I was in two minds whether to tell you all this or not.

a) because it’s boring
a) it’s none of your beeswax.

But it’s a slow day in blade hell so…

A couple of months back, three in fact, I went up for a panel for promotion. It was a big promotion, like massive innit, so big in fact, that I might occasionally have been seen on the TV and everything, like HE who went before, and we’re talking national TV, not North Tonight or crap like that, and Kim Ayres would have been watching the news about some new plane or some boat being launched or something and nibbling on a scone perhaps, and I’d come on wearing a silly hardhat and saying something meaningless but clever and a bit pompous (OH yes folks, I’d got as far as working all this out), and Ayres would choke and shout on his wife, ”Quick! Quick! Come and see. Look it’s Doctor Maroon on the TV! That guy I met off the internet, it’s really him! Maroon!” and Kim’s wife would come through to see what the hell all the fuss was about, but by that time, they’d have moved on to tomorrow’s weather or a baby polar bear stuck in a lift or something and she’d be a bit annoyed with Ayres and she’d tell him to “stay off that bloody computer for 24 hours for the love of God!” and poor Kim would wonder if he’d dreamt it after all and then he’d know what solipsism felt like, but anyway, as it happens I didn’t get it, like, I bombed man, like, into the mountainside at mach 2, there were no survivors, the wreckage was strewn for eighty nautical miles in all directions, the black box was not recovered. It was a three day event, you know the thing, it’s an observation process, keeping your tie out the soup at lunch, semi formal gatherings at night with influential nobodies from the Outside World, it’s very tiring, being watched, but I think I did THAT bit well, maybe not, who knows, who gives a good godam, they could have bored for Britain anyway, that lot, talk about dull? and fascists to a man, actually they were ok, but the worst of it was when I went into the actual board room on day three to give my spiel and I suddenly realised I had a buzzing bogey! You know the ones I mean, one of those dry rattlers that clings tenaciously up your nose and flaps about, you don’t know if it’s showing or if it will come flying out onto the chairman’s wristwatch, or go skiting across the magnificent polished table in full view of everyone, you don’t know how big it is, you just know it’s up your nose like a trapped bee, so it was quick handshakes all round while keeping my big Pinocchio nose pointed to the floor so they couldn’t see up it, then a half turn away, and FULL blast into emergency hankie no1 (kept in right trouser pocket) but to no avail, Lord Jesus why me? Try second broadside, still no, but worse, I might have loosened it catastrophically. Was it even now, as I stuttered and mumbled my introductions, emerging out my nose like an evil hermit crab? Smile, casual turn / scan of room, while working genteel third blow into emergency hankie no 2 (inside jacket pocket left), got the bastard! Hooray! We’re home dry and soon to be rich, now why won’t my stick go in the USB socket on their shitty lousy laptop? Oh Christ, is it USB2? But isn’t USB2 just the same socket as USB1 anyway? Will I go and get MY laptop wherever the hell it is and plug their shitty lousy projector into it instead? Is this all some pisspoor test to see how I handle stress? Do they think this is stress? What chinless wonders! They wouldn’t know stress if it punched them in the godam eye. I don’t even want their shitty job. Bloody public schoolboy twats, no wait, I see what it is! It won’t go in, because THAT is the fucking phone socket, that’s why, fool, the USB socket is the next one along, Aha! There we go, everything is still fine, they haven’t noticed a thing, wing it man, smile, BREATH, give me the money, I mean job, I want a Bentley just like you guys…