2005-01-19 - 12:40 p.m.

So in no readily discernible future news, the next few weeks should be more fun than a barrel of unemployed monkeys.

I had a personal phone call from the new MD yesterday to apologise for dropping our department like a hot potato that coincidentally had the density of a small planet that was even more coincidentally at the end of its contract, not that small planets have contracts, but if they did, this particular one wouldn�t legally be required to be paid off.

�If there�s anything I can do�� she kind of half-offered.

A couple of thoughts sprang to mind:

1. Pay me a couple of month�s salary in a gratuitous show of random benevolence that would, like a pillow employed by a drug dealer to prop up his favourite stash of coke, go some way to cushioning the blow.

2. Come down to the office, get drunk and fall about comically for my personal entertainment, perhaps responding to my mocking cries of �Dance, little corporate marionette, dance� with some kind of subservient jig.

3. I think I�ll be OK.

No prizes for guessing which response I gave. I don�t see no cold, hard cash or funny senior management dancin� today, anyway.

Next week I might just enjoy kicking back, getting up at the crack of noon and wandering round the house naked (I have the place to myself for three weeks) and (if anyone�s still reading after that disturbing image), then launching myself onto an unsuspecting job market.

One thought I had was hiring myself out to the army to come up with codenames for their campaigns. Is it me, or is the fact that we launched a directive in Iraq called �Operation Ali Baba� slightly less than sensitive the people we are �liberating�? Coming up next, �Operation Dusky-Skinned Burglars� and �Operation Round Up the Towelhead Robbers and Make Them Do The Sex With Each Other�.

Still, it�s nothing if not reassuring to see that we can compete with the Americans when it comes to degrading war crimes. Eat your little cracker heart out, Lindy England.