2002-08-20 - 6:28 p.m.

I hate all that �small world� cobblers when you bump into some random acquaintance from your past � after all, the chances are surely slimmer that you won�t run into one of these drones at some point, but you don�t get people sitting back and thinking, �My! Big World! I haven�t seen ANYONE�

Anywedge, it was with such mundane chance that I ran into a PR travel woman during lunch hour today. I had just perused the homosexual card shop looking for a birthday card for my Dad that didn�t portray a rent boy in some advanced, undressed state of transactional negotiation (there were some non-gay Farr Side ones) and I was deliberating on my sandwich filling when I got hollered at. The woman had shown me round some bit of Ireland last year, and though she was vaguely pleasant she did, and I don�t want to sound cruel here, resemble Hulk Hogan in a dress.

We only said hello and what have you, but it reminded me that when she was showing me round to various local baffled tradespeople and ticket kiosk staff, she would always formally introduce me to them by saying, �This is Pablo Kickasso�the journalist.� This would have been embarrassing enough, but she didn�t do it in the fashion of, say, �This is Oscar Wilde�the writer,� in which case the assembled company could have then genuflected with bowed heads in awed deference to my uncontested genius, but more in the fashion of �This is Oscar Wilde�the convicted deviant who likes to touch young boy�s nethers,� and the situation rather called for me to immediately apologise for the humiliating abhorrence of my very existence.

She was well, since you ask.