The write life by Drivel

Everybody knows what programmers do all day—write duff code—but how does the oft-misunderstood jobbing technical writer fill the unforgiving minute? Here we reproduce hitherto-unpublished extracts from the glittering quotidinal journal of Drivel (aka Paul Danon), IT-socialite, wordsmith extraordinaire and sole proprietor of the fiscally-offshore WriteLife consultancy.

Sunday

Riffling idly through the job-advertisements I see that Alligator Industries are offering a tantalising £7,500 for a temporary trainee deputy under-under tea-maker and apprentice slop-boy who must be capable of daily producing at least 500 pages of error-free, full-colour, tri-lingual, in-context user-documentation for safety-critical nerve-gas and microsurgery applications. "There must be a catch," I say to myself. "At that handsome salary you probably have to run the switchboard too."

Monday

To a scintillating Brown Ale and Cream Cracker reception to celebrate the amalgamation of all five of Black Flash's regional writeries into one huge Centre of Excellence (CofE) at Wargrave. Conscious that my readers deserve even more than my characteristically insightful musings and perspicacious observations, I am in trilbied reporter-mode. Licking my indelible pencil I ask the CofE's new chief communicator: "How do you think you'll be able to engender an esprit de corps among the hitherto widely distributed staff?" "Staff?" he asks. "What staff?"

Tuesday

To Mordred plc, WriteLife's largest client, for a meeting. They are, they tell me: "planning a new release". Have they ever, I ask, though of planning a current release? Or an old one? I allow a short time for the poignancy of my questions to strike them and this soon becomes quite a long time. Then, before I know it, the meeting is adjourned (though I subsequently learn that, no sooner have I left, than it resumes). My point has obviously gone home and so have I.

Wednesday

On to WriteLife's gleaming white teak desk wafts a press-release from my colleagues at our sister-company WriteOff, the direct mailing and PR agency. It is most refreshing to be able to reproduce it without amendment, so crystalline its style, so robust its structure:
16 Acacia Villas, Petts Wood, London, SE31 4PZ, is the address of WriteWay, a new technical documentation agency telephone (0181) 192 6613 no job too large or small. Says founder-owner-chairman Ken Way: "No job is too large or small for us at WriteWay on (0181) 192 6613." WriteWay is prepared to work on projects regardless of their size, according to its proprietor, speaking at a finger-buffet reception to launch the new agency during which he was skewered to the wall by a ceremonial Masai fishing-spear.

Thursday

To the British Standards (so aptly named) Institution for the launch of BS9671/ISO4236/EN24236 Menu Selections, Numeric, Worldwide Normalisation of, 1997. Enticed to this event at first by the lyrical style of WriteOff's press-release, then by the new directive's apparent subject-matter (of indubitable interest to those of my readers who design on-screen assistance and programmatic selection-tablatures), my decision to attend has been clinched by what I take to be the offer of authentic oriental cuisine to help the nascent standard down the slipway.

Imagine then how fallen is my crest when I discover that, rather than forming the inducement to attend the publication's début, Chinese food (of the takeaway dynasty) is BS9671's intended bailiwick! Worse, the sponsors are WriteLife's dreaded number-one customer Mordred plc and, worse still, that plc's sadistic catering-manager has again seen fit to make the launch a Brown Ale and Cream Cracker do. Cold comfort it is as I squint through the swirling fog for a vacant cab to know that, from Copenhagen to the steps of the Acropolis, deep fried crispy prawn-balls will be forever 80.

Friday

"Technical communications?" yells the taxi-driver interrogatively while looking me full in the face and negotiating Hyde Park Corner during the rainy evening rush-hour. "Contradiction in terms, innit?" Pinned to the back seat by the G-force, I struggle to move my lips to ask why, but fail. Happily the cabbie is a sensitive man and anticipates my query. "Well," he says, "if it's technical, you can't understand it." "How true," I say to myself as consciousness slips from my grasp.