Some stupid bint in the office today has a phone that sounds like a fire alarm. Seriously, a slow crescendo "whooop" kind of sound. How fecking stupid is that.

Thankfully she was only visiting.

I don’t have anything against mobile phones per se. I have one myself. It’s just that an awful lot of people in the office I work in seem to think it’s a good idea to have some deafening annoying ring tone, and then leave them on their desks. WTF is the point of having a mobile phone if you don’t take it with you? Do these people think others have nothing better to do than either (a) listen to Que Sera Sera all the time?

Gee. I’m doing a lot of whinging about people. Am I becoming a cranky old man?

I’ve been reading over the past couple of weeks how the Duchess Of Fergie is in debt - the estimates being between two and six million dollars. In the course of this discussion, let us go with the lowest of the two amounts.

$2 million?! TWO MILLION DOLLARS? How the hell do you get $2 million into debt(*)? That’s more than some small countries! It’s surely not an easy thing to do. I know if I tried that on my Mastercard they’d pull it after a couple of grand.

Okay, we all have to accept that it’s hard living with virtually zero income. In this case "zero" is a mere $460,000 a year, in fact. But really, if you looked at your personal finances, and saw something like this:

… it could be time to start reconsidering your lifestyle.

(*) In the event that time has passed somewhat and you’re reading this in the year 2200 and thinking "but $2 million wouldn’t buy a stamp!" then just take it from me - in 1996 it’s a bucket load of money, okay?