How to win friends...

I've started this sentence three times. It's a tricky one. I'm trying to find a subtle, nice way of saying, "I'm fucking glad to be leaving my job." Hmm, I guess that will do. It is difficult though; whilst there are always some people I like more than others, generally I get on with people really well and have almost always enjoyed the vast majority of any job I've had. With this one - honestly - I never really clicked.

The good news is I've found somewhere to move to where the people seem friendly, the work seems interesting and relevant, and where I don't have to work with someone whose personal motto is borrowed from Machiavelli. (More about this particular character, no doubt, in future Plogs.)

It's been a bumpy ride, to put it mildly. There have been difficult colleagues and challenging stakeholders*. Still, this was a situation I had fixed - admittedly by handing my notice in. Anyway, this was my leaving lunch with a handpicked crew of people I got on with OK. It was actually really nice. We had a laugh, and at the end of the meal my manager (actually a decent guy) made a short speech, and handed me a card, saying there were some book tokens within and he hoped I'd get something to remember them all by.

I was touched by the gesture and went to Krispy Kreme and to Waitrose and bought £30 of cakes for them all.

When I got home, I opened the Waterstones giftcard, and read the message my manager had written. The leaving card had been round the department of about 70 people, many of whom had signed with nice messages. My manager had written on the little card that came with the giftcard, "Laura, good luck for the future, and I hope you will buy something to cherish and remember us by. From your friends and colleagues."

I noticed there was a receipt in with the giftcard indicating the amount on the card - the only way to find out how many cherishable books I could purchase. How sweet of them, and how nice that these 70 friends and colleagues had a whip-round. The total value of the giftcard?

£12.

I think I was right. I think it is time to move on. At least I've chosen the book I want to buy, to remember them:

* This is business speak for "tosser bastards".

Toads

"Why should I let the toad work squat on my life?" asked Philip Larkin. Often, when you're completing the same meaningless spreadsheet for the 19th time, fully aware that no-one is ever going to look at it, it's tempting to see his point.

I used to have a mini routine in my stand up which went, "Would anyone really notice if you didn't complete that spreadsheet? Would it really matter if you didn't go into the office tomorrow? Would anyone even care if you fell off the face of the earth? (pause) My line manager said to me this morning. Well, that gets my annual review out of the way."

But the question remains: why should I let the toad work squat on my life? For me the answer is actually pretty simple: shiny things. I like shiny things. In order to procure shiny things, I generally have to exchange magic beans. Or money, as it's sometimes called. I've found that the toad work is reasonably efficacious in producing magic beans. And magic beans produce shiny things.

It's my last day at the current toad pond, and with five days off before commencing work with my new employers and experiencing the next round of amphibious delights, I suppose I'm technically unemployed, or toad-free for the next few days. And, owing a spectacular cock-up with my final pay packet, I'm also going to be reasonably magic-bean free for the next month. Hey ho.

What I really need to do is find a way of producing magic beans without the involvement of toads. Or fairy godmothers or the lottery. Suggestions on a postcard, please.

Latin is a language, as dead as dead can be. First it killed the Romans, now it's killing me.

Ladies and gentlemen, I can only apologise for my absence. I have no real excuse. Work has not been manic, my social life has not been hectic, I have not been ill. Just lazy.

So I shall try to make it up to you with a Plog so splendiferous it will set your very eyes on fire. In a good way.

Many, many moons ago when I was at school, Latin was a compulsory subject. Ploggers, I went to the sort of school that had a Flower Monitress (responsible for ensuring the classroom had fresh flowers), where you had to stand up when the teacher came in the room, and where it was pretty much expected that you would be bullied by staff and pupils alike if you didn't get all "A" grades at GCSE. If you chose not to go to university, there was a mandatory 60-minute interview with our headmistress (a formidable lady) where I am told you were browbeaten into completing your UCAS form "just in case" whilst being shown photos of unemployed women with fourteen children, with your face Photoshopped into it. That last bit might be an exaggeration.

Needless to say, my parents chose the school for me because it reminded them of their own school days. In the fifties. 'Nuff said.

Anyway, Latin was a compulsory subject in the Lower Fourth (or 2nd year, or year 8, whatever you want to call it). If you did badly enough at it, they let you drop it by the Upper Fourth (or 3rd year, or year 9 or whatever). Our Lower Fourth Latin teacher was a lady nearing her retirement, whom - if memory serves - we nicknamed Pussyfoot for her habit of creeping up on us whilst we were (feloniously) eating our lunch in the classroom (rather than walking the five minutes to the dinner hall) and telling us off. Yes, we were bad through and through.

Astonishingly, I did not do badly enough at Latin to be allowed to drop it the following year, despite - to this day - never having got my head around the difference between declensions and conjugations - or indeed, why we had to study it. Pussyfoot having retired, we were given a new teacher, brand new to the school, to drill Latin into our stupid little heads.

Her name was... well, I won't tell you, but I'll give her a pseudonym. Let's call her Miss Roberts. Now, I will not deny that 14 year-old girls can be a bit cruel. An extract from my diary on an "own clothes" day reads, "Teachers are so sad. Mrs McDonald was wearing spray-on jeans and Miss Andrews was wearing baggy leggings - they always get it so wrong!" This from the girl who seemed to spend most of her teenage years in a checked shirt from the local factory shop, and an ethnic skirt with bells sewn into it.

So yes, girls can be cruel. But straight away it became apparent that Miss Roberts looked much less like a Latin teacher... and much more like an air hostess. Including the brightly-coloured suit, with a very short skirt, a matching neck tie, high heels and more make up than the Oxford Street John Lewis Clinique counter normally sells in a week.

At parents' evening, most parents had a system - the mums would speak to half the teachers, the dads to the other half - covering everything they needed to in half the time. Both of my parents will swear that the queue of dads to see Miss Roberts was not entirely gender balanced.

Little wits that we were, it wasn't long before we thought up the endlessly amusing catch-phrase, based on the premise of Miss Roberts being a frustrated air hostess: "Tea? Coffee? Latin lesson?" I had still learned no Latin and regularly used to get Katy Who Smells of Wee to do my rough work for me*.

Anyway, the next year I dropped Latin, Miss Roberts left a couple of years later ("to teach boys; I prefer boys" - a great statement to make in an all-girls' high school) and the world went on.

Until last week. When I received a friend suggestion on Facebook to add Miss Roberts. Out of curiosity, I clicked through to her page. She only had two other friends. I checked out the info on her profile. She now appears to be a travel agent.

So what I'm saying is - cruel as 14 year-old girls can be - we saw it coming.

* This backfired in May 1994 when I was chosen to read out my translation of Quintus' latest dull adventures in culina with Scintilla. I looked down at my rough work (in Katy's handwriting) and confidently asserted to the class, "Quintus was jay-walking down the high street, wearing pants made of jelly."

Eastenders

There are a few things I miss about living in Bethnal Green: the short journey into the city, a relatively modern flat that didn't seem to need as much maintenance as our 1930s' house does, proximity to restaurants, a nice big Sainsbury's. Nothing insurmountable.

There are many things I do not miss about living in Bethnal Green: the tramp who used to sleep in the communal entrance to our flat, the fact that my car was towed approximately every seven minutes and Tower Hamlets council who - given an appropriate budget and a venue - would still be utterly unable to organise a drinking session in a place that brewed beer.

And then there's stuff that was just always there. Like the Tower Hamlets' free local paper eastendlife (all one word, no capitals, clearly a tribute to e e cummings).

Luckily (or unluckily, I haven't decided yet), I have discovered I can pick up a free copy of said newspaper from the library next door to where I work. I say "newspaper" - to be fair, there is very rarely any actual news contained within. It's normally a couple of articles about a new school crossing (with a picture of appropriately grinning Asian kids and a token white child to reflect Tower Hamlet's diverse population.) and a call to old people to tell them they should join a social club. The three articles are then replicated in Urdu and Bengali so you get to see the same leering buffoons and dribbly oldsters several times over. As far as I am aware, it hasn't yet won any journalism prizes.

However, eastendlife has surpassed itself this week. The front page headline reads: "There's no excuse for domestic abuse". Excellent! A rhyme!

But then they take excellence to a new level with their subheading: "Don't suffer in silence, says victim of violence". Oh. My. God. A rhyming couplet about wife-beating. This is genius.
I understand exactly what they've done here and on an intellectual level, it's simply supreme.

As we all know from our studies of literature, the couplet is often used to denote (particularly in Shakespeare) the end or "rounding off" of an act. So by using the couplets as an expression of finishing, of finality, we are being encouraged to stop, to finish - if you like - violence. Very, very clever.

Additionally, it's a handy rhyme to remember. Picture the scene. You're a big, angry (or a little, angry) eastendman (all one word, no capitals). You have been stereotypically in the pub all day and then off to the dogs that night. Your dog lost. You are angrier than a wasp in a tumble drier. You come home and your wife starts nagging you because you've been having an affair with her sister. What a cow. She's clearly got it coming. She deserves it, and you know it. It's time to give her the slapping she expects.

But wait a second! What's this? There's a handy rhyme stuck in your head for such an occasion: "There's no excuse for domestic abuse". You remember it just in time. The wife remains unslapped and you don't have to go to prison (until a week later when you get done for that burglary and the guys inside beat you up because your slapping arm is out of practice).

Thank you eastendlife!

Pro-nunn-ciation

Well, Mr and Mrs Nunn have been to stay, and were reasonable well behaved. For once. However, Mrs Nunn has a unique way of speaking. And if you wish to speak Mrs Nunn-ese, then please find below a Mrs Nunn dictionary and pronunciation guide:

Bedroom = bear-drum

Buffet = boofay

Chihuahua = shi-wow-wow

Obama - oh-bam-ah

Posthumously - pos-thumb-osly

Rabid = ray-bid

Repeat (as in a TV repeat) = Ree-peat

There are more which escape my mind currently but I will add them as they occur to me.

So a sentence from Mrs Nunn might sound, "Someone call Oh-bam-ah! There's a ray-bid shi-wow-wow in the bear-drum eating the boofay! And the CD player is stuck on ree-peat. At this rate I'll be hearing it pos-thumb-osly!"

Of course, this would depend on several things:

- Mrs Nunn knowing Obama's phone number

- Having a buffet set up in the bedroom

- A rabid dog somehow making it to the UK and somehow getting to Loughborough, and into my parents' bedroom

- Mrs Nunn even attempting to operate the CD player.

And the least likely of all of those? The idea that she could operate the CD player. The others all sound par for the course in the Nunn household.