Before we began our search for isms I had to work out our modus operandi - or at least how we were going to do things. My team and I agreed to hold quarterly meetings every six months, with a six-monthly meeting every year, or at least annually. At these sessions we hoped to highlight any quabbles and sort out the chiff chaff; we guessed that, occasionally, we would have to iron out a few qwerps as well.
Our first meeting was a damp squid! We began by having liquid drinks, but for Harry (he’s the one that drinks like there’s no yesterday but is as tight as a camel’s arse in a snowstorm) we had to fill a demi-jar. I, myself, personally am partial to a cravat of wine. I also love eating maroons and the wine helped to wash down those awful carrycot beans and chocolate kit-e-kats that Mary had brought in.
During out initial planning phase, instead of dropping up a drough raft, Mary took a hysterical reference period and drew up a plan of action in the form of a matricee (which may be attached at Appendicee A at some time). This was an instant squashed duck and was immediately thrown in to the waste disposable unit. I know she was only feeling her feet but she landed in hot weather over that mistake. We were back to quo vadis.
Nevertheless, we had to keep ourselves one above the headball and I couldn’t have people coming into work and just poddling about. No one else had the pet answer, and you can't have either if or what, so I prepared another action plan, made a few adendments and marked them with alpha-numbers. We also agreed that the paragraphs should be numbered consequentially. I thought to myself, I’m not putting my head on the rack to get hung again, so I based the new plan on military strategy, like in that war film ‘Accollapips Now”.
The plan was issued with the caviar that Alan Candlish had to see it first. To aid discussion I transferred the plan onto acetape slides for the OHP projector. I’d hit the nose on the head this time and we set off hoping that something would happen in the recent future.
In our search for isms we scoured the countryside on three-wheeled bicycles, using our ‘Z to Y street guides’ and often working up to the kneeballs in snow. We used all the latest technicological equipment: computers - complete with VDU units - and we must have gone though about a dozen nickel canadium batteries. The team were nervous at first, what with all the statisticles and such, but once they picked up the methology they soon settled down. We all felt a bit chained hand and sink at first because all that intense work was certainly bog-minding.
My search for isms was spreading like wild flour and we were rapidly approaching the second phase, which followed the first. Then I heard that the Arab oil Ministers had reached a sheikhy agreement on the collection of isms. A human cry went up at Shotley Bridge Hospital. ‘That’s put the shit among the pigeons’, I thought. Each of my researchers was sworn to keep mum about our work and were told not to split the beans on pelanty of becoming a customer in a funeral decorators. However, some leaked documents had been found in a cabinet ........ a Cabinet spokesman would make a statement later in the day.
