Monday 1 December 2008

Rhymes With Punt

It was my first day back at work today (groans of disappointment all round), much of it spent on tedious back-to-work chores such as cleaning the revolting pigsty of a desk I was allocated, and trying to persuade the IT people that yes, I really did need a computer today and not in a week’s time. I was reminded of a job I used to work at with similarly anal IT policies, where everyone was assigned a computer logon, no doubt so the boss could keep track of who was updating their blogs or looking up porn (which amounts to much the same thing for some people).

These logons were, very imaginatively, composed of the first three letters of one’s family name plus the initial of one’s given name. Mine, for example, was POLL, from POLony, Lonie, and random words like that were about the limit of the amusement to be derived from this Big Brother measure. One day, I happened upon a list of new starters who would soon be receiving their shiny new logons which, if they were lucky, might be paired with an actual working computer somewhat younger than the Pleistocene mammoth.

Now, regular readers are apprised of my level of (im)maturity and enjoyment of asinine humour, so you may well imagine my utter delight and boundless glee when I read down the list to one gentleman in particular.

His name was Terrance Cunningham.