Oh, woe! That it should come to this! That a delicate creature, such as myself, should be edged, beaten and broomed into the agonising position of having to break a man’s heart!

Two suitors have I, each devoted and true - and yet my aunt is most particular that I do not, as she puts it, “fuck the poor cunts about”. Might I implore your indulgence, dear reader? If I shared with you the story of my triangle, (the details of which have become somewhat hairy), would you help me choose a suitor?

I first met Desmond at the sandwich counter in Boots the Chemist. He glanced down at my egg and cress, and said that he felt like he’d known me all his life. “Sir,” I giggled, knowing a thing or two about seduction. “To know me so quickly and so completely is to make me seem quite shallow!” But I had pulled my T-shirt above my stomach to let him know that I was interested.

For my birthday, Desmond bought me an exquisite pair of sugar tongs. “A girl like you shouldn’t be touching sugar,” he said, plainly oblivious to the fact that I am a 31 year old man with sideburns. I’ve started leaving catalogues open on the pages featuring ornate gravy boats - I do hope he gets the message. That I want a gravy boat. Otherwise I’ll have to resort to wailing “woe, to live without a gravy boat”.

Silly old Desmond will try to dress me in frocks and suchlike, and when I complain it is his delightful habit to put his large hands over my face until I pass out. When I wake, it is always wearing a dress, with a localised ache in my hips, where he has attacked me stupidly with his fundament. It is a fortune that he has not found any of my holes, yet.

Desmond has proposed to me. He has occupier’s rights over an end terrace in Lincoln, so I’m not taking it lightly.

But then there’s Duncan. Sweet, adorable Duncan. Grant me, pray, a few more moments of your time to tell you about Duncan.

Duncan first came to my attention in the queue at the Leicester Square Burger King, where he was facing in the wrong direction. My immediate reaction - apart from a sense that I had been eating celery my whole life, and here was meat - was that the poor creature needed the care of a skilled sponge-maiden. I approached him with my kerchief wrapped around my finger, and sweet Duncan flapped his head around, and tried to bite my hand.

Two weeks later, I had managed to coax Duncan into a seated position, although he would still spring to his feet and salivate wildly if he smelled chips. My goal was clear - I was to take Duncan to the ambassador’s party!

After three months of training, Duncan had come along most encouragingly. He had stopped hunting the furniture, and with the aid of a bespoke contraption wired into his skull, he could no longer bite anyone, although some growling and frothing still occurred. I was greatly excited… word had got around about Duncan, and my handiwork was to be admired by Tony Blair himself!

Duncan spent the first half of the party eating the ice sculpture and looking suspicious, because he could see through it a little. It was quite charming to watch him at play, and I commented to Tony Blair himself that I imagined he was hung like a barn. I also spotted a divine fragrance, and mentioned to Tony Blair himself that I adored his perfume. Tony Blair told me that it was made from expensive oils, and extracts from a rare family of vegetable distantly related to the potato.

“Posh chips!” howled Duncan, launching himself at the Prime Minister’s neck. I’m sorry to report that Duncan chewed poor Tony Blair to death, and were told not to come back until we’d found a new Prime Minister. I gestured at Duncan, but they reacted angrily.

That night, Duncan and I kissed for the first time. Well, I say kiss. He ate some chips out of my palm, which is as good as.

So you see my torture - I love both these men with all my heart, and would simply make a mess on the carpet without either of them. But who should I choose? Any suggestions from you, dear hearts, would be gratefully received, so long as you don’t swear or talk about men’s hot cocks.

Medico-Educational Category

Runner-Up

“OPEN UP TO MOUTH CANCER”
You and mouth cancer are like a couple of bloody children. Look at you both sitting there with your arms folded, not looking at each other. Isn’t it time you put your differences aside? Open up to mouth cancer.

This touchy-feely approach to localised cancers is to be backed up with a range of huggable plush cancers, and a Rubik’s cancer that goes benign when you solve it. A sitcom about a boy who lives with a cancer-stricken giraffe and/or alien is set to be broadcast on HBO, and the Chuckle Brothers’ new show - “Tumour, To You” - promises to set the skies on fire and never stop burning, according to Barry Chuckle.

Winner

“TURN YOUR BACK ON MUSCULOSKELETAL DISORDERS”
This poster takes a different approach, imploring readers to behave more frostily towards illness. This poster is more in the vein of such medical information posters as “Smile Blankly And Walk Past Your Best Friend Amnesia”, “Scream When Autism Moves Things Around In Your Room”, and “Piss Crabs Off”.

However, “Turn Your Back On Musculoskeletal Disorders” is shaping up to be as popular as 1989’s “OMFG! AIDS!”, with 50 Cent already recording a song to back up the campaign.

“If I was your sargeant, I’d give you this order -
turn your back on musculoskeletal disorder”

Also, it looks like the person is pissing onto a wall, and don’t tell me nodoby noticed THAT in the focus groups. A deserving winner.

CROSS-GENERATIONAL COMMUNICATION

WINNER

“NO MESSIN’”
A meeting with the Fat Controller;

“I understand that the younger generation is currently labouring under the impression that congregating in groups around the railway is somehow ‘cool’, as your Fonz would say. I can only imagine that they have read Edith Nesbit’s excellent book, The Railway Children, and cultivated a nostalgic romance with rail travel.”

“Probably, sir.”

“Perhaps they appreciate the rail paradox - the freedom that such travel gives us, and the train’s own status as prisoner of the tracks. To borrow from our red-faced brethren - if it is a steel horse, then it’s steel testicles have been truly castrated. Perhaps they relish that tragedy all too keenly.”

“I should think.”

“Well, I’m an old fuddy-duddy, I know that. Let’s erect a poster that speaks directly to these romance-dazzled children, in their own patois. All we need to do is inform them that such recreational endeavours are not cool.”

“OK, sir.”

TWO WEEKS LATER

“Well done. I’d have put three exclamation marks after Get Real, but otherwise, perfect. Here, have a train.”

“Wow, are you sure sir?”

“Yes, I’ve got loads.”

SPECIAL WORTHY CAUSE AWARD
WINNER

“TIT FREAK”
If you think you can help this poor tit freak out, you might like to drop him a line. Do you have tits? Then Tit Freak might be interested. Sadly, this quick doodle doesn’t give any information about his interests beyond titfreakery, so if it’s any help, his previous graffiti in this very same toilet (I’m something of a regular) includes “tit freak seeks men for mutual breastfeeding”.

Are you up to the task? ENJOY TIT FREAK.

This entry is karma for my previous “work toilet” entry, in which the man in the next cubicle made wild rattling noises and gasped “shit“. This time, it was my turn to be the monster in the cupboard.

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.

In the hellish crazy-go-round of life, few things act as stabilising constants. Your mother can go wrong, and develop her final years into a career of aimless dirty protests. The building in which you live will decay, and this planet is destined to smash itself into the sun like some kind of idiot.

So it’s a relief to finally have something good, pure and eternal to cling to; and that is my fresh-faced and hand-humping hatred of Brenda.

Today, I don’t really have anything to say about her - the Passion has had a slightly skew-iff effect on me. Instead of thinking - “I know, today I shall write about the shade of her cheeks, because I’m sure I just actually watched a facial capillary burst” - I thought I’d pull my head out and give everyone else the chance to bitch about their Brendas.

So, I dusted off my old PHP thimbles and tippety-tapped night and day, and look; I’ve made a little website which is solely dedicated to bitching about the fuckers that you work with, as and when you please. It’s not entirely bug-free at the moment, but I’m not a proper programmer, so SHUT UP.

This is the new site, at http://lifelong.disappointment.com.

IDEAS TO CALL THE NEW SITE
- OH GOD NOT MONDAY LOL
- I THINK WE NEED A ROTA FOR THIS
- DIAGNOSIS - MONDAY!
- I KNOW YOU’RE TALKING TO ME, I’M IGNORING YOU
- MY STAPLER IS JAMMED RIGHT THAT’S THE LAST STRAW
- IS IT FRIDAY YET? I GENUINELY DON’T KNOW WHAT DAY IT IS
- FUCK WORK, WORK IS FULL OF CUNTS
- WHOO HOO IT IS PAYDAY ALTHOUGH I DON’T GET PAID ENOUGH REALLY
- I AM ONLY TWELVE I SHOULDN’T BE HERE
- my colleagues constantly give me pause to wonder at the entire direction of my life

What follows is an exercise in what happens when someone says “write something for this site, it will be great”. What I will do is sit there stewing for two weeks, then write something like this in a sweat. This was written for Weebl’s Stuff, on the basis that they’d link to my book and say what a wonderful Christmas present it would make. Less than a week later, my book had dropped to 10,000th place on the Amazon bestseller charts. Were people so crestfallen that they returned the book? Or are sales figures like drawing yourself back on a massive catapult, and we’re about to get fired into the horizon?

I know the people who’re reading this probably bought the book for everyone they knew last Christmas - but for fuck’s sake, you must have met new people since THEN. What are you, a bunch of fucking hermits?

Anyway, here’s what I wrote for that Jonti and m’mate Lee at Sumo Dojo / Weebl’s Stuff.

THERE ARE ONLY SIX QUESTIONS, AND I HAVE ANSWERED THEM ALL

Questions can be boiled down into six categories; WHICH, WHAT, WHEN, HOW, WHO and WHY. If you’ve come out of a coma with different music taste and amnesia, you might also say things like “I like Starsailor?” This is also a question, but I don’t know how that works, so let’s forget about it.

Once all these questions are answered, we can get back to the proper stuff, like inventing massive sandwiches and handing out flyers for nightclubs that don’t exist, like Big Jeff’s Dynamite Caddyshack. So, here I go.

WHAT WERE EALING COUNCIL THINKING BUILDING A MASSIVE COCK OUT OF ROADS NEAR MY HOUSE?

I’ve just moved house to the Ealing Broadway area. It is a nice house, and my flatmates are two delightful young men. There is an exquisite collection of fast food outlets at the end of my road - I’m within desperate-dialling-OMG-so-hungry distance from two - TWO - clay ovens. I can buy a pizza from one clay oven and pop it into the other on the way home, to keep it clay-fresh.

So what could ruin this idyll? Well, I was using Google Local, and planning where I would open my first Neoporium. I’m not sure what Neoporiums sell yet, but they sound pretty futuristic so it’s probably memories, dreams, or bits of Jupiter. Cross that bridge when I come to it. I’d got as far as about five hundred metres from my house, when I noticed this atrocity.

You see it, right? It’s a road cock being wanked off by the road arms of another road. The attention to detail is such that one of the arms goes behind the cock, and the other in front. What galls me most is that I’ve probably walked along that road. I could may have possibly almost brushed against the helmet of that road. As I walked away from that road, a man in a helicopter could have mistaken me for a sperm. Call me a prude, but I don’t want flying men thinking I’m a sperm.

Thanks, Ealing County Council. Thanks for ruining my life.

HOW MANY PIXELS ARE THERE IN AN ANUS?

This is a philosophical question, that begs a million other questions. How many megapixels does life have? How close are you to the anus? Are you using digital or optical zoom? All these questions have plagued anus scientists since a fat woman sat in some sand and left a little bum-dent.

My answer finally came, playing Nintedogs. I chose the Siberian Husky, and he’s turned out to be a bit of a saucepot. He belongs to a spirited breed - he doesn’t take orders well, he pulls at the lead, and he whimpers when I try to stuff his tails in his fucking mouth. Worst of all, when I’m sat with my Nintendog on my lap, watching The Vicar of Dibley with my great-aunts, sometimes I look away from the screen to accept a biscuit, or laugh at the fat and/or stupid people on the television. And when I look back to my pet, I find that he has positioned himself so that my loving stroke is poking at his little anus.

This wouldn’t be so bad, but I have lost my touch-screen stylus, and am making do with a small screwdriver. What would my dear aunt say if she knew that I was poking at a tiny dog’s bot-plop with a mini-screwdriver? I honestly don’t know what she’d say. I’ve made a few guesses, though.

1. I say Jonathan, that’s hardly cricket! Cricket is entirely different to what you’re doing.
2. When I said “would like like another cup of tea”, did you think that was a modern euphemism for sticking a screwdriver into a dog’s arsehole?
3. In my day we used knitting needles, but still - excellent technique.

I’m straying away from the point, which is that I know know exactly how many pixels there are in an anus - and there are two.

I’ve looked at this picture long and especially hard, and I’ve decided that only two pixels are actually bum. The others are merely a bit bummy, and we’re not to hold that against them - but to give them full bum status would be rash. So, it’s two. Armed with this new arsenal of bum-knowledge, I can now name my own anus-pixels, and they are called Tony and Darren.

WHO LEFT A SLICE OF BREAD BEHIND THE RADIATOR?

Seriously, who did that? I mean it’s not easy to get a slice of bread behind the radiator, is it? Especially in the lounge. How often do you have untoasted, unbuttered, bread in the lounge? Perhaps if you’d bought a slice in to show your friend, to say “look how malted this bread is - that’s some malty bread, my friend”. But following that, you’d rarely say “Well, you know what we do with bread this malty. We put it behind the radiator. Don’t we kids!”

“Yay! Put it behind the radiator, Uncle Log!” This never happens.

Really, I’ve stood there with a full loaf, trying my hardest to accidentally drop a slice of bread behind the damn radiator. It doesn’t go. I’ve tried slinging it like a yeasty frisbee, I’ve tried throwing the whole bollocking loaf at the radiator, thinking one might go down. It didn’t.

Loaf after loaf I have thrown at my radiator, and not a single slice has fallen down the back.

Which leads me to the inevitable conclusion that someone PUT the slice of bread there. Why? It can’t be a prank. Pranks smell worse than that. This is just a bit of bread that been slightly toasted by the central heating.

I picture the scene. In the kitchen, the perpetrator sees a loaf of bread, and thinks “mm, I quite fancy a bit of that bread”. He takes six slices into the lounge, and turns on Friends. Slices one and two are gobbled cheerfully, and he notes from Joey’s weight that this is probably season eight, maybe nine. He doesn’t enjoy slice numbers three or four so much. In fact, after slice four, he’s gone off bread altogether. Silce five is a trial - but he heroically ploughs through it. Slice six, however, becomes the enemy. He can no longer stand the sight of this bread. He thinks - and I’m going to come clean here, and admit that it was me - that if I put any more bread in my mouth I would puke. I should take it back to the kitchen. But it is Friends on the telly, so I can’t leave the sofa in case Chandler done a trump and I missed it. So I tucked the bread gently behind the radiator, and thought to myself that I’d move it when Friends finished.

But I never moved the bread, because I forgot all about it. Until someone said “why is there bread behind the radiator?”, and I laughed and said “how absurd - I don’t even like Friends, let alone five slices of delicious bread”.

I’ve never confessed in real life. I PUT BREAD BEHIND RADIATORS. God, that feels good.

WHICH LITTLE BRITAIN MERCHANDISE SHOULD YOU BUY FOR YOUR FRIENDS?

It’s approaching Christmas, so you really need to be considering which Little Britain doll or key-ring you’re going to be buying your friends. Use this table to quickly assess the pros and cons of the more popular choices.

WHY DID ELLA FITZGERALD CROSS THE ROAD?

I have come up with five reasons why Ella Fitzgerald might have crossed the road. If it’s not one of these, then I’m sure I haven’t a clue.

1. She felt the first tingling of a cold sore developing, and someone had left a bucket of old Zovirax outside Tesco. Unfortunately for Ella, the Tesco was on the opposite side of the road.

2. Ella and her lover were walking her dog, and eating chicken from the bucket. Her lover paused to gesture at a diamond ball gown in a shop window, and the greasy chicken bone flew from his hand. Ella’s pet schnauser chased it, dragging her after him.

3. Ella’s diet of iron filings and ball bearings means that she has to phone in advance if she plans to walk past the local magnet shop on the other side of the road. Her mischeivous butler sometimes only pretends to make the call!

4. She is obsessive compulsive and has been crossing roads constantly for twenty five years. There is no real reason why Ella Fitzgerald is crossing the road, it is the symptom of mental disorder.

5. She lives opposite her old mate Toni Braxton, and regularly visits. Besides, people cross roads all the time. No big.

WHEN IS THE WORLD GOING TO END?

On January 4th, 2050, at 4:22pm, the last human will succumb to the zombie plague. The woman, who is pregnant, was mankind’s last hope, after her lover was torn apart in a lift shaft. Despite her religious upbringing, she had accepted the fact that for mankind to survive, she would eventually have to bear the children of her unborn son; what she didn’ t know was that it was a girl, and that no amount of lezzing up - however energetic and muddy - will get anyone pregnant, although the male zombies would probably have loved it. Anyway, she gets her head slammed in a massive door and that’s the end of us all.

It’s not entirely fair. Boo hoo, it’s not fair. :(

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.

Sometimes, Brenda lets you into her world. It’s a strange thing, to be embraced by someone you despise - especially if you have the instinctive desire to be liked by everyone, no matter how much they’ve proved themself to be a big anus.

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?