THE PANIC OFFICE

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[thepanicoffice]

- Vigour of Speech -

[...]

Now, where were we? Oh yes. My impromptu speech at the gala event of the season, the National Conservatism conference at the Emmanuel Centre in London, organised by .

What London Fashion Week is to ostentatious cloth sculptures never to be bought by actual humans, so this conference was to feverish imaginings of a reactionary carnival never to be bought by an actual electorate. Excitement was in the air, mingling with stale coffee breath, and I felt in my element. A chance to once again flex my oratorical muscles, which had been left to atrophy over the long months when my only interlocutor was an infant that still can’t quite pronounce the word ‘bird’. 

Time, also, to see whether I can still make the political weather; at least conjure a light political drizzle. Brollies up!

With the same prickly entitlement that was much in evidence among delegates at the event - a disguise allowing me to hide in plain sight - I walked briskly past conference centre security, who were reluctantly embroiled in an animated and doubtless fascinating discussion with one attendee about whether their lanyard had been manufactured abroad. 

I swam through the clamouring crowd and quickly annexed a space outside the cloakroom. I set out some folding chairs and, atop a makeshift stage of stacked briefcases, began to address the overspill from the main hall.

“People today are too woke!” I thundered - not a charge that could be levelled at the handful who had congregated in that small room, particularly the three men in varying stages of post-prandial nap. Warming to my theme, I spoke about what I termed ‘the spectrum of Communism’: red tape, green industries, Black lives, brown shoes with blue suits, etc.

My precise meaning, barely salvageable from the salvo of invective, was unclear, but my general thrust and vigour were warmly received. The man in the waxing gibbous phase of his snooze began gargling his own tongue, which sounded like the cheering of a distant crowd. Something about that Nurembergian noise thickens the blood and I climbed further into my rhetoric, pausing only briefly to help an elderly delegate find her shawl.

Knowing my audience, I decided to finish on the surefire crowd pleasers: Marxist councils are making it a criminal offence to misgender cats; the BBC are wasting money building a statue of the licence fee before encouraging youths to tear it down; satsumas are actually just an EU plot to reduce the size of oranges. I brought the assembled crowd - now numbering nearly 15 - into an orgiastic frenzy, clasping together their mottled paws, holding them aloft, crying “Yes! Yes! That’s how things are!”

Slick with a righteous sheen of sweat, arms raised aloft as I basked in the adulation, I skipped off the teetering stack of briefcases and through a door marked ‘Green Room’. It was in there that I saw Suella Braverman; a literally green room. Unwinding after her own speech, she was sunning herself under a hot bulb on the artificial rocks of her portable vivarium. Mopping my brow, I tried to strike up small talk with her about the Coronation but she made no effort to reply. Her unreadable, glassy eyes slewed with a kind of malign ecstasy before, through slavering lips, she commanded an aide to “release the flies”. 

Preferring the look of the conference buffet, I decided to make myself scarce.

I passed on the grey servings of oatmeal [1] and instead treated myself to a largely coagulated egg that had been coerced with some skill into a bap, I decided to take a quick turn around the rest of the event. Shadowy representatives of the Edmund Burke Foundation were milling about, handing out money in discreet brown envelopes [2]. I wandered into a panel discussion where each of the speakers managed to be in fierce agreement with one another while being in fiercer disagreement with themselves.

I also briefly caught sight of Michael Gove - unmistakable in hue and tone - gurning contentedly and talking to anyone who strayed into his vicinity about the glory years of the Hacienda. I kept a wide berth, fearing the electric frisson that always crackles between us and has made conference seasons past so vividly unforgettable.

I took refuge from the crossfire of cognitive dissonance and incipient carnal combustion in the safety of the press pen. I tried to compose myself, collect my skittering thoughts, but found I was unable to hear them above the frenetic hammering of laptop keyboards and the susurrous, satisfied recitation of artfully snide sentences.

Scarcely able to breathe in this hot furnace of ideas - the clangour ringing in my ears and mind of a new intellectual movement being bravely wrought [3] - I stumbled out into the sickly light of a London afternoon, wondering whether the world could possibly be ready for what I had just seen.

The future is here [4] and, if you squint and tilt your head, there’s something uncannily familiar about it.

--------

[1] Cleverly branded as ‘Burke’s Porridge’.

[2] They pay for everything with money in discreet brown envelopes. The people on the cake stand gave me the change for my cherry bakewell in a discreet brown envelope.

[3] Or at least crudely welded together from previous ideological wreckages; a sort of cut-and-shut conservatism in which to fearlessly careen through the modern age.

[4] As I cried slightly too loudly to a Big Issue sales representative, who looked concerned on my behalf.

[thepanicoffice]

- Paternity Grieve -

[...]

It's been seven and a half years since I last wantonly scattered pixels on these hallowed pages, and yet somehow my child is still only fifteen months old.

I prefer to think of it not as gaining a son, but as losing vital parts of myself forever. There is much to mourn the loss of.

My aggressive metabolism, once my stalwart companion and saviour, has now abandoned me. I have, in one year, grown a paunch that a decade of wild dietary excess could not inflict. 

My luxuriant hair. Gone. We will not see its like again. The central quiff has been caught in the ruthless pincer movement of a senseless and unjust war of aggression. Eventually it will find itself surrounded, cut off from rescue, before being erased completely; a victim of the insatiable territorial ambitions of my own shiny forehead. 

Exhaustion has even eroded the contours of my very personality, its edges blending with those of the bottle steriliser. We both have similar, thankless roles, spend much of our day sitting sadly in the kitchen, and occasionally emit a low grumbling noise to confirm we are still alive.

Truly, parenthood has been everything I feared and I was wise to avoid it for so long.

Yet, against my best judgement, I have resolved never to pay others to raise my child for me; a resolution that now seems foolhardy. Instead of entrusting my son to the arms of a loving professional, he has been consigned to the care of a rank amateur. The boy has spent his formative months sat in the corner of my office, functioning as an effective - if occasionally pungent - paperweight. Yet he shows no taste for port and cigars, no inclination to write and, most shamefully, little or no sartorial flare. Give him a pocket square and he simply chews the corner of it. I fear he may never become the elegant but troubled genius that I need him to be.

But change - like the complex odour of nappy cream and excrement - is in the air. 

Now, whether in a quest for food or in urgent protest at my lively but one-sided conversation, he has begun to walk and therefore has finally become very much someone else’s problem. As he totters down the Office hallway like an inebriate giraffe, I find myself temporarily freed up to once again lavish the minimum of time and energy on you, my readership; my neglected first child. 

After all, I poured so many hours into cultivating you, moulding you in my gnarled image, inspiring in you a combination of lust and awe. Since you’ll bear the scars forever anyway, it would be a shame to waste it altogether, eh? 

And, as that achingly healthy breed of absentee father, the Cycling Dad - clad in his lycra and treating strangers and squirrels to bellowed insights about marketing strategies in the nation’s quietest and most idyllic parks - will attest: it is important, nay essential, to keep up your own interests in the face of new responsibilities.

That is why I have dipped my toes back into the viscous mire of political machination; the swamp into which I wade with such practiced, amphibian grace. On the 17th of May, I managed to wangle my way into giving a speech at the much-chortled-over proceedings of the National Conservatism conference earlier this month.

The whole fascinating affair - with its confused but fiery oration, low quality egg baps, and discreet brown envelopes - will be detailed in due course. You’ll also discover the only Minister who’s spent more time in a tank than Liz Truss at a Foreign Office photo op. Let that tantalise you until my next missive.

[thepanicoffice]

New Issue

[...]

Well, it’s finally happened.

They said it couldn’t be done.

More often, they said it shouldn’t be done.

But once again, I have proven the doubters wrong and demonstrated myself capable of generational replication.

Or fatherhood, as the sentimentalists insist on calling it.

Between the grave diagnoses bandied about by so-called ‘urological experts’, and even graver ones touted by my exhausted corps of therapists, who claimed my recurrent condition [1] was either an act of profound psychological self-sabotage [2] or the necessary consequence of my cheese, port and cigar exclusive diet, I had assumed that I would never be blessed/blighted by progeny of my own.

Rumours abound, of course, of illegitimate offspring – they cling to me like cigar smoke and cheese rinds, dogging my every step. But I’ve never heeded scurrilous gossip, nor opened the letters sent to me by the courts. So as far as I know, or am legally willing to acknowledge, this is the first time this has happened.

Regardless, we cannot get hung up on our past mistakes. We must instead focus on our future ones.

There is no shortage of guidance out there advising how best to raise your children, not least the dry and functional manual produced by my own nearly lamented father [3]. While there is little doubt that Pater's unconventional methods made me the well-adjusted and only mildly substance-dependent man I am today, I’m afraid I haven’t the energy required to trap my own son in a constant web of aggressive silence for the next 18 years. I haven’t got the old man’s stamina.

Instead, perhaps the greatest gift I can bestow upon my child, is to select for them a respectable and well-meaning au pair. Someone into whose arms he can run while his mother and I loudly express our undying admiration for one another through the medium of hurled crockery [4].

Nevertheless, I still hope to be able to impart some wisdom of my own to the boy. This is going to take the form of one of those private messages people write to their children, to be opened on their 10th birthday, or in the event of the parent’s grizzly and unforeseen demise. Except, in order to get some content mileage out of it, I am publishing it here, so that the depth of my affection for this unborn creature can be known to all the world. I leave it to my secretary to make the necessary amendments as the circumstances dictate.

Hello lad

I’m sorry that I’ve not been there to see you grow because [of my untimely death at the hands of my many creditors/our diaries didn’t align for the few days a year you weren’t at boarding school/you quickly identified me as a bounder not worthy of your love and time].

I’m sorry for the condition of the land you inherit; its fetid rivers, its choked skies, its scarred and savaged earth. I’m sorry that my addiction to single-use plastics has irreparably poisoned the wellspring of life on this planet. Washing things and reusing them is so much harder than simply discarding them. But I was wrong. I see that now.

I’m sorry that you have been delivered into a society that sees you as little more than an indentured servant, upon whose aching, blistered back the comfortable retirement of your coddled forebears will be borne, as you toil in the burning gaze of a dying sun.

Finally, I’m sorry that you have been born into the seemingly endless night created by the titanic shadow that I cast over this fragile world.

But on this, [your 10th birthday/your 20th birthday/your 60th birthday/Wednesday], I want you to know: you can eclipse me. 

Yours can be the name the peoples of this sphere cry aloud, in pain, in devotion, in the expectation of mercy or salvation. You can be the darkness that swells the perpetual black I leave in my wake. Or you can be the light that banishes it altogether. 

The world is but clay ready to receive your imprint, waiting for your fire to mark it indelibly.

The choice, all choices, are yours.

I love you. And I will use the flayed skin of my foes to line your golden bassinet.

The bins go out on Fridays.

Yours, in fierce adoration,

Your father (the Editor)

______________

[1] Egotistic flaccification, according to disreputable medical textbooks.

[2] Whether my unconscious did so out of spite or through the noble motive of a better tomorrow remains unclear.

[3] The Cold Hand of Indifference: A Victorian Father’s Guide to Childrearing in this Cursed Century intermittently climbs to #1 on Amazon’s bestseller list under the ‘Callous Self-help’ category.

[4] Or quietly declare our dedication via the medium of passive aggressive taunts uttered through rictus grins.

[thepanicoffice]

Return of the Native: Football’s belated homecoming

[...]

This Office has always supported and endorsed its nation's efforts in all forms of competitive kicking [1].

The fact that we have only now decided to vocalise our unwavering commitment should in no way be interpreted as a late Damascene conversion; the sharp creases in our replica shirts are no indicator of a shallow and snivelling opportunism.

Even if they were, hitching oneself to hurtling bandwagons is surely the most effective way of slipstreaming through existence. Winners invariably make for the best bedfellows. Even now, my pen hovers in readiness over the deed to a Tuscan villa. Next week, should oil be discovered there, my counterfeit Algerian passport is ready to go. One must be chameleonic, prepared for every eventuality.

But for now, and, I’m prepared to swear, every minute up until now, my heart and spine is forever England. My chilblains are forever England. My rash is possibly French but it has recently come around to an English way of thinking. My liver will be England long after the rest of me is gone.

For that reason, the time is ripe for a few words on the English association football team [2].

I have been told that one of their most valuable traits as a team is their diversity. Fundamentally, I believe that all football players are of a very specific type – practically the same person at their core, probably all called Jason – so I highly doubt that can truly be the case.

But unlike, for example, the suddenly amnesiac sections of the froth-for-pay press, or that one lone Tory MP who has managed to paint himself into a stimulating Sunday evening unboxing, admiring and re-boxing his collectable Margaret Thatcher toby jugs, I take no issue with their public political gestures.

Being not so much woke as incredibly drowsy after a few sherries, I treat their kneeling with the same quiet indulgence I do anyone trying to take a stand for a better world, whether that be the charity workers I cross the city to avoid or the repeated attempts of Office staff to unionise [3]. I chuckle patronisingly, safe in the knowledge that we’re trapped together in this sclerotic body politic, torpid and wheezing at the most minor exertions, and nothing will ever meaningfully change. God bless it.

Like most others, I find myself curiously, even erotically, drawn to their manager, Graham Billingsgate – kindly, well-tailored, his face the picture of ill-shaven hawkishness, looking like everyone’s favourite woodwork teacher. Recent polls place his public approval rating higher than that of Churchill himself. Winston admittedly cuts less of a dash in a waistcoat but his victory over a full-strength Germany was more decisive, if equally reliant on late substitutions.

Perhaps the thing I like most about this England team is that they had the generosity and good grace to win their semi-final in a way that has brought pleasure and satisfaction to our troubled and splintering Union. The English are happy for reaching their first final of a major men’s tournament since before my father even made the pivotal decision about which side of the Cold War he would come down on. The rest of the UK are happy because they got there through a controversial decision that provides yet more evidence of perfidious Albion being handed an undeserved victory. That betrays a level of thoughtfulness and dedication to keeping the Kingdom united that you’d never see from those rancorous Scots.

So here we are – this nation of shopkeepers, of cropsharers, of sharp coppers, of sheep croppers, and probably much else besides (footballers being the obvious one to mention) – on the cusp of achieving something astonishing. Astonishing in the sense that, by the basic metrics of population and wealth, a nation of our size probably shouldn’t have gone 25 governments, 11 Prime Ministers, and the fractious entry and withdrawal from an international political union between visits to a final.

Nevertheless. Nevertheless…

Football, that faithless gadabout, carousing abroad with his many and varied floozies – some from the Americas, some Continentals, far too many of them German – might just, after these 55 long years, be coming home.

If he does, I shall give him a piece of my bloody mind.

Or perhaps the warm allure of his exotic, if emotionally demonstrative, Italian mistress will be too much to resist...

As I said, winners make for the best bedfellows.

-------------------------

[1] The Falklands War was famously resolved with a shinning tournament – Dutchman’s rules (trousers rolled up to the knee, no clogs, first to expose the bone wins) and a comprehensive victory for Coldstream Guards Sergeant Elmer ‘Razorshins’ Ruddle – which to my mind remains England’s finest post-war achievement.

[2] This being how they are always referred to by the true fans.

[3] Cheerfully thwarted.

[thepanicoffice]

Half Crown Piece

[...]

I myself have, on occasion, been a member of several of the great European Royal Families [1]. I weave myself into them quietly, like hereditary susceptibility to gout, and then disappear without warning, like embezzled charitable donations.

And yet, there is more – a great deal more – that qualifies me to opine, with the zest of a gossipy courtier, on the travails of our much-maligned monarchy.

Indeed, at first glance, there is much that unites me with the Duchess of Sussex: I have had a moderately successful acting career stymied by a torrid love affair with a troubled redhead [2], have a publicly venomous relationship with my father that has played out on the front pages of the gutter press [3], and (I assume) we have both secretly urinated in the vestry at St George’s Chapel in Windsor before a major event was due to take place.

Yet despite these almost eerie similarities, I’m afraid I am at a loss to understand the Duchess’s mindset and the Sussexes’ candid and inexcusably American interview.

Like her, I have had my share of unpleasant skirmishes with the media. I too know the sting of being outrageously accused by spiteful commentators of ‘not being black enough to have experienced racism’. However, unlike Meghan, I managed to rise above it and, with dignity, continued to deliver my impromptu speech at the MOBO Awards.

In fact, I have relished the ongoing war of words (and, briefly, before I saw sense, letter bombs) between myself and that shrill costermonger of pungent, overripe opinions, Piers Morgan. Having spent much of the early 2000s leaving messages on my own voicemail calling him an elaborate mutton-sculpture in the hope that they would eventually find their way back to his hot, puce little ears, I simply cannot understand the Duchess’s reticence to exchange insults with a man with such a hefty trade deficit.

The enmity of Piers Morgan is a gift to be treasured. If they did it in vouchers, I’d give them to my dearest relations [4] for every birthday and Christmas.

The point I am getting at here is that, with time and the patient support of the ermine-swaddled nucleus of the Royal Family, the Duchess could have learned the ancient rules of combat on which their relationship with the media is founded. When they offer ritual humiliation, you smile sheepishly and endure it. When they offer you incriminating allegations, you chunter unconvincingly with anecdotes about pizza outlets. When they hound a relative to their death, you cheerfully accept it in exchange for some bar polish for your gilded cage.

This is the quid pro quo of the empty cipher of your life, the price paid for the honour of drifting around needlessly large and difficult to heat houses; for the privilege of attending garden fetes and asking people, incessantly, what it is they do; for soaking in the quiet scorn of your social circle, who are just as wealthy as you but don’t have to spend every other day trapped in the pallid light of the hospital ward they are opening.

But no, clearly those privileges – of being an absurd and costly anachronism, like an antique foot-pedal sewing machine or leech beauty treatments – aren’t good enough for the Sussexes.

That’s why, in my fleeting outrage, I have created a petition calling for Harry and his children to be removed from the line of succession, finally injecting a bit of democracy into the principle of hereditary succession.

At least, until I lose interest and, with the true privilege of the super-rich – unencumbered by the stifling confines of duty to an institution whose right to exist is predicated on its own powerlessness – I return to the warm azure waters of my tropical island, far beyond the gaze of a voracious press, free to shoot idly at porpoises.

---------

[1] I still rule over a small protectorate in Schleswig-Holstein, whether they recognise it or not, which entitles me to a proportion of the yield of the annual pig harvest. One day soon, I will make my way there in my best overalls and my hog-plucking gloves and take what is rightfully mine.

[2] Antony Worrall Thompson can deny it all he likes. We both know what happened and there’s only one way to interpret those photographs.

[3] And, never one to miss out on a scoop, even one to my own extreme national humiliation, the pages of the Panic Office itself.

[4] Had any survived that regrettable and not provably suspicious yacht fire two years ago.

[thepanicoffice]

Lazy Thoughts, Energetically Expressed

[...]

I have now taken time to fully absorb the terrifying vision of the future Culture War set out in the solemn speculative reportage of our very own Lydia Happenstance. 

War is always futile [1] but it is never more so than when its causes and ultimate aims are unclear, lost in the fog of loathing that clouds all comprehension, with nothing visible but the dense miasma of hatred that hangs only inches before your eyes.

But I am nothing if not a hateful man, exhaling spite into the atmosphere like some sort of malevolent reed diffuser.

That is why I have heeded my country’s call and allowed myself to be conscripted in the next great cataclysm of the age. I shoulder arms and, like a cultural Don Quixote, charge off on my knock-kneed mare to attack the windmills that surround us. And not quaint, English countryside windmills either – Marxist windmills, churning out communist wheat for their gritty proletarian bread… [2]

…I’ve managed to confuse myself with that metaphor.

The point is, I was delighted to read about the powers this brave Government is introducing which will, if I understand correctly, allow me to sue any Universities/educational institutes that refuse me the opportunity to hector and unilaterally discourse at their profoundly mediocre students.

As someone who has had platforms dropped from beneath them faster than a condemned man at the gallows, I welcome this move as a useful corrective to those namby-pamby pinkos who think they have the right to ignore me and my confused, bilious invective.

No more, students! Drop your economy packs of pasta, bring your newly acquired venereal diseases, and listen up, on pain of costly legal action! 

It’s about time that someone started tipping over stalls in this supposed ‘marketplace of ideas’, scattering their tawdry products hither and thither. As I have noted elsewhere, I prefer to hold court in the centre of the ‘sweltering, crowded bazaar of thoughts in which I shriek at the top of my lungs about the quality of my wares, indifferent to whether anyone purchases them.’

Weather and disease permitting, here are the dates, locations and and topics of my entirely unwelcomed upcoming lecture tour, Lazy Thoughts, Energetically Expressed:

31 April 2021: The Oxford Union, Oxford University – Topic: ‘The Geneva Convention: Guarantor of humanity or bureaucratic red-tape constraining our potential?’

3 May 2021: Third Year Art Exhibition, Outer St. Martins – Topic: ‘Racism is only the fourth best type of discrimination. Here are the top three.’

5 May 2021: FrisbeeSoc AGM, University of Tungsten - Topic: ‘Pandemics as holy vengeance: Are the BBC to blame for COVID-19? (Yes, clearly)’

9 May 2021: Archery Club Social, University of Neasden – Topic: ‘Archery as sublimation of aberrant sexual desire’

10 May 2021: Drama Soc, Blackpool College – Topic: ‘Coup de Theatre: How to hasten the much-deserved death of the Liberal Arts’

12 May 2021: BAME Forum, Winscombe Adult Learning Centre - Topic: ‘The Black and White Minstrel Show: A victim of history?’

14 May 2021: On a soapbox in the middle of the canteen, University of West Anglia – Topic: ‘What are you looking at? You want some?’

19 May 2021: Parents’ evening, St Winifred’s School for Unruly Youths – Topic: ‘Clive of India: The powdered wig that powered a continent (but just how sexy was he really?)’

30 May 2021: Recreation grounds, trying to keep pace with the Athletics meetup, University of Cumberland – Topic: ‘Reasons I wouldn’t bed your mother, Jim’

I look forward to seeing you there. And if I don’t, I look forward, with equal or greater pleasure, to dragging you and your institutions through the already overburdened courts until you finally start showing me and my unfocused arguments some respect.

And no passing impolite notes about me at the back, or I’ll have you imprisoned.

I like my speech like I like my markets: completely unrestrained until it starts to inconvenience me personally.

_________________________________

[1]  Especially when I’m involved and actively working to undermine both sides for financial gain, as is generally the case.

[2] And before anyone accuses me of a right wing bias, I’ll have you know that I made something of a reputation for myself in the 80s by repeatedly interrupting Conservative Society dinners and shouting that Milton Friedman exclusively wore frilly pink negligees to bed. True story*.

----------

*True that I shouted this, not true that Friedman wore negligees to bed, as my libel lawyers, through several fiery emails, have been at pains to stress.

[thepanicoffice]

A Fragile Peace: Armistice after the Great Culture War

[...]

It’s no secret that I do not have my finger on the pulse of our age. I can, given time, remember to hold a mirror up to its mouth to see if it’s still breathing, but that’s about it. This is largely due my being a seething cauldron of self-regard and venality, but it may be for other equally valid reasons too. I don’t really care.

But that means this esteemed chronicle is falling woefully behind. The last time we broke a story, it was about my torrid affair with the then-Minister of Defence, which I only revealed because, due to an unrelated matter, I needed a public alibi. Sadly, I cannot always rely on my own sexual allure to the political classes to push us to the forefront of news.

The only way to get ahead in the publishing game is to start commissioning stories on things you assume are inevitably going to happen. That’s why I have asked our war correspondent to report back from the frontlines of the impending societal rupture that will define our post-pandemic world. I present to you, from several years hence, the Armistice of the Great Culture War.

[...]

Words by Lydia Happenstance, Culture War Correspondent

Last Friday, on the third day of the third month, 2025, after nearly one and half years of confused and needless violence, the guns, sirens, and opinion pieces fell silent to mark the beginning of Armistice and an end to the Great Culture War.

It began as a battle of words between the UK Conservative Party and an enemy that they had themselves largely created; a Frankenstein’s monster stitched together from scraps of Daily Telegraph premium content, animated by fears of civil unrest and falling house prices.

Their repeated assertions that you can’t say anything anymore, echoed and expanded upon by their outriders in the national press, culminated in the creation of the British Bastion of Culture [1], a paramilitary group whose mission statement was as emphatic as it was baffling: ‘To save Winston Churchill from the Marxists’.

Seeing this as a provocation, a protagonist in the Culture War gradually coalesced. After dozens of public meetings and committees of varying degrees of formality, the People’s Vanguard was established on a Zoom conference call in October 2021. Composed largely of sullen academics, irascible Twitter activists and musicians who have been unable to find meaningful employment since the COVID-19 pandemic, the Vanguard – known more commonly as ‘The Wokeists’ – began to prosecute a bloody and merciless campaign of tolerance on an unsuspecting populace.

They became known for their guerrilla tactics, affixing plaques of detailed historical context about the role of slavery and structural racism onto statues, buildings, and Cabinet Ministers in a series of daring night-time raids. It was said of them that ‘the armies of the Woke never sleep’.

Retaliation from the BBC was swift and unforgiving, as they took control of local television stations and forced broadcasters to play the German episode of Fawlty Towers, which they mistakenly thought was deemed offensive by ‘the Lefties’.

By the end, and possibly from the very beginning, it was clear that many of the combatants no longer understood what they were fighting for, only what they were fighting against. The War became an end in itself, rather than a means to any kind of glorious future. Ultimately, it was attrition and the exponential increase in casualties that made a ceasefire inevitable.

The Armistice was signed in Droitwich, for reasons unknown. It was attended by the democratic committee of the Vanguard, led by their Tribune, the distressingly middle-class Marxist poet, Rupert Trebuchet MA, and by BBC leader and regular Spiked columnist, Sebastian Spitegills. No eye contact was made or pleasantries exchanged as the parties, mediated by the comedian Michael Macintyre – chosen for being so banal and anodyne as to be a wholly neutral party in the Culture War – hammered out the terms of peace.

The Treaty of Droitwich runs to some 270 pages with many complex agreements made. No off-colour jokes are to be told below the 28th parallel, meaning that you will now have to travel North of Ipswich if you want to watch a Carry On film or reference the name of the dog in Dambusters. Equally, those who wish to use the term ‘problematic’ or write a Guardian long read about culturally appropriative Halloween costumes will be obliged to travel to the South of this line that formally marks the schism in our divided nation.

Both parties have agreed to stop using the word ‘triggered’, whether ironically or unironically.

Perhaps most controversially, but in the spirit of compromise, both parties have agreed that certain issues, such as trans rights and the utilitarian calculus of whether or not Churchill was a net positive to the world, will be uniformly responded to with the dictum: “It’s actually very complicated actually.”

The Treaty also allowed for the exchange of prisoners of war, many of whom have been away from their uncomprehending and slightly embarrassed families for many months. Sadly, deaths in the POW camps of both sides have been so high that very few will be returning home. The Bastionites, considering hanging to be a tradition that uniquely represents ‘the very best of British’, have been enthusiastically performing summary executions since hostilities first began. The Wokeists took a less violent but more tedious approach, instead forcing captured fighters to undergo Tesco’s corporate Awareness and Sensitivity Training. Many of the BBC soldiers, however, preferred to take their own lives rather than learn what a microaggression is or how to avoid speaking disparagingly to BAME colleagues. Deaths number in the thousands.

The UK Labour Party hailed this historic accord. Speaking in the House of Commons, party leader Sir Keir Starmer was forceful in his praise for the Treaty, saying: “This is an event that has occurred and we recognise that.”

Prime Minister Michael Gove, when asked for comment, responded obliquely: “My mandibles are sharp and my belly hungry. Bring in the infants that I might slake my abhorrent thirsts.”

Despite the progress that has been made, many observers are predicting that the peace that has been brokered will be a fragile one. On Sunday morning, on the outskirts of the Sussex village of Piddinghoe, a small skirmish broke out over whether the War should be commemorated with red or white poppies. The word ‘Imperialist’ was spray-painted on a telephone box before a library was set on fire in quick reprisal. Many more such incidents can be expected before peace truly settles in.

There are even reports that some will not accept the hard-won peace. Former Commandant Laurence Fox, the second highest ranking General of the BBC army, is said to be stationed in a bunker on the Isle of Man, where he has either not been told or simply refuses to acknowledge the ceasefire. He will not be alone. No contact has been made with Julia Hartley-Brewer’s submarine for more than three weeks.

Speaking to civilians – those who have been victims of the violence, displaced by the upheavals, or simply mildly inconvenienced by having the same episode of Fawlty Towers repeated on their televisions for the last year – they remain unclear as to why any of this happened in the first place.

“I don’t understand any of it,” said Clive Purloin, a roadworks engineer, who was caught briefly in the crossfire as rival groups clashed in Liverpool over whether Ken Dodd was a fascist whose statue should be toppled. “Really. Not a clue.”

It is a view shared by virtually everyone.

The signing of the Treaty of Versailles. It was like this but much, much stupider. ----------------

[1] Only belatedly realising, to their incandescent, bovine fury, that this meant they shared an acronym with an organisation purportedly representing everything that they despised. Attempts to rename the group were prevented by them having entered into a two-year contract for the website domain

[thepanicoffice]

A Grand New Day

[...]

I realise that this is a very difficult time for everyone, and this is, on balance, probably the last thing you needed to hear right now, but... it is with a heavy heart that I must announce my return to the public sphere.

For too many months, the national discourse has been free from the long and ghoulish shadow that I cast, leaving you all to frolic about carelessly in a sunny glade of light chit-chat and petty recrimination. Well now the sky darkens, the seas froth, nature recoils, and the comfort of doubt is snatched from you: the fun stops here.

In  some respects, I had taken to the life of the wealthy recluse like a duck to l’orange. I have been a stalwart companion, a faithful confidante, and a tender lover to myself for these past months. I developed at first a grudging acceptance of, and then a keen taste for, my own urine. I now find myself convinced of its healing properties and somewhat addicted to its tangy savour [1].

Despite being trapped with such stellar company and moreish bodily fluids, the air of my study, soupy with candlelight and the mingled odours of putrefaction and blue cheese, begins to stale, and the days stretch beyond comprehension or endurance.

Even my Christmas presents to myself seemed staid and predictable. I simply haven’t the space for any more carriage clocks [2] or bindings of erotic Victorian lithographs [3].

Perhaps the world outside my window has simply become interesting enough to once again engage my fleeting attention. I have today awoken to more ridiculous coups than a pigeon uprising in Trafalgar Square [4]. Now seems to be the ideal time to leap back into the fray - my personal success rate in instigating insurrections stands at a more than competitive 68% after all. Violent uprisings should never be left to laughable incompetents and lacklustre fascists - my culture is not your costume, damn your eyes!

Perhaps the hour has indeed come to haul back the bookcase barricading the window, heave up its ancient, sun-warped sash frame and, in my faintly soiled nightshirt, cry with a renewed vigour into the trembling light of the New Year:

“You boy, what day is this?”

The boy seems uncertain. His mother keeps a determined gaze on the floor and quickly ushers him past the building. Undaunted, unabashed, I shout again: “I’ll tell you what day it is! It is a grand new day in which to PANIC!”

--------------------------------------- [1] The calcic fragments of bladder stones, carefully acquired over years through a diet richer than Croesus, also make for a crunchy treat.

[2] What was I thinking? My drawing room now ticks and tuts at me like a ghastly court of disappointed aunts. What even is a carriage clock?

[3] Once you’ve seen one shapely ankle, one ruffled bodice, one slightly elevated bustle, you’ve very much seen them all.

[4] A homophonic joke that would be much funnier if it were being bellowed into your ear above the genial din of a saloon bar, carried on my hot, port-soured breath and augmented by my own delighted guffaws.

[thepanicoffice]

Washington or Bust

[...]

It’s been a busy few days for me, as you might imagine – freighting falsified postal votes down long, lonely stretches of the Nevada desert as I ponder whether or not to let the heavy curtain of History fall on the second act of America’s flirtation with fascism.

Heavy is the head that wears the coronet of corruption, but I bear it manfully [1].

Such are the trifling troubles of the chess-master. But what of the pawn? What of today’s yesterday’s man, Donald J. Trump? Don’t play coy – you remember him: the creature who looks like the pocket fluff of a heavy smoker has been scattered over an aggressively baked camembert.

For a man of such renowned sphincteric laxity, we have heard precious little escape those ample fleshy pillows in recent days, preferring to leave that honour to trusted professional communicators like Rudy Giuliani and bewildered insurrectionists shrieking at the top of their lungs.

But what is really going on inside the White House, in these febrile times?

Who better-placed to answer that question than the dust-gathering bust of the estimable Sir Winston Churchill? [2]

Before he joins the sharp-elbowed queue [3] of current and former staffers as they rush to sign exposé book deals, Our Man in Washington™ is here to provide a first-hand [4] account of the Trump administration’s final reckoning.

[...]

Wednesday 4 November 2020:

The day began like any other in the lamentable reign of this porcine demagogue: with the most powerful man in the world bellowing at his television and agitating a mustard stain on one of his inexcusably long red ties.

Recriminations are hurled, along with pens, staplers and, very nearly, myself, at the heads of the cowering courtiers whose names he has not bothered, and now will never have the chance, to learn. He calls them cowards, reptiles and – in his own colourful demotic – ‘asswipes’. And that’s just his two lackwit sons. He may even consider them terms of endearment.

In quiet moments, after his nap but before his afternoon attempts to sunder the remaining bonds between the people and the democratic institutions of the Republic, I have seen him indulging in arts and crafts time. It is quite a sight to see the leader of the free world, on his knees with safety scissors and glue stick, carefully crafting an unconvincing presidential pardon that is disguised to look like stock order form for the stationery cupboard, which he plans to leave on his successor’s desk in the hope that it will be accidentally signed. Such are the ridiculous schemes that we are pushed to in our moments of despair, as failure descends inexorably like the dark of night. In the final days in his bunker, Hitler, it is little known, briefly wondered aloud whether he could belatedly pivot his career towards becoming a stage entertainer.

In the evening, in a weaker moment when he fleetingly considers accepting his fate with a modicum of dignity and grace, he delivers a speech to his gathered staff that might be moving if it weren’t so confused and offensive. As far as I can decipher, he tells them that although he may not know them individually, or even care for them – again, directed at the uncomprehending vacuity of his own sons’ faces – he appreciates their loyalty. In a touching moment, he warmly grasps the shoulder of his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and tells him that he’s welcome to become his butler any time, whoever he is. His meandering oratory comes to a close when he declares his intentions to concede defeat, then purchase the moon and claim sanctuary there.

24 minutes later, he violently reconsiders, describing such humility as ‘loser talk’, though reaffirming his intention to buy the moon. A ‘genius move’, in his own estimation.

From where I am now perched on a bookshelf, next to some conspicuously un-thumbed volumes of my own Histories, I can see his oddly proportioned silhouette strutting and fretting his dwindling moments on stage, worrying bald patches in the Oval Office carpets, as he says the words “Supreme Court?” in a range of pitches and volumes to no one in particular.

The President now looks, as I am so fond of saying, for obvious reasons, like a busted flush.

Were I able to stand, I would stand by my original assessment of nearly four years ago: that the man is to the noble art of rhetoric what I, an armless statuette, am to the ignoble art of jazz piano.

Words to remember him by. Along with, if there is any justice, the words ‘guilty’ and ‘gross malfeasance in a public office’.

Now we are left to pray that he will be sentenced to a lifetime of photo opportunities and signing autographs for every one of the tens of millions who voted for him and who, despite their resilient unwillingness to confront this obvious fact, he held and still holds in utter, rictus-grinning, hand-sanitising contempt.

The kind of man of the people that the Editor of this wretched periodical can no doubt appreciate.

I believe he’s currently out golfing somewhere. Meanwhile, I have spent several hours on the phone to the Chief Executive of Pfizer, discussing complex matters of epidemiology and logistics. Someone has to run this place until January. And, given that the American Republic, in her glorious wisdom, has seen fit to elect that most dubious of God’s creatures – an Irishman – I’ll probably have to run it for the foreseeable future too.

But as my human namesake once said: “The price of greatness is responsibility."

All I ask as a reward is that they place me near a window this time.

Photograph: Kevin Dietsch/Pool/EPA

_________________________

[1] Despite my congenitally weak neck – the result of a genetic vertebral floppiness that my enemies, biographers and parents have all been so quick to mock.

[2] Assuming his view isn’t obscured by a vase or a pot plant.

[3] No small task, given his cruel lack of elbows.

[4] Again, I accept my words are ill-chosen and cruel.

[thepanicoffice]

Brush with Death

[...]

Through plague, famine, financial crisis, and bourgeois summer music festival season, the Panic Office has always been there for its dedicated, maladjusted, slightly simple readership.

We have long prided ourselves on providing a faintly nourishing mental gruel of content – a sort of intellectual starvation rations – to keep your grey matter from wasting away entirely. This has never been more important than now, when you remain confined indoors reflecting on the senselessness of your own existence and the cruel accident of your birth.

But we also like to keep things light and cheerful.

So, let’s talk about DEATH.

I don’t regularly check the Office’s post-box but I would assume we have been inundated with glowing feedback on my semi-regular jaunts through art history. Having graduated primary education, I consider myself to meet all the criteria to be classed as a fine art scholar and well-equipped to take you on a brief tour of death in the visual imagination of the West.

It’s as well to remind ourselves that the darkness that dwells beyond the precipice of the mortal coil has occupied the thoughts of our ancestors since the first time some unwashed maniac picked up a wet clot of pigments and, for reasons best known only to them, decided to draw something they could only see in their head.

Let us go, and don’t fear the reaper. But don’t make eye contact with him either, for God’s sake. That’s just asking for trouble.

[...]

Unknown, Renaissance

Death has not always been a figure of fear – here we see his unmistakable skeletal form strutting and jiving along, barely clad in an entirely superfluous toga, like a slightly-less creepy John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Actually, it is probably that self-same fever that has claimed the life of this chubby-wristed infant. However, as I assume was probably the case for most people alive in the Middle Ages, he doesn’t look very sad to be going. If I’d have been born only to discover that I had no access to warm towels and was forced to empty my bowels out of a window like a common Welshman, I’d have embraced death as a friend too.

Death and Life, Gustav Klimt, 1915

This gaudily garbed grim cuts a sinister figure. He brandishes, with menace, the distinct gnarly form of a Nice ’n’ Spicy Nik Nak – its seemingly harmless, even comical, appearance at odds with the often-lethal sodium content contained within. The spectre leers at this writhing tissue of existence, threatening it with, presumably, heart disease and morbid obes– Ooh , is that a nipple? It is! Great painting. Though it is distractingly close to that child. That sort of spoils my enjoyment.

What were we talking about? Oh yes, Death. In summary, it’s hard to be too fearful when it’s stalking around in vibrant patchwork robes that Elton John would consider unforgivably tasteless and showy.

Death and the miser, Hieronymus Bosch, 1490

This irritatingly long and hard-to-crop image (it’s clear little if any thought was given to future generations of facetious technophobe bloggers by Mr Bosch) requires quite a lot of unpacking. Its dense and layered symbolism is obscure but, when one has assumed one can easily decipher art for as long as I have, its meaning becomes clear: bribe the ugly devils that crowd your life with a bulging sack of jealously-hoarded gold and perhaps Death will overlook you when your time comes. Most importantly, shun Christ and his shiny promises even when your demise looks inevitable – that’s exactly what he wants you to do, clever bastard.

Bosch, never one to know when to just put the brush down and step away from a canvas, has included all manner of largely meaningless additional detail. One feature, though, stands out: the hideous, stunted rat-gremlin carries a letter, waving it aloft, unnoticed by all. We will never know what it says. It’s almost a perfect metaphor for the Panic Office itself.

Unknown, 17th Century

Ye Gods! I don’t even know where to look. Someone get this man some damned trousers! And who thought it would be a good idea to equip a blindfolded man with a scythe? Absurd.

Der beste Arzt (The Best Doctor), Alfred Kubin, 1901

I can relate to this one. Death, mysterious and even slightly sexy, carelessly smothers this excessively long man with one hand. This is basically what my hangovers feel like when I’ve been trying to match Ann Widdecombe drink for drink at our monthly cribbage night. Like me, the slender victim clasps his hands in supplication, praying to the mercy of his nameless tormentor that his suffering might end. However, unlike me, this man doesn’t seem inclined drink a vial of baboon’s tears which I have found, after years of trial and error, is really the only effective remedy.

Unknown, Medieval

This is a fascinating depiction of Death as a sort of recognisable breed of pub bore, droning on, hectoring, sharing his conspiracy theories about how the dinosaurs really went extinct, deathsplaining to the living. Look at it, wagging its skeletal figure at this clearly disinterested person. It’s like, we get it: death comes for us all. But there’s no need to be such a dullard about it.

Danse Macabre, Thomas Rowlandson, 1815-6

This is the first work that makes me empathise with Death. All that power and yet every day the same tedium: more double pneumonias, more malarial fevers, more shower slippages. Yawn. Many of the best deaths – bubonic plague, the bloody flux, leprosy – have been all but eradicated (thanks a lot, modern medicine!) So what is left to look forward to? The odd atrocity or elephant goring, sadly few and far between. You think you’re having a boring lockdown? Take a moment to put yourself in Death’s shoes (black crocs I reckon; practical but essentially evil).

Graphic illustration of Lubeck mural, after 1463

We’ve all been to parties like this, cajoled into dancing by others regardless of whether your outfit really allows for it. Now imagine those other partygoers are the dead themselves. Terrible evening.

The Hypochondriac, Richard Dagley, 1827

Speaking as someone who’s died of hypochondria twice before, I know this scene only too well. One sits at home, trying to quietly contemplates one’s… eery painting of a prancing clown… only to spy, from the corner of your eye, Death’s chittering mandibles lurch from the gloom. Meanwhile, your pet cat (or monkey; the quality here is rather poor) offers you no comfort as you descend into a clammy-browed panic. Jesus, I need to get my blood pressure checked. Some days I can’t sleep for the hammering arrhythmia of my backfiring heart, I can feel it behind my eyes, and my sight fades until I am left to face…

La Jeune Fille et la Mort, Marianne Stokes, 1900

…Oh Christ, this guy. This morose tosser. This gloomy dullard. This Sisters of Mercy album cover reject, come to bore you with his self-indulgent monologues about the ‘black lips of encroaching night’ or whatever GCSE poetry he’s most recently written after his parents have sent him to bed for failing to use a drinks coaster on the good table. I don’t know where he got that robe from but the big lads in his form are going to give him hell for that come Monday. But that’s fine, he doesn’t care, he’s used to being misunderstood, as he thinks no one apart from him has ever worn pale makeup and been really into the ‘complex, violence artistry’ of 80s slasher films. Tedious prick. Just get over yourself and end me! No, I’m not impressed by your lamp. Arse.

[thepanicoffice]

Light touch precautions, aggressively implemented

[...]

STAFF BULLETIN – PNCOFF20-0924/YF

READING BRUTALLY ENCOURAGED.

It has been brought to my attention by certain bold (some might say foolhardy) individuals, speaking out on behalf of their more wisely timid colleagues, that my last bulletin was not well received.

Far from having their deadened souls stirred by my poetic evocation of the pungent delights of the workplace, supposedly ‘legitimate concerns’ have been raised. 

“Wait”, you have apparently shrieked in your hysterical way, the wave of nausea cresting up your oesophagus before dashing against the back of your teeth: “What steps are you taking to ensure that the Office is COVID safe?”

As I have tried to reassure these self-appointed staff representatives, during their brief, failed, bloody attempt to unionise in the wake of this crisis: I have taken every precaution that I deem necessary. And even a few that I think are entirely gratuitous.

Starting tomorrow, the following sensible ‘light touch’ precautions will be aggressively implemented (thereby making them, in fact, rather ‘heavy touch’ precautions) to ensure that the Panic Office is seen as an industry leader in workplace virus control [1]:

All staff will be obliged to wear balaclavas, sourced from certain separatist paramilitary groups with which I have a loose financial interest. Soaking them in mouthwash will likely eradicate all harmful microbes. Kerosene is more effective but will increase the likelihood of troubling hallucinations. You pays your money, you takes your choice.

Relatedly, all beards will be forcibly shaved, though that’s not a new policy.

All staff will be equipped with a special ‘social distancing’ hula hoop, two metres in diameter to ensure the continuous demarcation of a safe zone. If their rate of gyration slows or the hoop falls to the ground, a sharp though probably not fatal electric shock will be administered.

I have installed a labyrinthine one-way system that leads all the way through the gloomy bowels of the Office, meaning that the working day will need to be extended by seven hours to account for trips to the toilet, visits to the Fret a Danger café, trips back to the toilet after eating its dubious sandwiches, etc.

On that note, I have now very generously added a second toilet/bucket – please empty it regularly into the guttering from the third-floor window. Those working near the second and first-floor windows are advised to bring waterproof clothing and a cheerful resilience.

You will be prohibited from seeing, mixing with, or speaking to your friends and families for the rest of this pandemic, to minimise the risk of infection and the attendant impact on working hours. A basic cardboard shanty town has been carelessly constructed in E-Wing for staff to fritter away their squalid lives in the company of the colleagues they hold in hateful contempt.

There will be rectal thermometer checks every half hour (lubricant not provided; butter is available for purchase from the Fret). Anyone running a temperature will be required to immediately self-isolate down the abandoned ink mine shaft [2].

Every four hours, all open plan spaces will be firebombed. When the alarm sounds you must leave your desks and walk in the direction of Fret. DO NOT take any personal belongings - they must drown in the cleansing fire.

The herd of Office lawyers will be roaming the floors, offering a complementary last will and testament service. Bequests made out to our charitable foundation, the Orphans and Widows of Panic Fund [3], will be solemnly (but enthusiastically) accepted [4].

I hope that these measures bring you a measure of comfort that, alas, will never again be felt by your dearly departed union leaders [5].

Now, I refuse to say this for a third time: haul your degraded carcasses back to work. Wait there. And PANIC.

_____

[1] According to Amnesty International’s rankings, we are only industry leaders in workplace beatings and suppression of employee rights. I aim to challenge for the top spot in several exciting new categories this year.

[2] Apparently ink cannot be mined and I was "woefull ill-informed" for trying, but now I have a perfectly serviceable plague pit-cum-self-isolation grotto, so I’ve had the last last laugh.

[3] Of which, since the untimely deaths of my parents in a suspiciously violent hotel trouserpress accident in 1994, I stand to be one of the major beneficiaries.

[4] However, I draw the line at leaving money to wasteful nonsense like cat charities/donkey sanctuaries/wasp rehabilitation clinics, or the like. That is not the kind of sentimental concern I am willing to have my lawyers facilitate.

[5] As they helplessly hobble and crawl through the Forest of Tears that backs on to the Office, flinching at every rustle of leaf and snap of twig, ever watchful, ever fearful, of the dread approach of the Nameless Ones. May God have mercy on their tender collectivist flesh.

[thepanicoffice]

♫ Return or the Sack ♪

[...]

STAFF BULLETIN – PNCOFF20-0922/XE

READING MANDATORY.

To the faithless curs who are currently stealing a living –

These are, as you will already be aware from numberless perfunctory email preambles, ‘strange’ times. ‘Unprecedented’, even, if that heightens the numbed excitement of mild peril that has sustained you through these tedious months.

In news that is certain to disappoint many of you, I have remained well throughout this process, safely sequestered away in my purpose-built luxury contamination chamber. There were a few occasions on which I felt sure I had succumbed to the dread virus, but this was largely the result of opiate migraines and lungs that already rattle and rasp like wasps’ nests when I so much as lift a glass of port to my lips.

In news that will disappoint more of you still, in spite of a worsening financial outlook – unparalleled since our attempt to rebrand as an erotic stationers in 1984 – there will be no redundancies, voluntary or otherwise. You aren’t getting away that easily.

Now, you’re going to hear a lot of conflicting messages over the coming days about whether or not you are expected to return to the workplace.

The Government, in an attempt to lighten the public mood and help them while away the dull hours, have been communicating public policy in the form of gnomic riddles – dropping obscure clues about which urban areas will be locked down in their daily ‘unnamed Number 10 source’ briefings, limiting gatherings based on the number of servants required to harvest grouse moors, sowing doubt about the very meaning of commonplace words like ‘law’ and ‘decency’, etc. It’s like the Sunday Times cryptic crossword if failure to solve it might mean your untimely demise.

Despite all this admirable fostering of confusion and doubt, certain so-called ‘scientists’, their Erlenmeyer flasks flowing over with wasted public funds, are trying to tell you that if you can work from home, then you should.

Do not heed their siren song, tempting though it might be.

As you well know, the Panic Office has deliberately avoided adopting modern technologies from the landline onwards [1] meaning it is simply impossible for you to conduct your laborious and unrewarding tasks while remaining safe and happy at home.

More to the point, even the Office sandwich shop – Fret a Danger [2] – with its costly, pale salads and gravel-textured flapjacks sold to a (often literally) captive audience of dead-eyed wage slaves, is dying on its arse [3].

So, taking my inspiration from Dettol, the nation’s favourite product for eradicating traces of DNA and bloodstains®, I have decided to appeal to your withered senses of duty and romance by listing some of the things about working at the Panic Office that you will undoubtedly be missing:

Payment

The intoxicating uncertainty of whether you will survive the day

The unique commute, with dizzying views from the poorly maintained zipline into the Office precinct

Never knowing whether the water cooler will give you dysentery

Flirty banter with the corpse gatherers, getting to ride on the back of their cart, etc.

The slide into alcoholism just to get you through

The heady aroma of coffee, typewriter ink, and colleagues’ dysentery

Accidentally ‘replying all’ using the messenger pigeon system, resulting in the poor creature’s death from exhaustion

Looking despairingly around you into the hollow, vacant eyes of your second (and eventually, only) family

Leaving far later than your working day is due to end, out into the cruel, cold darkness

Struggling to climb back up the zipline, failing to enjoy its views in the pitiless shroud of night

Funny hat day on the third Friday of the month

Honestly, it brings a tear to my eye. And I imagine I’m not alone in that.

So, what are you waiting for?

Straighten your damn tie and herd yourself into the cattle-truck. After many months of state-sanctioned indolence, it is once again time to PANIC.

_____________________________

[1] Swiftly identified as the devil’s conjurings by my Great Grandfather, on account of his blood feud with Alexander Graham Bell, and firmly rejected by his scions ever since. It will be a cold day in hell before I accept the fax machine into my life.

[2] I know how that reads but say it in a French accent and it suddenly becomes elegant and aspirational. Just lean into it, like you were in an advert, and say with crisp enunciation:

[3] Aside from the Fine Arts Forgeries department and our arms manufacturing wing, it’s been the only branch of the Panic Office empire that’s been able to maintain a steady profit for years. Your continued chewing of our overpriced and overpackaged cud is the only way we can realistically pay your insulting wages; a sort of self-reinforcing subsidisation loop. I cannot stress how important it is for you to return and eat our crap sandwiches.

[thepanicoffice]

The Selfish Inquisition

...

Day 58 in lockdown. Supplies are low.

I haven’t any more gravy for the roast swan, which, as only the Queen and I know, is insufferably dry even when cooked to perfection.

I am reduced to drinking my homebrew gin, made of mouldering pomegranates in nail varnish, fermented in a Cabinet member’s sock (it doesn’t matter which). It’s still pretty good.

I haven’t discoursed with another human for the duration. What initially seemed like a rare pleasure (both for me and the wider world) now seems like a hideous curse (this time, mostly for me). While I have never cared a fig for the opinions of others, I at least needed to hear them so that I could sustain myself with the dark energy of my own smug righteousness.

Now, I can only assume that I’m right. But just how right? Compared to what clothwitted, hog-ignorant beliefs?

I am left with no option but to conduct the most significant, the most timely, the most daring interview of this callow young century. I am going to interview Richard Maslin, Editor of the foremost almanac of hysteria, the Panic Office.

Some have called me mad. To them I say: It is better to be warped like a fish, than to suffer the moistness of a badger! And I stand by that.

In any case, there is surely no one better placed to penetrate the oily evasiveness and staggering capacity for falsehood of my self, than myself. I shall spare me no blushes; no petty untruth shall remain unmolested; no vulgar deceit shall remain unpunished. In doing so, I hope to shed light onto the dark, begrimed pages of my own inscrutable and largely unsubstantiated life story.

This is like Frost/Nixon if they were both the same person. 

I hope you find it as revealing as I found it confusing.

[Tape recording starts]

Me: I’ll be taping this for the record.

I: May I have some water before we start?

Me: You’ve never drunk water in your life, you treacherous snake! Now start talking. Who was your mother? And why?

I: That’s a hypothetical question. I don’t answer hypothetical questions.

Me: No it isn’t! Your passport claims you were born in Belize. But that’s not strictly true, is it? You were born on a yacht in international waters off the coast of Belize, and your birth was registered in twelve countries simultaneously.

I: [Lights a cigar and chuckles] I’m a man of many flavours, it has been said.

Me: ‘Yes or no’ questions are the most effective means of interrogation – yes or no?

I: I’m afraid you’d have to ask my lawyer about that.

Me: Ah yes, your lawyer. One Samuel Konigsreich, a.k.a. Miguel Sanchez, a.k.a. Dr. Nguyen van Phuoc. A man who, according to our research, was called to the English Bar three years after his own gruesome death by self-immolation. How do you explain this?

I: Clerical errors of this kind are very common. My lawyer assures me of this.

Me: You claim to have served in the Merchant Navy from 1997-98, when in fact you have no idea what the Merchant Navy even is. Isn’t that so?

I: I admit that is the case, though in my defence I do look fantastic in a commodore’s uniform.

Me: The first true words that have passed your lips in a decade. Now we’re getting somewhere! Your own sister has described you as “A man so ill-suited to the stage, his 2004 performance as Konstantin in a version of Chekhov’s Seagull managed to bankrupt three theatres, including two he had never performed in.”

I: A simple case of sibling rivalry. My performance was recognised by many as innovative.

Me: Come, come, Mr Maslin. That simply isn’t the case. For one thing, you don’t have a sister.

I: I do have some siblings though, I think. I can’t be expected to keep track of all of their genders.

Me: Have you ever travelled to the content of Africa?

I: No.

Me: Well you should – there are many culturally enriching experiences to be had. Nairobi and Accra, in particular, are wonderful cities. But we’ll touch in that again later. For now, why don’t you tell us about the summer of 2012 and the allegations that continue to dog you to this very day?

I: I can only assume you’re referring to the accordion incident, or what the shameless tabloids dubbed ‘The Eye-full Tower’ and ‘The French Erection’. Suffice to say, nothing was ever proved and, following the tragic death of all witnesses…

Me: ...by self-immolation…

I: ...by self-immolation, yes… since that fateful July day - God, how the fires raged - nothing is ever likely to be proven. Unless the accordion itself starts speaking. And precautionary injunctions have been taken out in case that dark day ever arrives.

Me: I note that none of these events are recorded in your autobiography.

I: Which one?

Me: Any of them. Not one of the seven currently published, in all their conflicting accounts and chronologies, makes mention of this oft-whispered of event.

I: Perhaps not, though that’s really down to the prerogative of the editor. I’m sure that my third autobiography, Maslin: A Compendium of Calumny originally bore the subtitle ‘I never interfered with that accordion (but if I did, here’s how I’d do it)’. Evidently it never made it to the final draft. I can hardly be held responsible for that.

Me: Is it not true that you have nearly always edited your own work?

I: Not always. I did once have an editor but he sadly…

Me: Died of…

I: ...of self-immolation, yes! You’re quite obsessed with that, aren’t you? Yes, an unusual number of people I’ve known have died of accidental self-immolation. These things happen. Quite often, clearly.

Me: In 2016, you temporarily took over the running of a frozen food concern but were forced to step aside after the disastrous launch of a new product, Findus Crispy Waspcakes. How did you ever think you would get away with it?

I: I have apologised on record over the handling of that incident. But I will never apologise for trying to bring high-quality, organic, frozen wasps to the British consumer.

Me: When did you apologise? On what record?

I: You ask an awful lot of questions. Has anyone ever told you that?

Me: Well that is the nature of an inquisition! Come tomorrow morning, the whole world will read about what a reprehensible reptile (or ‘repreheptile’) you are! A man - if such you can even generously be called - whose peerless cruelty is matched only by his own breathtaking incompetence; his wanton dissolution by his own stunted lack of imagination; his bilious vigour by his own physical cowardice!

I: You’re more forensic than Keir Starmer after a few too many episodes of Silent Witness.

Me: Your senseless flattery and/or spiteful jibes will not save you from my probing tongue.

I: Your what?

Me: My… it’s a figure of speech. I’m not sure...

 I: How are you feeling?

Me: I… why?

I: Lightheaded?

Me: My head is starting to… I feel… 

I: Heavybowelled?

Me: Dear god, have you drugged me?

I: Absolutely not. Perhaps it was that water you offered me.

Me: But I didn’t… offer…

I: Shh… That’s right. Just surrender your body to the darkness. Shh…

[Interview ends]

[thepanicoffice]

To Catch an Editor

...

Fellow mortals* – it will come as no surprise that, like many other entrepreneurs who have grossly overleveraged themselves, borrowing against the value of one of their many tropical islands (I’m looking at you, Branson), this pandemic has hit me hard financially. The Panic Office, once thought too big to fail, like Lehman Brothers or Woolworths, is now on its knees.

While I may lack the breath-taking audacity required to ask the Government to be bail me out (Why do you keep catching my eye, Branson?) I fortunately do possess the slightly less breath-taking audacity required to attempt to furlough myself. 

I did so to recoup 80% of my salary – or at least up to the flimsy limits that the scheme allows; my salary is currently about 7/8ths of the total £6.8m Office budget – to see me through these difficult coming months in my toilet paper palace (I just can’t seem to get through the stuff quick enough even though I am as irregular as a plasticine clock).

Naturally, I then set out to find a temporary managing editor to do my work on the cheap. I’ve also got to spend much of my time fending off fresh charges of seditious rhyming schemes and improper use of iambic pentameter levelled against me, but that’s only a passing problem.

Of course, not any old managing editor would do. No, the Office demands a certain someone. Someone combative and regressive; someone with innumerable character flaws ripe for exploitation, and a litany of malefactions for me to hold over them; someone to vigorously castigate the staff when they have grown numb to my own drunken reprimands; someone phlegmatic and unflinching in the face of amorality, malfeasance and depravity; above all, someone with a working knowledge of the arcane and constantly shifting rites, regulations and lore of the Office itself.

In short, I needed Jones.

And so, a scheme was hatched, and orders disseminated through the remaining Panic networks, demanding the immediate identification and capture of all cadaverous, bearded men in the region, backed of course, by a substantial financial inducement.

14 hours later, Jones hurled himself through my office window - 12th floor mind you; the pigeons were most distressed – stating that he had apprehended himself and demanded payment.

The following is an (in)complete, (de)unexpurgated transcript of the job interview/disciplinary hearing which followed:

----------

RM: Interview Begins, the time is 15:67 on the 45th of July, nineteen ninety…sixteen. We are located in conference room L, overlooking the Waddington Quad. Chair of proceedings, the right honourable Viceroy & Lord Protector, Sir Reginald ‘Richard’ Wyndham Maslin III, Editor in Chief presiding. Please state your full name for the record.

RJ: …

RM: Come on now, there’s a chap.

RJ: …

RM: State your name or I’ll forcibly loosen your tongue.

RJ: …

RM: Listen you defiant wretch, it was you who devised the deprivation of liberty clause for the contracts of employment. Now state your damn name.

RJ: The defendant is Lord Professor Ríkharð Tiberius Arcturus Jones, latterly Associate Deputy Editor. 

RM: May I remind you that it is strictly forbidden for any employee except the Editor in Chief to refer to himself in the third person.

RJ: Clause 42, amendment 67/F of the Appropriate Comportment & Acceptable Conduct act of ’79, which superseded the traditional agreement that whosoever was loudest and drunkest had the floor. You just can't bellow and booze like old Reggie could.

RM: 67/G actually. ‘F' was the clarification to the ban on frottage between officers of unequal rank during budget reports. Now, you’ve wasted enough of my exceedingly expensive time already, the moment for grovelling prostrations, convoluted extenuations and enormous bribes is rapidly retreating. If you intend to weave an elaborate fiction with which to shield your hide then be quick about it.

RJ: No, that’s 76/G. 67/G permits amendments 4 through 19 to be disregarded in the event of an inadequate soup dish. But what was 76/F?

RM: You have nothing to offer in defence of your actions?

RJ: I believe my intermittent drunken missives speak for themselves.

RM: As you wish. Question the first, where the ruddy arse have you been?

RJ: I’ll ask the questions here. Now where were we? Ah yes, tell me, are you any better at dodging ashtrays than you used to be?

[a startled grunt followed by a violent crash is heard]

RM: Well I suppose that was to be expected. If only you could be induced to direct your ire towards the lower end of the social scale with any degree of consistency. I ask again, where have you been?

RJ: Stewkley. Compassionate leave.

RM: Compassionate leave? For the best part of 3 years?

RJ: Well, the office is well known for its compassion.

RM: But Stewkley of all places?

RJ: Mm, rather convenient actually, I’ve been needing an excuse to go for some time. I had several items of a …sensitive nature to recover from a buried strong box. Jail sentences do seem to fly by when they’re being served by others, don’t they? I shall need the number for your chap in Cairo, and I don’t suppose you happen to remember the name of the amoral sea captain who got us out of that spot of bother in Venezuela?

RM: Ah, Venezuela! Seems like another life doesn’t it? I shall have Snivellsby look into it. I think I have a man called Snivellsby anyway. Don’t think this settles matters though! You can’t just breeze back in here like you’ve never been gone - there must be ramifications!

RJ: Surely you’ve not forgotten amendment 76/F? It is of utmost importance that there should be seen to be ramifications for poor conduct and bad form, and that this takes precedence over all other considerations, including the institution of any actual sanction.

RM: Well, it is a most irregular reading of the amendment, but not without legitimacy... 

RJ: Exactly, just write it up and file it with the others. I’ll be in my office.

[RJ exits the room; or, to give it the due Shakespearean level of flounce: Exeunt. RM pours himself a dusty glass full of cognac]

RM: Oh yes. He’ll do.

___________ *For what has this whole ghastly period taught us if not of our own frailty? The value of community? The importance of the low-paid to the effective functioning of society? Bah - of course not! It has taught us that the mortal coil is narrow, treacherous underfoot, and we are wearing impractical clown shoes.

[thepanicoffice]

The Days Dragon (and on, and on...)

...

These are long, dark days for Britannia and her plumpest daughter, England. Pestilence is abroad, its people are deprived of their God-given liberties, and the weather has been unstintingly glorious. It is a most unnatural state of affairs.

But still on this day, St George’s Day, there can be no better time to forget the actual reality of life in England and retreat into the myths that wreath this sceptred isle like a spectral mist. When we chose George as our patron saint, against all other options (Saint Meaculpus, patron saint of effusive apologies, and Saint Simeon, patron saint of bumblebees, were also in the running), we were deciding what story we wanted to tell the world about ourselves.

The English – the Angelcynn, as history bores sometimes refer to us to sound clever – have long been recognised by the world as a unique people, marked by our contradictions: prurient yet prudish, greedy yet miserly, pig ignorant yet forcefully opinionated. We are all those things, yes, and so much more. This is a land of shopkeepers, gardeners, keen racists, telemarketing fraudsters, alcoholics, and Members of Parliament. Some are all of these things simultaneously.

All of them distinctly, unmistakably English. Do Italians, for example, or Croatians, do gardening? I highly doubt it.

This St George’s Day, because I am so incredibly bored of sitting and weaving my leg hairs together, I have decided to continue my part-time role as a lecturer in Art History (see my previous reviews of Renaissance codpieces and Surrealist hellscapes) and look at images of that legendary event. From each, I hope to discover what each might tell us about this nation and the bizarre, often disgusting, people that make it what it sometimes regrettably is.

Bernat Martorell, 1434/35

This painting captures perfectly the tedium of heroism – George, so often engaged in feats of lizard murder, sees nothing remarkable in his actions. The maiden, likewise, inspects her nails with disinterest. It reflects the stoic spirit of a nation for whom acts of valour are so commonplace that they have become frankly dull and perfunctory.

Despite this, we are rubberneckers and curtain-twitchers at heart – spy the colourful array of onlookers peering from the parapets. They’ll be talking about George’s reckless behaviour and debating the sexual availability of the maiden over their evening meals for days to come, as a community.

Jost Haller, c.1445

What could be more English than a man who rides into battle, adorned with an armour made of jelly moulds and extravagant feather plumes, to put to the sword a slightly pathetic looking… what the hell even is that? Why does it have human eyes? I haven’t seen such pitiable eyes reckoning with their own sad demise since I decided to have Piers Morgan executed (though he was later reprieved after I’d had a large lunch and my blood sugar levels/mood had vastly improved). What can we glean from this image? Surely that the bold English will smite the ugly and banish such foul wickedness from their lands (Morgan is, I’m sorry to say, still at large to this day – curse my momentary flicker of mercy!)

Master of Sir John Fastolf, c. 1430–40 Like any true-born, pith-helmeted, tea-blooded Englishman, I revel in the death of almost any undeserving creature you can name. After the Australian bushfires, the heart-warming image of singed koalas has remained with me, bringing me much comfort and amusement in the interminable hours that stand each day between me and my bedtime. But here the artist has produced a dragon so adorable, so sickeningly charming, not even St George himself is able to take any pleasure in its demise. Look at him – his heart just isn’t in it. His large-headed bride isn’t much impressed either, and who can blame her? But what lesson to learn here about the English? Even where it brings them no personal satisfaction, England expects every man to do his duty and remorselessly shank the innocent. On such things are empires built.

Carpaccio, 1502

Finally, an agreeably English-looking George – like a flaxen-haired Robert Plant, his mane bouncing in the wind as he gallops to conquer his foe! And look at that fierce bastard dragon! The sunbleached corpses scattered around its lair! Wonderful stuff. Certainly, his horse may have a topknot, like some hipster graphic designer, but we can’t have it all. The landscape is also unfortunately rather foreign in appearance… those domes don’t exactly suggest this is taking place in Dover city centre. No shopping precincts or pubs to make one think of England. But never mind. What do we learn from this? George was a verified LAD, the dragon was a worthy adversary, and the English know how to ride a fashionable horse into battle. Also, and this is a common theme throughout, our womenfolk are very good at praying quietly without getting in the way.

Rubens, c. 1605-07

Oh yes! Yes, Rubens! That’s the one. I’m… becoming engorged (with patriotic vigour) at the very sight of it. George, stout and masculine, delivers the killing blow to an actual, terrifying dragon. That sheep can’t believe what it’s seeing! Jesus. Even the horse is sexy. God, what a painting! The only thing spoiling this photo is the fact that George is tragically wearing sandals – something I am not prepared to concede that any Englishman would ever do. Only Germans and feminists wear sandals. The lesson here, clearly, is that the English are a warrior race, chosen to be God’s elect – just look, for proof, to this painting, to the speech of Shakespeare’s Henry V, to the martial figure of Boris Johnson. it’s no wonder we’re so bloody good at wars and pub brawls. England!

Rosa Corder, 1875 – 1890

… Well, now I’m confused. Still aroused but confused. Why has the dragon stripped that woman to the waist? What filthy purpose does it have in its warped reptilian mind? Are dragons able to tie people up? The dragon clearly knows it’s made a mistake trying to eat George’s shield, even with its impressive jaw-span. A wry side-eye to the camera: Oh gawd, I’ve only gone and done it now. The whole thing is ludicrous. So why am I still erect?

Russian Icon, unknown.

What in Christ’s name is he stabbing!? I’ve had more perilous encounters with a silk scarf. He’s at far greater risk of falling from that lumpy, pinheaded horse than he is being harmed by that feeble red windsock. What do we learn here? That England prefers to pick fights it knows it will win easily, perhaps, and that won’t stop it hanging a golden halo about its pate as it crows endlessly about its past victories. Still we sit astride a lumpy horse, oblivious to what a comical blowhard we appear to everyone else.

Pere Nisart, c.1468

Wholesale slaughter of gigantic human-toothed vole. Jesus. What a joke of a country.

[thepanicoffice]

Self-reinforcing Suspicion Matrix

...

Two weeks of isolation has been enough to gravely aggravate my gout and I now yearn for the sweet release of death. May the darkness, that soft quilt of eternal night, descend over me soon.

Perhaps this tragedy was avoidable. But I had a larder bloated with rich meats and sweet wines that needed to be urgently, even greedily, consumed. These things won’t keep indefinitely and I – patriot that I am – refuse to waste good food (very good food) while my country is in crisis.

Consuming guinea fowl for seventeen meals in a row may seem like a heroic act but it was truly the least I could do in these desperate times.

In order to take my mind off the agony coursing through my feet, I have decided to blackleg my own strike, as we all knew I would from the outset, and turned my attention back to the Office.

Her Majesty’s Government has yet to respond to my repeated and insistent queries as to whether ‘autocratic periodical editor’, ‘vociferous cultural commentator’ or even (shudder) ‘lifestyle blogger’ have been accorded Key Worker status.

As such, until they tell me otherwise, I will bravely continue with my essential duties, sewing confusion, fear and discord wherever I can in the hope that, on that bright morning when the Dread Virus has passed, the sun spills its golden light upon the tender shoots of a burgeoning forest of pure PANIC.

I have been sent a number of fretting missives clamouring for my sage counsel. I have picked one, from a respectable emissary of Middle England, which is representative of the quandary many find themselves in right now: am I right to grass on my neighbours?

Dear Sir

As a lifelong and unrepentant curtain-twitcher, never happier than when my sanctimonious beak is snugly ensconced in other people’s business, this public health crisis has presented something of a golden opportunity.

By day I prowl the streets on my government-permitted exercise, chastising (at a cautious distance) anyone who looks like they might stray too close to my two metre zone of exclusion; by night I bellow out of my window at gathering herds of cats. Honestly, I have never known contentment like it.

However, tensions have arisen between me and my neighbours. Yesterday, I took the opportunity to criticise the woman next door when I spied in her shopping bag a number of items that I deem to be non-essential (chocolate, a copy of the Guardian, tampons, etc.) When she started to cry I called her a traitor.

Her husband has since called me and left a voicemail (I was out at the park shaming any children who gazed longingly in the direction of the swings) threatening to ‘do me in’ and likening me, in most graphic terms, to a woman’s reproductive vestibule.

I have since called the police’s new number for ‘concerned citizens’ and reported the man’s wife for her thoughtless purchases and cavalier attitude towards the health of myself, our nation’s elderly, and our NHS (about which though, I must admit, I’ve not been fond of until very recently).

Please, dear sir, give me your opinion as to who is in the right here.

Yours, in predatory vigilance, and under the delegated authority of all Right Thinking people in Britain,

Harold Velcro-Wasp

-------

Dear Harold,

These are indeed troubled times and we must all play our part. In the words of regular homosexual and sometime poet, W.H. Auden, ‘We must love one another or die’.

Like the gusset of my slacks, when we come under sustained and unpleasant pressure it is so much easier to split asunder than to hold together.

But, like the gusset of my slacks, who is to blame for that sundering? Is it the general seam, holding the line in the face of adversity? Or is it the loose stitch, wayward and irresponsible?

All of this is a roundabout way of saying is that your neighbours are those loose stitches, whose selfish and callous rebellion places my undercarriage at perilous risk of exposure.

If the fabric of society (and, to belabour the point, my slacks) gives way, where will we be?

I’ll tell you: with our vulnerable testicles dangling in the unforgiving air, tongued by a cruel wind.

That’s the message I want you (and, just as importantly, my tailor) to take from this hideous metaphor .

So yes, inform on your friends, your family, and perfect strangers if they dare to stray from the ancient rules and customs that have determined our way of life since they were imposed a week ago.

I strongly believe that if any good is to come from this dire and troubling situation, it will be the creation of a self-reinforcing matrix of suspicion and pious judgement among the people of this country.

And, in that spirit of always assuming the worst intentions of everyone, how, pray, did you post your letter to the Panic Office? Did you post in on your sanctioned constitutional, or did you make a special journey for this unnecessary errand? Answer me Harold, you filthy anarchist! You want to see us all dead? You hateful burden, you excrescence, you defiler of the social compact! Burn in hell!

Yours affectionately,

The Editor

[thepanicoffice]

DEM (Or, taking the 'Panic' out of 'Pandemic')

[...]

History fixes us with glaring eye, steeped in blackened brow.

Rather than dwell on the grace and good humour (and occasional stockpiling and profiteering) with which the British people have stared that hateful bitch down over the years, I am reminded of the time I ruthlessly took advantage of  dark days to enact a wild cat strike of humourists so that we might fully extort the value of our underappreciated labour.

Some called me callous. Mercenary. A malignant canker sore on the corner of humanity’s lip.*

It was, they said, “unethical” and “an affront to common decency” that, rather than try to bring humanity together with the unifying spirit of laughter, I should try to hold it to ransom for personal gain. Those people, clearly, were not familiar with my existing body of work.

Admittedly, there was a lack of traction. Rather than viewing this as a seizing of negotiating leverage, the general public greeted my sudden threat of silence with something akin to exhausted relief (and, in some quarters, celebration in the streets, as though a hostile power had suddenly laid down its arms and retreated).

But that has all changed now. In the face of The Event, people are vainly scrabbling with their pale, sunlight-starved fingers for content to fill the endless hours, regardless of its quality. And when people stop caring about the quality of their content, that’s when I slide menacingly into view.

Now I must strike while the iron is hot and feverish with a rasping cough. There has surely never been a better time for me to withdraw my product and seek the pecuniary payoff to which I so strongly feel I am entitled.

So, until my demands are met (see previous demands, adjusted for inflation – the 7% is uplifted to 16.4%; the security cougar is uplifted to a security rhinoceros, etc.) I will be maintaining radio silence. No more recondite blethering, no more waspish but unfocused satire, no more irrelevant facetiae.

…At least, until I become so bored of purposelessly rattling around inside my gilded cage that my vanity and insatiable need for attention compel me to scab against my own strike. But not a moment before then!

LARKS FOR LUCRE!

RIPOSTES FOR REMUNERATION!

A FAIR DAY’S SMIRK FOR A FAIR DAY’S PAY! _________

*And your words stung Mother!