Anyone buying the nation’s most well-meaning newspaper tomorrow (Monday 12th) will get the chance to read exactly such a story, in which my trousers are quite brutally ripped off. It may not be something that the nation needs to read, but it’s got to be better than this, right? Yeah?

Alternately, you could just look at this link, where the new article will appear as soon as it’s up. And my fourth piece, believe it or not, actually expresses an earnest opinion. The last time I did that, I swear I nearly wiped out organised religion.

What’s become obvious, is that I need serious practice at pulling authoritative opinions from my arse. So, if anyone is still reading this blog after my crazy days of neglect, this is my challenge and my promise; I will write a 700-word opinion piece on any subject raised in the comments. And boy-frigging-howdy, I will be plumbing wells of passion you never knew I had. I will be searing. I will be sensational. I will be bereft of useful information. To make it in this game, I reckon I’ve got to churn it out like a cocksure fraud – so I won’t research a fucking thing.

Look at this shit, I wrote this back in 2005. If I can write 1,000 words about putting on a sock, I reckon 700 words about the Palestinian conflict should be piss-play. So go on, you glorious titmice – get commenting and commission me into orbit.

(This blog post was this man’s idea.)

A. And who can blame you? Being a Games Journalist is the finest thing the human soul can aspire to, but I’ll warn you right now; demand is so high that you are going to have to “get in the fucking queue”.

The responsibilities are sometimes crushing. Other journalists (lower case – cf “hey, it’s the Roman gods” and “Hi, I’m God”) are constantly asking us what it’s like, and we have to pretend it’s not quite as amazing as it is, just to be polite. Here are just a few letters from lower-case journalists I’ve had to deal with this week.

Hey Log,
I’m going to a party tonight and Julie Burchill told me it was fancy dress. I got excited and told Kate Adie, only to find out that Julie was lying to make me look stupid. Now I’m in a race against time to intercept Kate Adie before she arrives at the party dressed as Go-Go Yubari. Is this important enough for me to use the BBC helicopter?
Yours,
Tony Parsons

Answer: Fuck yes. You literally cannot afford to waste time in Games Journalism. The deadlines are so aggressive and unwavering that it’s like defusing a bomb in a convent. More often than not we are compelled to send in our copy by helicopter or witchcraft.

Shit Log quick man this is urgent,
I’m about to hand in some article about dangerous dogs and I’m not sure I’ve got any of the facts right. Dogs are those things with four knees that bend the same way, right?
Come on man I’m outside the editor’s office as we speak,
Simon Hoggart

Answer: Hey Simon, chill the fuck up. Remember: whatever he says to you, it can’t change the fact the you wrote an article, so kudos to you. If anyone says you’re wrong, simply look them in the face and say “if you know so much about dangerous dogs, elephants, or whatever it is my article is about, where’s your article? Oh I forgot, you don’t have one”

Hey Log,
What’s Poco Loco like on the PSP?
Georgina Littlejohn

Answer: I have no idea what you are talking about. 43% of that wasn’t even words.

Q. CAN YOU NAME ALL THE GAMES JOURNALISTS JUST OFF THE TOP OF YOUR HEAD OR IS IT A SECRET

A. No problem – we Games Journalists aren’t shy. Attempts to feign humility are useless; our excellence is so dazzlingly obvious that pretending to be anything less than amazing is an insult to your intelligence. So let me tell you about my two favourite Games Journalists of like all time.

This is Steve Ptarmigan. Steve isn’t working in the field so much these days; in fact, he ascended bodily into heaven after giving 99% to Lunar Jetman’s graphics.

Jeff was most famous for the picture on the left, which was his visual response to every single game he reviewed. He used this drawing of his face to convey anger, excitement, disappointment and even arousal; in fact, Steve Ptarmigan was the very first person to suggest that good games were sexually arousing. It’s so common to wax orgasmic nowadays, that heart-wrenchingly emotional poetry is the only acceptable method of reviewing a game. (<50% = Heartbreaking Soliloquy, >50% = Randy Limerick). Take this 1998 poem that Bathtime Mahoney wrote in response to the Otacon ending of Metal Gear Solid.

Trapped in Shadow Moses, you got pretty injured.
I bought you twenty roses, I fought a cyborg ninja.
Now just gimme the sweet stuff, Emmerich,
Open up your honey pot, Hal,
Between my legs I can tuck my dick,
I can be your slotless gal 93%

Memorable quotes from my most recent reviews include “My nuts span around so fast that I’m not even joking this time 84%” (Dark Messiah) and “After downing an enemy Luftwaffe, I slid onto my back and use the weight of my legs to hump my own chin 52%” (Wings Over Europe).

Lady Marmalade’s famous review of Sinistar, in which they hid behind each other and screamed for six minutes, was to kick off a crazy new era in radical feminist Games Journalism. Older readers will remember Christina Aguilera’s spectular Namco petition, when she barnacled herself onto Namco HQ with the suction of her vagina, and whaled on the windows with her fists until they made a Pac-Man she could properly identify with. Similarly, Lil Kim was so taken with the communication system in Captain Blood she has the symbols for “WANT GIVE YOU GENETIC HELP” tattooed on her fibula.

Sadly, Pink and Mya were expelled from Games Journalism, after they were tricked into admitting that they’d never played Gorf. It was a shame, but come on – you’ll be telling me they haven’t memorised both sets of moves for the Chess level in Dragon’s Lair, next. This is BASIC GAMES JOURNALISM.

That is all the Games Journalists I can think of at the minute, but if you spot any more then please do send them in and I’ll update this… well, I suppose it’s an encyclopaedia, really.

Q. ARE THERE ANY RULES OF GAMES JOURNALISM OR CAN I JUST MAKE IT UP AS I GO ALONG OR WHAT

A. Games Journalism is amazingly difficult (most scientists reckon it’s mathematically impossible / miraculous), but everyone agrees that the hardest thing about it is the percentages. Here’s the system I use; in time, you’ll probably make your own up with the numbers in the wrong order or something dumb like that.

Once you’ve got the hang of percentages, you’ve got to learn the initials of all games, and the shorthand for the most common percentages. We’re constantly saying things like “Wow, Gamer slapped GRAW with a beefy Turlington”, just to remind everyone else how difficult our job is.

Q. IS THAT IT THEN

A. Yeah, but I’ll sign off with the three things I’ve learned in my nine long months in Games Journalism.

1. If someone says “I liked that game” and you gave it a bad score, say “well on a superficial level it did have some merits, but it lacked the substance, nuance and finesse that I, a Games Journalist, require”
2. If someone says that a game you scored highly was rubbish, simply make up some incredile plot twists and groundbreaking set-pieces that might have happened in the game. When they look confused, say “did you not get to that level? It really picked up around then”.
3. If someone takes issue with something you wrote – perhaps you said a game was real-time strategy, when in fact it was a point-and-click adventure – refer them to your editor. Then put your finger under your nose, claim to be your editor, and tell them to fuck the fuck right off.

I hope you have fun becoming and being a Games Journalist. And remember; if you get asked a riddle in which one person always lies, and the other person always tells the truth, the answer always involves asking one person what the other one would say.

Also with opinions on this matter : Tom Bramwell, John Walker, The Triforce, Bill Harris, Mathew Kumar, Tim Edwards, Richard Cobbett, Kieron Gillen, Stuart Campbell, Affectionate Diary

If I was a mechanic, my customers’ bonnets would flip up, tear off, and shear through a cyclist’s torso. If I was a tailor, my range of bespoke suits would cause a lingering melancholy and laziness that would – eventually – lead to the cessation of all human reproduction. It’s what I do. I do things badly, and people always suffer like you wouldn’t believe.

This is why I limit myself to admin jobs; it’s the same everyday consideration that makes modern Gorgons train their hair not to hiss at the cinema. What possible harm could I do in a menial admin job? Well, I’ll fucking tell you. I forgot to photocopy the study guides for Midwifery Pragmatism.

Now I didn’t realise they had to be taught this; I thought midwives were going to be pretty pragmatic by default. I mean it’s pretty down-to-earth and real stuff, running around saying “shit, a baby – get it the fuck out of that woman before it eats her hole” and “no way, another baby – do you want me to pull it out underwater?”.

What I’m saying it that pragmatism is essential to midwifery. Too little, too much, and babies start dying. And now, thanks to me, a generation of totally fucking impractical midwives have been unleashed. I mean, shit! I’ve started a midwifery timebomb!

By 2007, these people will be delivering their first babies. The midwives – I say midwives, by now they’re just baby-killing machines – will be taking the expectant mothers to Alton Towers. Then, when the mothers go on the nice swan boats they start shouting “BOOOORING LET’S GO ON OBLIVION”.

By 2008, caretakers at the Obvlion will have to unsnag the umbilical cords from the frame, so that other customers don’t get smashed in the face with a 60mph toddler. They’ll become really immune to infant mortality, and it’s my fault. Their wives will say “why aren’t you gasping, there’s all manner of infant mortality on the television, and some is particularly excellent” and the man will say “my daily life is now a catalogue of human remains and unrealised potential, thanks to Log“.

Well, I’ll tell you what. I’m not hanging around for the fallout. I’m fucking OUT of here. On Friday, when my contract ends. I just hope to God that I’m out of here before the carnage starts, and the blood starts flowing.

This is totally like I’ve fucked up the Bible.

A very quick entry out of pure, rabid emergency. Forgive the first-draft-feel (my writing is usually so fucking polished), but I’ve just been listening to a man have a wank.

It really was the most basic mistake of the toilet wanker; assuming that every slam of the door means one person has entered or left. This time, I had entered with a colleague who’d opted to piss rampant; I had gone into a cubicle, for a nice sit-down wee, and to try and complete Castlevania on Hard Mode.

So when the standy-wee man washed his hands and left, our hidden friend assumed he was alone, and that’s when the fapping began. (I had the volume on the DS turned down – the idea of a man having a toilet wank to a tinny-speakered rendition of “Dracula’s Tears” is pretty cool, but unlikely)

I know I couldn’t see it, but there is no other possible explanation for the duration and regularity of a sound that genuinely went “fap fap fap fap fap”. I put my head to the ground, and saw shoes. No porn spread around on the floor, just shoes.

I sat agog for a while, before scrambling for my phone or dictaphone. In my idiot contentment with the idea of playing the DS, though, I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t have either on me. So I ran out of the toilet, as silently as possible, to get them. I needed a sly photo of those shoes, too, so I could do a Cinderella on him, the cheeky bogfapper.

Immediately outside, I ran into a woman who was looking around in that lost, stupid way that can only make a sane human feel rage. “I wonder if you can help me,” she whimpered, and I stifled a snarl and asked her what she wanted. Then I ignored her answer, preferring to stare at the door. After several attempts to listen to this lump of lady, it turned out that she had an expenses form that needed to be handed in. And what she had done was to staple her receipts to the expenses form, and not filled it in. Like the form had a fucking notice at the top reading “just staple your fucking receipts to the top, we’ll guess the rest love”.

I told her to fill it in, and that I’d be back in a moment. I ran through the office to get my shit. No-one runs in our office. Breaking out of a sullen slump is considered ostentatious. But he could finish at any moment, and this was important to me. I’ve had too many (two) funny times in those toilets, and I need a dramatic development, something to keep me going in this place.

Running past the girl, who was still writing her dumb fucking name, I went towards the toilets. And found myself staring at the shoes, now full of man. It’s the guy from the office opposite me. He’s the guy who grunts, wanks, says “Oh God” while shitting, and now he’s smiling at me. “Hi Jon,” he says. “Haha!” I laugh in reply, before turning to help my new best friend with her form.

So where do I go now? I’ve got no mystery. I’ve lost the whole sense of adventure, and worst of all I don’t have any photos of shoes or wanking sound clips to put on the internet. Sure I could make my own up, but that’d feel cheap, and I simply can’t bring myself to lie to you beautiful tykes like that.

So what do I do? Where can you go after looking into the smiling eyes of a man whose shoes you have watched, as he noisily milked himself?

I’ve just had the one moment in my life that means I don’t need to live any more – I just want to live the last few moments over, and over, again. I’ve just spent a full two minutes crying with laughter, padding my little feet on the floor, and nearly screaming with delight. Oh God, please let me tell you why.

I just went to the toilet in work. Unusually, both the other cubicles were full, so I went into the third booth, dropped my grubbies, and got ready to untidy myself. But what came out was a succession of what I can only – in all fairness – describe as trumps.

NUMBER 1
The first fart with any shit is forgivable, and to be expected. I’m not puerile, so I didn’t laugh at this fart. I did listen to the reactions of the other cubicles – it’s something of a catchphrase in my family to appreciatively cheer “Good Arse” after a peculiarly beefy trump. There was no reaction, so I got on with the more serious business of having a shit.

NUMBER 2
But no shit was to come. What came instead was another fart. Identical in tone, timbre and moisture as the last, if nipped to a close earlier, thanks to a sense of mild embarrassment. The similarity of the farts made me smile a little, and made me think about all the old theories we came up with as children to explain different kind of farts – fatness, gayness, and so on. And all the names for farts we had, from the onomatopoeic “pern” to the Angry Anderson (aggressive, comes from Down Under). These memories make me smile, but I really am thinking more about having a shit.

NUMBER 3
I relax and gently push for a third time, but I’m prepared for the fart, and ready to pinch it off instantly. I can feel my mouth starting to crinkle, but at this stage I mistake it for concentration, and don’t admit to myself that I’m on the verge of laughing out loud. So when my tense sphincter produces a totally different squeaker-style fart, I’m not ready to stifle the “aha!” laugh that jumps out.

NUMBER 4
So now, I’m fucked. The fact that I audibly chuckled, and didn’t even disguise it to sound like a grunt of effort, means that they know I’m in a cubicle, farting and laughing to myself. This was made worse by my clumsy attempt at a late conversion – a wild effort to make any sound that would make the laugh sound like something that wasn’t a laugh. My conversion sound was a gasping, quiet “uphooo”.

If I’d heard that sound coming from another cubicle, I would have pictured them pressing against the walls in fear at what was about to happen; a brown down-volcano spitting its first sloppy rocks. My farts had so far been dry, thankfully – I think I would have fallen off the bowl if I’d sputtered. But everything is building up, and I’m starting to revert.

NUMBER 5
I’ve also seen the flaw in my plan to stifle the farts; I’m having a shit. I’m going to have to get rid of the air, first. I lack the internal dexterity to manoeuvre a balloonful of air around or through a turd. Now that I’ve been stupid enough to cut that fart off mid-toot, I’ve got more left. So I either wait for the other two men to leave, or I just get a grip, act my age, and fart what is left onto the water.

Unfortunately, I’ve totally reverted to schoolboy mode, and during the two second fart that follows, I’m laughing like Muttley would laugh during a two minute silence. If he was fucking rabid. I put my hand to the wall to steady myself, and I hit the oversized toilet roll dispenser, which makes a sound loud enough to imply that my cubicle is a rocket ship that’s about to take off.

I give in. There’s more fart left, but if I don’t stop soon I’ll shit myself laughing.

NUMBER 6
I can’t stop laughing now. I don’t even need to fart to set myself off. I only have to picture the faces of the people in their private shittoirs, and I’m off. The sixth fart comes from this juddering heap – by now, I really don’t have enough control over my body to stop farts coming out. This isn’t helped by the absolute silence from the other cubicles. If one of them would just laugh, or acknowledge the farts, it would break the spell. The fact I’m imagining them to be appalled is just making me worse.

I swap between gasping, laughing, wobbling, biting my fist – and it’s when biting my fist that the sixth flies out. This makes me stop shaking – or perhaps I’m shaking so fast I can no longer feel it – and raise my eyebrows in a disbelieving appreciation of what is happening to my poor anus. It’s fair to say that I’m having the time of my fucking life.

NUMBER 7
The seventh fart proves to be the last, and it’s mercifully short, as the turtle finally stops coughing and sticks its head down my toot-chute. This kills the charm, at last, and I can finally calm down. Even though I do feel like I’ve just done a brazillion sit-ups. The other chambers remains silent, so I suspiciously look under the partition. Sure enough, there’s feet. So, with a final, wry chuckle, of the kind that Oscar Wilde might use after saying “ah, but tis better to have a wind-filled shit than a sin-filled wit” or something gay like that, I run without washing my hands back to my desk.

On the upside, it was a clean break and barely needed wiping.

My job covering the cervical screening course ended ten days ago, but they liked me enough to take me back. Now I’m in another role, whose details are too dull to properly understand. But today is my first day back, after taking a week off watching the telly.

This morning, I got off the bus, and Brenda greeted me. With a weeklong drudge slog hanging from my ankles, this would normally have made my tongue sizzle. But, bouyed by my absence, I winked at her, and decided to keep the conversation on my terms – largely by talking over her. Incredibly, she liked it, and decided to let me in on the office news.

Monica’s got my chair.

My hatred of Monica pre-dates Brenda by some weeks. Monica is a mythical office spectre; her long absences based on entertaining illnesses. When RSI became a commonly-known condition, she had an epiphany – that’s why her hands were shit at doing things! It wasn’t her under-gifted shitfa brain firing off a relentless volley of dumb, dumb commands, it was Health and Safety’s fault.

Now, she has two wrist rests. Presumably if she balances it out, so that she’s had an average of one wrist-rest over the course of her life, this will cure her “RSI”. It’s only because her nails are as long as an Indian fakir’s that she can reach the keyboard at all.

Then, she ruined her reputation for hypochondria by getting a tumour in her eye. Where it would be uncharitable of me to claim that a God-fearing Mormon such as Monica would fake a tumour in her eye, it does give her the opportunity to do the following, which appear to come very naturally to her;

1. Take months off at a time, to put eye drops in.
2. Burst into tears whenever asked to do work, because it all so horrible.
3. Steal my fucking desk, because the “glare” from her identically-lit monitor is too much for her.

My desk was magnificent. No-one could see what I was doing on the internet. Monica’s desk, apart from having the stink of long-term illness about it, is exposed to the whole office. And that’s what the crafty cunt was up to, the second she got her chance. Honestly, you let your guard down for a fucking second. I’m going to dazzle her with the reflection from my watch. I’ll give the bitch glare. Come get some glare! I got a wrist fulla the stuff! And if I get tired, reflecting sunlight into your tumour, I’m gonna come round your desk and rest my bitty wrists! ‘Cos your desk is like some kinda fuckin’ wrist spa! With little wrist-jacuzzis and shit!

Now, I’m not one to bitch, but I’ve seen her typing letters in Excel. I watched over her shoulder, my mouth blopping open-shut in awe. I asked her whether she should be using a word processor, like Word, the software for words. It’s part of the Office package for offices, I explained. She replied – “I tried that, I couldn’t get the words over here.” She pointed to the cell range G1-G5, where she had typed the address.

At the moment, as I live and type, she’s being talked through a data entry form. She was told “you put the name in there”. Her reply, with the emphatic arrogance that I love so much…

“Why does it ask for name? You leave name blank.”

Now, I don’t know where to focus my hatred. Dog with two dicks. I know what I’ll do – I’ll ignore them both, and try to write something funny that’s not based on hating the cunts that fill this world. It is getting to be a bit like shooting a pike in a teapot.

On the one hand, I was enjoying the fact that this creature had come from her desk and was telling me her funny story… but the actual telling of the story was close to unbearable. It was only by turning on my dictaphone that I was able to relax – I could listen to her without vomiting so long as I had this noble, ulterior motive. To record our conversation and play it to [three inhabitants of] the world.

Before telling me this story, Brenda had sat at her desk, laughing at something. Immediately after the laugh, she looked around. Then she laughed again, and followed it with an “oh, dear!” that clearly emphasised the askability surrounding her mirth. Looking over to me, she took my grimace as an inviting wince, and wrinkled around the desks to my chair. She had a photo.

It was a photo of her, laughing. Laughing in the sense of “mouth widening, teeth bared, eyes squinting”. I recognised it as a laugh, anyway – even though these same expressions can be used for “on the floor, awaiting a kick to the stomach”. The latter describes my face. Hanging from her blouse in the photo is a “Do Not Disturb” sign used in hotels. The weight of the sign is pulling her flimsy blouse down a touch – not obscene, but enough to remind me that she was once a sexual creature, and God save us, may still be.

This sign is a comical one – it features Winnie The Pooh struggling, with a pot of honey stuck onto his head, and has the caption;

It’s the kind of photo that stands for itself. It’s not awful – I mean, it’s not nearly as bad as the office posters you more usually find – and if she’d had it pinned to her partition, I wouldn’t have thought any less of her for it. But she’s not willing to let it rest there, is she? She’s not even going to rest, having stuffed it under my nose. This picture is so amazing to her that she wants to give me the back story.

It came at a difficult time in the office – morale was low, and good old Brenda was keen to portray herself as the office jester. This is an image that she genuinely holds – when it is painfully clear to everyone else that she’s nothing more than vocal shrapnel lodged in everyone’s fucking face. This is where we join the story – the dictaphone is now on.

[what follows is the transcript - click here to listen]

I was showing off for the dictaphone, there. She looked spurred.

Brenda physically can’t say the word “gay”. After the recording finishes, she says “I know it’s the fashion, these days, but…”, which prompted me to write down “anal sex isn’t a pair of nice shoes” and promise myself I’d make it into a T-shirt.

She enjoys the fact that I’m responding to her, but what I’m saying is irrelevant. The tracks to this conversation were laid minutes ago, and I’m just a passenger.

She is making me laugh inside my head, now. When she said “and he was laughing, and I was laughing”, she’s just given up her right to claim any part of reality, beyond being a character in a sketch show.

Brenda fondly thinks that the people on the other side of the partition – whose morale she was trying to raise with this photo that she doesn’t seem to have shown them, only me – were thinking “That Brenda!”

She would probably come flying apart and dissipate in a tearless, sandy sob if they told her what they were really thinking, which was “why does death come to so many, but not to this immortal crone?”

This section boils down into three statements;

1. “It will be a nice surprise for him to see that I was photographed at work.”
This is a classic case of “The suprise that was met with a ruffle of a newspaper and a that’s nice, dear”. Unless…

Possibly Brenda and her husband, yesterday

2. “I couldn’t tell my husband that I was photographed by a gay man, although (1) – it will be a nice surprise for him.”

Oh, Brenda. Brenda, Brenda, Brenda.

3. “My husband will not assume I am fucking the man who photographed me, because he is gay. Although (2) – I cannot tell him he was gay, just because. Still, (1) – it’ll be a nice surprise, anyway.”

BRENDA!

I am glad that Brenda has taken me into her confidence, and I hope to get more stories out of her. I’m thinking of writing an anthology. Shit, I wonder if I could get her to invite me around for sunday dinner?

I have just been forced to overhear the most excruciating conversation of my so-short life. Brenda has just invented and solved a problem that affected no-one, in one of her frequent shouting sessions that let everyone know how fucking loud she is. Today, she let everyone know how important she was by howling at a chinese student temp, who didn’t understand her.

Brenda
You’re going to have to clean your desk for next week, aren’t you?

The Chinaman, whose name used to be Jason, but is now Jackie, looks at her. He isn’t sure she is talking to him, as she didn’t look at him, say his name, or engage him in any way. She simply thought it, and said it. This is Brenda’s magic.

Brenda
I said, you’re going to have to clean your desk for next week. Aren’t you.

Jackie points at his desk and makes a gesture to himself. His English isn’t so hot, but he’s really keen to learn. He lives with other Chinese people and values the times when he’s forced to listen to and speak English. Unfortunately, the distracting elements of Brenda’s conversation – hideous, shrill crow-noise and hypnotic repetition – mean that you can only really listen to her by not listening to her. The second you focus on what she’s saying, the nausea rises and you start to black out.

It’s the conversational equivalent of looking at a partial eclipse in a bucket of water, I suppose.

Brenda
I said, Jackie. [sensing that she doesn't have his full attention] Jackie, I said if we’ve got the data team coming in on Monday, you’re going to have to clean your desk out. They’ll be wanting your desk, won’t they?

I love the idea of a data team. You don’t fuck with the data team. They keep all the student records. They can cancel your library card, change your name. They’re the fucking architects. And there’s seven of them, each with mastery over a different colour of the rainbow.

Anyway, I’ve been drawn out of writing a bunch of shit about gambling, and my attention’s now firmly stuck on Brenda – I tend to start listening at the second repetition, because that’s when the nausea starts being perversely enjoyable. Jackie now gets the gist of what Brenda is cawking about, and looks confused. He begins to say Jan, our immediate bosses’ name. But he doesn’t quite get the chance to put it into a sentence.

Brenda
Well it’s no good Jan Sherlock saying anything, the data team are coming in on Monday! Jan Sherlock can’t stop that, can she?

She really enjoyed saying that. As powerless and frail as she is, nothing pleases her more than other people not being omnipotent. But she’s aware that this sounds a touch bitter, so she adds an aural ;) at the end by generating a staccato laugh with no mirth or sincerity. This woman is no stranger to nervous breakdowns; I just wish she’d stop fucking bouncing back from them.

I can’t emphasise enough how little Jackie has actually said. This is a monologue.

Brenda
How will that leave space for the people coming in, then? Answer me that! They’ll have nowhere to sit! Someone needs to do something about that, don’t they?

I’m so embarrassed on Jackie’s behalf that I’ve started chewing on my finger skin. He hasn’t got a clue how to respond to what this monster cunt is saying, but he’s too polite to walk away. And she can’t see how what she’s saying is wrong, and is unwilling to stop talking, ever. Listening to Brenda’s voice is like trying to pick out the stringy bit from an egg white, while somebody stabs you in the knees.

Jackie thinks he is being told off. He doesn’t know how to reply to this torrent of rhetorical white noise, and Brenda’s momentarily run out of steam. This results in ten seconds of Jackie shuffling nervously, and Brenda looking around for people to agree with her. Jackie stammers another boss’s name, and something clicks with Brenda. She’s either recognising this new person’s authority to issue desks, or she’s slowly becoming aware of what an aggressive, bullying cunt she sounds.

Brenda
Oh, Denise said it? That’s all right then.

And that’s where it ends. As dramatically complete as a Stephen King novel. I wanted it to carry on, to see how many times she could repeat herself, I wanted Jackie to just scream at her to fuck off. But no… Brenda’s decency valve once again stopped her just short of me lunging across the table and snapping her fucking neck, and denied her life the conclusion it so sorely needs.

A) I was chatting to loads of people on MSN Messenger and they were all like “come on join the party” and I came back with “you better get this party started cos I’m the kinda guy who’ll never settle down”. Seriously, I am the most fun to party with. I say things like “Walla walla BONG” and crazy shit like that.

B) The second reason was that it’s been a truly magnificent day for my beast-colleague, Brenda. Who would have thought that Brenda’s most awful behaviour to date would revolve around the bereavement of a colleague? I shit you the fuck not, she was crying more than the woman whose dad had died.

C) We had a sad-face complaint from the Law of the Playground. I don’t have time to explain now, but the glorious upshot is that we made someone cry about her fat dead mum. I think we can probably step aside now, and say “mission accomplished”.

By way of apology, I’m going to go to Nottingham for four days, and come back on Sunday. Is that OK? Does a period of self-imposed Midlands sound fair enough to you? Or do you want more? Take a piece, I’ve got loads spare.

Before I go, though – if you want to see a photo of me murdering whores on the internet, then you really should probably go see Jekyll and Gingernuts. I’ve never looked dapperer, and frankly, you could have made more of an effort.

COMMENTS HOMEWORK FOR THE WEEKEND
Answer one or more of the following questions.
1. What do you bring to the party (bear in mind I’ve already brought the vodka and dancing honeys)?
2. Once I’ve wiped out all the whores, who should I murder next? Seems a shame to waste the momentum.
3. Should I take down this story from the Law of the Playground?

What I did do, was turn my dictaphone on for three minutes and see if she said anything particularly shit. Although she was running low on steam by 2pm, there’s still some classic Brenda moments.

It’s 700k and two minutes of mp3, hidden behind this link. I would have done an embed link, but someone complained that it crashed their computer. Sorry.

First of all, uncountable thanks to Robert, who delightfully adorned Brenda with a brown accolade. Look at the affection she shows to her mucky bangle – her cheek rests adoringly on the greasy tracks, as it snakes unwholesomely past her, no doubt to rest in the filing trays until she calls on it again.

“Vast poo,” Brenda wails, in my imagination. “You give me succour.” Rather than put an unpleasant image on the front page (heaven forfend), here’s a link.
Again, thanks to Bobby for paragliding that bitch into my inbox.

Anyway, Brenda’s been ill. She has that frail, poisoned look about her, so I’m not surprised. When you’re as offensive to creation as Brenda is, your body must occasionally try to kill itself with antibodies. So, last week, the air in the office lost its sawtooth edge. Also, someone moved one of the polystyrene ceiling tiles, and rainbows fell out.

But now Brenda’s back, and in the mood for some self-justification. She’s mouthy enough about being ten minutes late – this table shows some of her best excuses for different latenesses;

So you can imagine the heaps of whining turd we all suffered this morning. Five working days’ worth of the stuff.

Before her illness, Brenda found a new way to outrage me. I was late, and had jumped onto a bus to shave vital minutes off my travelling time. It was only a couple of stops, but I was still horrified to see Brenda sitting next to the exit door. “RUNNING LATE TOO, JON?” she called over to me, startling the large black man next to her, who wasn’t expecting a shrill outburst from his right flank.

I never remember what I say back in these situations – it’s usually so violently bland that there’s no point. We just moved our mouths for two minutes, until we arrived at the university. Getting out of the bus, and walking along the road, this is when she outraged me.

On the left, at the bottom, you can see the bus stop. On the right, on the other side of the road, is our mutual destination. The red line is Brenda’s path. The woman is a fucking Tron light cycle. There isn’t a single curve in her walking pattern, and she will not tolerate talk of 45 degrees.

But that’s fine, you might be thinking. That is a strange quirk, but it is after all part of the Green Cross Code, and it doesn’t unduly affect you.

Well that’s just apologist shit, and I’ll tell you how it affected me. See that blue line? That is my approach to the building, with its unique and elegant compromise between the shortest “straight line” approach (which also increases the danger of being on the road for the most time) and Brenda’s 90 degree robotic insanity.

Now, do you see where the red and blue lines cross? That intersection is where I touched Brenda for the first time. My forearm still chills from the contact.

Brenda is around four feet tall, so my initial reaction was to look around in both directions, and say “whu? whassat?” Then I looked down, and saw her there, unwavering. Walking onwards as though nothing had happened. And I walked with her, slightly stunned, feeling myself getting pulled from my perfect blue-line approach to the building. This pull does actually seem to be guiding my path, as I bump into Brenda two more times.

After ten seconds in which I aged three years, we get to a place where Brenda is willing to cross. Her ferret-chops turned to face our workplace, she put her toes to the kerb, and looked left. Then right. Then left again. Then right again. A gap in the traffic appeared. I lurched forwards, unfollowed by Brenda.

“I’ll never make that,” she said.

Wanting to appear chivalrous, I rejoin Brenda until the traffic on the A4020 abates for long enough for her to shuffle across. Looking at her reminds me of the mental patients in Nottingham, near where I’m from. They demolished the asylum and built a residential crescent, but still the occasional mental shuffles around. Now, though, they lack a purpose – they just walk around in their old patterns, not really troubled by the fact that it’s all different, and the buildings that used to be their homes are no longer there.

I start to feel mortal, and I remember the irrational fear that gripped me as an eight year old; that light-speed cars would drive around the world, killing people. No matter how Green Cross Code-approved your style was, one of these driverless and invisible cars could kill you, and it would hit you so fast that your body would be sent into space, and your parents would think you had run away. This fantasy used to make me run across every road. And standing there with Brenda made me want to do the same, screaming. But I couldn’t, partly because I am now 31, partly because I am now utterly bound to Brenda.

The gap we need inevitably comes, and we walk together to our neighbouring desks, and I sit down and turn on my computer. Eventually the internet arrives, and I can ignore her again.

Sure enough, ten minutes later, I’m sitting through her sixth retelling of the story about how her fridge freezer packed in, and has flooded her kitchen. Her husband is at home, up to his knees in towels! And she’d gotten up especially early, because she wanted to be here at eight, to start attacking her huge workload, too. How cruel life is!

This certainly is proportionately more elaborate than the time she was 15 minutes late, when the reason was simply the longest traffic jam in the world. That was also on a day you were planning to get in early, wasn’t it? The fates must really conspire against you, you brown-spouting fuck.

I smile, with the fake placidity of furiously paddling duck, and stifle my natural response. “I no more want to hear your dreary fucking lies than I want to slide toothpicks into my eardrums, you stupid, withered slice of meaningless bitch pie.”

Edit : I just took a photo of her. Please feel utterly free to print this out, roll it up, slide it into your arsehole and shit through it. In fact, if anyone were to send me a picture of themselves desecrating this picture, I would send them real presents through the post. Go on, piss on her. Piss on her face. Please.

9:10
We walked into the office together. When we reached our desks, she screeched in her vinegar whine over the tables. “So why were you late?” Only she didn’t use the inflection that might have implied that she was late too. This is her tactic, the shrill faux-friendly voice that lets everyone know your business. Thank fuck she can’t see the insane pornography I’m staring at all day.

9:45
I was having a conversation with the other woman opposite me. This is what I do when I’m not on the internet. Brenda comes back from whatever she fucking does in the corridor – to be honest I don’t want to think about it – and started repeating the last thing we said to each other. I checked her face without making eye contact, and her disgusting jowels were flapping with exasperation that she wasn’t part of the conversation. I hate her.

10:14
The man came to fix her telephone. For one week, she has been without a telephone, and has sat in her fucking chair like a puddle of dog shit, saying “everyone’s calling me! And I’m not available! I mean, if they want me to sit here do nothing, I will **GROTESQUE LAUGH** but I’d like to do some work! **GROTESQUE LAUGH**”

The phone man needed to drop some cable behind her desk. She couldn’t stop herself from trying to help; she kept pulling the cable in a way that exactly undid what the engineer had just done. I was furious on his behalf, and could barely stop myself from making audible whimpers as she yanked brainlessly away.

11:12
She conspires with me that she has been frustrated with her lack of a phone. “You’ve seen those comedy sketches, haven’t you?” I smile, but don’t reply with words. “You know those comedy sketches? Where the televisions go out the windows? Sometimes I feel like that.”

ONE - Televisions out of windows is a rock star cliché, not a famous set of comedy sketches, you cunt.
TWO - Do you mean you feel like you’re a television going out the window? Or do you mean you feel like throwing your television out of the window? What are you fucking saying, woman?
THREE - It’s called a MONITOR, you thick-striped twat.

“Yes, I’ve seen televisions out of windows,” I reply.

12:39
She calls me Jon. Fine, that’s my name. She calls Lynn Lynn. Excellent, well done. However, when she talks about our likeable and unsavage boss, Jan, she goes the extra mile and says the full name. Every time. Swinging it around like it lends her some kind of authority.

“Not just any old Jan, you understand! I am referring to the one and only J. Sherlock! Yes, the very same! Ms. J. Sherlock who runs post-registration nursing courses in this faculty we’re standing in right here!”

Here’s a heads-up, you cunt – I’ve seen Jan look at you, and it’s only because she’s a fundamentally nice woman that she doesn’t tell you to go stick everything in your pisspipes. You only escape it from me because I’m the kind of person who’d rather shout at the internet.

1:12
Out of morbid curiosity, I look at her face again, and see that her mouth is, in effect, upside down. Her tits are like well-chewed and rehydrated prunes. She trips over something, and jokingly threatens to sue something or other. Then all hell breaks loose as she discovers that there is a photocopier in the next room.

“There’s a photocopier next door? I was told I had to use the ones on the eighth floor. I’ve been going up seven flights to do my work.”

She then changes her story, and repeats it down the office.

“There’s a photocopier next door? Sue was told that she had to use the ones on the eighth floor. She’s been lugging all her work up seven flights.”

Right, you fucking hero. You altruistic piss-drinking darling. If it wasn’t enough that you’ve adopted Sue as your own personal Live Aid cause, you may have noticed those lifts? The lifts that take you up and down the building, you retarded Surrey fuck? Lifts make all floors the same floor!

2:15
Ms Sherlock walks past our table. Brenda – and I just stopped typing to snap a pencil even thinking the word – breaks off from nattering fruitlessly to me, and calls her over. “I don’t think Jon gets my sense of humour,” she said. “I think I’m a little bit too much for him.”

Don’t even get me started, bitch! I got your sense of humour the moment you opened your anus-lipped face! Your humour is unvaryingly a three-punch-combo;

1. Squeal in that fucking voice you have for two minutes about how difficult everything is for you, because other people simply make your life hell.
2. Say something resigned, like you don’t really care.
3. ** GROTESQUE LAUGH ** to cover up the fact that no-one else gives a leopard’s gash about your interminable suffering at the hands of the hole-punch thieves.

It’s not that difficult to get, Brenda! Now blow it out your cunt!

3:42
She’s been quiet for an hour, now. God, I hate her so much. I’m going to walk around a bit, and see what’s on her screen.

It’s a database entry form page. Jesus. That’s just so totally her.

OH GOD SHE’S PUTTING A SANDWICH IN HER MOUTH. She put about half of it in. She’s only two feet tall, and she’s cramming granary bloomers into her leathery neck. It’s 3:45, woman! Since when was that STUFF YOUR FUCKING FACE O’CLOCK?

4:30
Her phone’s ringing too much for her. It’s rung around four times since it was fixed at 10:14. The first time it rang was “Here we go!!!” Every time after that, she flapped her arms at me as though to say “Look! Look at this! Isn’t is abominable, what I put up with? You understand, don’t you? We bonded in that twenty minutes I talked to you about my holiday. You remember, that 20 minutes where you didn’t say anything? I just went on and on at you? You remember, right? You must remember, because I didn’t even stop when you actually turned your back on me and scowled at the wall!”

So now, she has a new bane of her life. I honestly don’t think this woman could operate with any less than 20 concurrent banes.

HOME TIME
In summary, Brenda is not the best work colleague, and if you have an office you’d like me to work in, please say so. I promise not to write anything like this about your staff.

There’s something quite gratifying, however, about taking orders from someone who has no idea what they’re talking about, and seeing what facial expressions you can get away with.

Take your average post room. It’s undemanding work mentally, so as an employer you’ve got a wider scope of employable IQs. How diplomatic was that? I’m saying that I worked with some amazing, top rank retards. In the post room in which I worked in I did, there were two full-fledged mouth-breathers.

There was a semi-autistic bloke called Dennis, and a real-life wowzer Downer called Josephine. Everyone called her Jo, but she’d look really grumpy when they did, so I made the effort and used her full name. Because despite the fact I’m writing this now, I’m not a monster.

Josephine. It took me until day seven in the post room before she introduced herself. She seemed shy, and unable to meet my friendly glances. After a week, the part of myself given to irritating fantasy was telling me she fancied me, and was asking me how I’d deal with it if she made a pass at me. They’re strong people, I assume from absolute ignorance. Would I be able to fight her off?

I took a photo of her on my phone. Here she is. I’m sorry, Josephine, but you’d be the first to admit that you do all look the bloody same.

Once we’d broken the ice, Josephine relaxed. The practical evidence of her relaxation was that she would belch in front of me. She’d belch about five times a day, and I got into the regular routine of saying “Josephine, I heard that!”, later developing it into “One more for good luck?”, and “It sounds like the ruddy docks in here!”

It became our routine. She’d smile at me, and I’d wink back at her. Then we’d get back to posting council tax reminders to our neighbours. There was comfort.

Things changed when, by pure and wonderful fortune, she let rip with a shocking belter. I was looking at her, and what I saw hypnotised me for ten minutes. Her top set of dentures slid out of her mouth. They didn’t fly out, or anything dramatic – they slid, slowly, over her bottom lip and came to rest. It was like watching a sleepy Alien’s little head come out, to see who’s come knocking at 3am. I failed to make my usual buddy-ha-ha comment. I couldn’t find the words. Josephine pushed her teeth back in, and gave me a cheeky, knowing smile.

I wanted to see it again. I’d stare at Josephine, to the point where I was worried that people would notice I was staring at her. So I had to turn it into a game. I would limit myself to five second stares, where I’d will her to belch so fruitily that it caused her dentures to drop onto the table. If she didn’t, I wasn’t allowed to stare at her again for ten minutes. This game was the only reason I didn’t stare at her solidly for eight hours.

By the time I’d finished that job, I’m certain that Josephine thought I had fallen in love with her. The symptoms were identical.

Onto Dennis, then. Dennis had a mental age of 11, and was spot-on. Friendly, he had the Asperger’s trait of being set in his routine, and panicky without it. Dennis loved music. He loved Coldplay, Travis, and Starsailor. He did, remember, have a mental age of 11.

One day he came in, clearly excited, with a new edition of the Guinness Book of Hit Singles. This was his obsession, his autistic party trick. He had memorized every entry of the old edition, and set about reading the new one in every spare minute. After two weeks, he challenged us all to ask him anything. Anything at all.

But… because he was only semi-autistic (he could engage on an emotional level – he was genuinely fond of people – and he loved jokes), he didn’t have the full-on idiot savant skills range. So he’d constantly get things wrong. And when he did get things right, it was generally stuff that I’d know, from a lifetime of non-autistic what I call “listening to music”.

Break times were, therefore, a squalid exercise in rolling your eyes and leafing through the Guinness Book of Hit Records, looking for fucking obvious records. Paint It Black, Dennis? IS IT NATALIE IMBRUGLIA?

When I said, earlier, that Dennis had a grasp of jokes, let me tell you his favourite joke;

Why did the world outside stop raining?
Because it had run out of water.

I laughed at this. It was brilliant that he’d specified that the world outside had stopped raining. Because it wouldn’t rain inside, even if the world hadn’t run out of water, you see. He may be spaffed upstairs, but he’s not stupid.

Dennis’ next favourite joke – My friend asked me if I took the train home – I said no, I can’t get it through the front door.

Every day at the post room, every day spent opening envelopes, came with a growing sense of belonging. And I’d like to be able to say that was the reason I left… but it wasn’t. I left because there was a couple of extra quid an hour on offer in a nearby nursing university. With cervical smear videos and everything.