says “And coming up next, Dr Who will kick the cocks off of some Go-Bots or something”. My mate who is a real Dr Who nerd says I have spelled Dr Who wrong. I couldn’t think of what to say back until three days later, so I phoned him up and said it was only concept art so fuck off.

I have written a new opening sequence. K-9 is flying around in space. There is a close-up on his ears, which spin around, and he says “DOCTOR, I HAVE DETECTED AN EPISODE IN THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM” and then I jump through a paper hoop and say “Let’s get ON IT!” I kick K-9 into the sun, then it’s the usual opening sequence only with me waving my arms around like I’m going dead fast. 

The music is Bob Marley’s Jammin’, but the last line of the chorus changed to “We hope you like Doctor Who”. My assistant, a sarcastic parrot with a monocle and the voice of Brian Sewell, squawks “Sure do!”, lands on my shoulder, and we jump into the Tardis.

(On the Dalek episode, the Daleks have a verse, too. They come in, singing “We are the Daleks, we love the disco sound” and I wag my finger at them and they say sorry)

So the action starts, and I’m on a NEVER BEFORE SEEN BEFORE new planet, where time is BACKWARDS. I shoot a monster in the face and a doctor (not me) appears and issues it a birth certificate. I actually say the word “WHURGH?” and the doctor says “I don’t know what planet you are from Mr Who but on this planet we issue birth certificates when people die and everyone smokes cigars”. He hands us both a party popper. My parrot shrugs and makes a “doi-yoi-yoing-g-g” sound that it learned off the telly. I decide to investigate.

Before long Ted Danson arrives, and tells me I have to get off his planet. I wrestle with him in a void dimension for twelve episodes, and everyone is astonished when it turns out he is full of Daleks and it was them all along, not Ted Danson. But THIS TIME, the Daleks have all got human noses because they thought perhaps it was the fact we could smell them coming that made us keep winning.

The Daleks say “I smelled YOU coming Dr Who, how do you like them apples” and I raise my eyebrows so far that they fly off, and tickle the Dalek’s noses. They all sneeze their plungers off, except for the supreme dalek, who I have to wrestle in a void dimension for a couple of episodes. Eventually I throw him into a wheelybin, rip his plunger off and stick it up my shirt like I have got a tit.

Then I regenerate SIX TIMES, which is a record for Most Regenerations In A Single Episode Of Doctor Who, and everyone is really pumped up. Then my parrot says “I’ve got cancer” and pretty much bums everyone out for the season finale. “Shit man, I just killed all the Daleks, why are you bumming everyone out,” I say, and the Parrot just dies. I spend two more episodes wrestling its dead body in a void dimension, then Kylie Minogue walks in and we make out, forgetting that in my latest incarnation I am a woman, which causes 30,001 complaints and the removal of BBC1 from the space-time airwaves.

THE END

(HEY RUSSELL T DAVIES IF YOU WANT ME TO WRITE AN EPISODE OF SARAH JANE ADVENTURES I’VE GOT AN AWESOME IDEA WHERE LUKE IS OLD ENOUGH TO DO GAY STUFF)

In My Pocket Of All Places

What is going on in the world where this kind of thing is made, and sold to children. How dare anyone do this. It is a disgrace. Also how is it that this photograph is clickable in six different places. I simply want no part in a world where this is allowed to happen. Even if it does take ages to load so that people just think it’s a big white space.

Please complain about this fucking thing to someone, thanks.

Jennifer’s Creepy Night Out: Part One

Hi, Jennifans! Jennifer Tolstoy here – Log’s ex-girlfriend, and the inventor of such words as FRAZY (fun and crazy), CRABULOUS (crazy and fabulous), and HUHNNNNGGGG (a sound I make when someone in the queue in front of me is taking too long, and won’t let me look over their shoulder).

I hold the world record for the number of times anyone has repeated the word “GO” in a military operation, when I tipped a bucket of worms into the sink on a drainpipe reconnaissance mission and shouted “GO GO GO” three hundred times. Beat that, Andy McNabb! BE MY FRIEND ON FACEBOOK

I’ve been in hiding since that fat Australian cunt bitch cow-tipping slut got my touching memorial video taken off the entire internet. I really appreciated your efforts to convince her I was in the right – which a few of you did by finding pictures of her, and putting fake willies flying into her massive, food-swollen piss Chunnel. This really helped me through the difficult times. :’)

Here is that video, for being such funtabulous Jennifans!

During my life time-out, my best friends phoned me every day. They thought I’d get bored, sitting still and moving as little as possible for a whole year. But only boring people get bored! Here is my top favourite five things to do when you refuse to leave the house because the world is a horrible place!

1. Try out innovative new sexy poses like the one you can see here (don’t look at it I’m so embarrassed haha)
2. Wait outside Log’s door in the morning with a wakey-wakey biscuit
3. Sometimes I get hungry and eat the biscuit
4. Which leaves me with no reason to stand outside his door, so I just burst in and start punching him through the duvet, saying “wakey-wakey” then saying “biscuit” because i’d been thinking it over and over again outside his door and now I can’t say “wakey-wakey” without saying “biscuit”
5. Living with Log is so much fun even though we’re not going out any more, we’re just like the best friends ever

This is me and my friends! Sandy is using a fake hand to touch my boobs. It’s lucky Sandy is my mega-best friend on toast, otherwise I would have span around with my arms out like a starfish.

This is OFFICIALLY how to respond to a sexual attack, and has been since 1986. After the Fonz told children to honk when they were getting their bodies touched by grown-ups, paedophiles quickly evolved to home in on groups of honking children. So then Cagney & Lacey had to do a video giving advice about what to do if you were cornered by a honk-proof nonce. I chose the starfish, but there were other things you could do!

1. Move your head up and down so they can’t work out where to kiss you.
2. Teleport to a location above your assailant, land on his head and guide him to a police station.
3. Form a sexless relationship with your abuser until you are old enough to consent to kissing with your mouth open.

Sandy says it’s not her real arm anyway, so it’s basically like that thing where you lie on your arm so it feels like someone else is touching your tits. I have to admit, it did feel like someone else was touching my tits.

These two guys are so gay. I am trying to look nonchalant, like I don’t care about it, but I’m also letting my silky hair land on the taller gay man’s arm. Let him know what he’s missing! I love gay men, they are so uninhibited! But then, I suppose you’d have to be inhibited to go near a big shitty bumhole. I don’t have a penis, but if I did, I would want to put it in something lovely, like a vase.

Log is gay, too – I was amazed when I found out, he never mentions it – and I think this is why we’re such great friends. Last night, I waited until he was really, really, asleep, and I crept into his bedroom, and tried to find bit that were sticking out of the duvet, that I could put into my mouth. When he woke, he just hid under the covers. He is so lame, sometimes, he doesn’t know how to have fun at all. But it’s all part of what makes our relationship so special – I’m the crazy one, he’s the one that keeps trying to put locks on his bedroom door, and stop me keeping my shoes in the fridge.

JENNIFER FOR PRESIDENT!

Tune in next week for part two of my creepy Halloween adventures – I meet Kelly off the Porky Beans video, get my eyeballs licked out, and meet the happiest Frankingstein in the world!

Adam Mason: An Apology

Nottingham’s Premier Cha-Mobile Enthusiast

Adam Mason was a child with a learning disability. He was taught that the world was a safe and indulgent place, by the girls who’d surround and protect him all playtime. He called himself Cha-Man, and not without reason: for the duration of his break periods, while I was doing handstands and staging daring worm rescues, Adam would say “cha” in a way that pleased him. As his pleasure grew, so too did the length of his chaaa. And as his pleasure and chaaaaaa grew, he would begin to run around, followed by all the girls in the year who weren’t making out with Jeremy Southgate.

The cha-mobile was born. A car for which cha was either the fuel, or the exhaust fumes. We simply didn’t know – all we knew was that Adam was running around the playground, shouting “chaaaaaaaaa”, and changing gears around corners.

This much is in the (stagnant, sorry) Law of the Playground. Adam Mason is the man I’ve always credited as the inspiration for the entire website. And, having found this photo, and thought a little bit more about it, I felt I should admit that I gave that utterly meaningless credit entirely out of guilt.

I wasn’t a benevolent observer, thinking “oho, this anecdote will serve me well from 1999-2008, in case E4.com need a soundbite”. When I wrote, on Law of the Playground, that he was tolerated by 200 other children, I should have said 198. As an irrational, passionate nine-year-old, I hated Adam. I hated the fact he wouldn’t say anything properly. I hated the effortless blanket approval he got from the girls. I felt that – for all my problems, and my inability to pull off a handstand that wasn’t against a wall – I was better than Adam, and deserved to be followed around the playground by a proportionately higher number of girls. Whether they were smelly or not.

Most of all, I hated the fact that in the end-of-year show, his “Mr Puniverse” sketch was more popularly received than “The B-Team”. The B-Team contained loads of proper jokes. We’d changed the names of the characters to Cannibal, Brace, Mr Coffee, and Gaymy. All Adam did for Mr Puniverse was get on stage – neither topless, nor oiled – and flex. The applause was incredible; Adam had stolen the show. We had stolen a dozen jokes from Blackadder, for nothing.

ASIDE
Once, I found a joke I thought was clever. It was presented as graffiti – “if you can’t read this, consult an optician”. Graffiti artists – quite a middle class bunch, they like a good chuckle. I thought this joke through a hundred times, worked out exactly why it was humourous. I realised that it was a joke that would only work in written form, and I realised I couldn’t really write it down and say “look, look at this joke I have wrote down”. So, I copied the graffiti format and defaced a school book with it. The very next day, I was firmly accused of writing it – the only evidence being “well, it’s just the kind of thing you’d say”. It felt obvious at the time, and I still think, that the teacher was calling me a cunt.

“This is the kind of thing a proper snotty cunt would write, and I honestly don’t think there are any other cunts in this school. And don’t try and say someone did it in a previous year – I’ve been at this school for twenty-three years, and you’re the first real cunt we’ve ever had. This is a dark day for Coppice Farm.”

BOT
So, I hated Adam. And I found someone else – another sunken man – who weren’t shared my hatred of Mason, and we’d brew and steam at his Impenetrable Convoy of Sympathy. We knew we could never hurt Adam, without looking like monsters. So we’d sit in a room, like a pair of cartoon coyotes, plotting the downfall of Adam. What if we swapped his Cha-Mobile for a real car? He’d drive into a hedge, or something.

He sucked his thumb, hooking his finger over the bridge of his nose. We invented a nail, which Adam could hammer into his face, allow him to hand his forefinger from it. Then we worried about the skin on his thumb, which would be like he’d been in the bath all day. So we put another nail in his temple for when he needed to dry it off. This was our stroke of genius – every invention was to help Adam, and cause him the maximum pain.

When it came to big school, I don’t remember Adam at all. Perhaps his parents realised that the girl’s bitch instinct was about to kick in, and Adam was about to start humping dustbins. But I’ve seen him once since, working in Tesco. Looking cheerful, productive, and slightly better paid than myself.

So, Adam Mason, this is my apology to you; I’m sorry for being the cunt that everyone obviously thought I was. I’m sorry I designed the cha-copter with the express purpose of having you collapse in a hyperventilating mess (although, to be fair, that was Paul’s idea, and he says he’s not sorry at all). And I’m sorry I just put a photo of you on the internet.

But most of all, I’m sorry I hated you. I’ve purged myself of the barbs of spite, and filled the abyss with pity. No longer will I stare at you, imagining a world in which you weren’t somehow beating me at things. Now, I’ll barely be able to glance at you.

That’s better, isn’t it? Nice bit of pity.