Well good, innit

For a city that experiences such vile weather, London is seriously poorly equipped to handle it. Tonight, the rain has come down in sheets, the kind that you wrestle to get into the washing machine and then discover that you don't have enough space to dry them once they're done. Much the same way that the gutters, downpipes, awnings, footpaths and roads can't get rid of the sheer volume of water that has built up in them.

As I dodged the deepest puddles and clung to the furthest point from the cars on the road, which were carelessly offering a free shower to any pedestrians foolish enough to stray near the edge, I wondered why it was, exactly, that I'd decided against "borrowing" one of the golf umbrellas leaning nonchalantly by the desk of the office klepto. Especially given that he wasn't even in the office to keep me by his desk with an entertaining (i.e. nauseating) sound and light display, a combination of his poor eating habits (he's yet to close his mouth once during a meal and offers a comprehensive range of chomping, slurping and gulping noises) and semi-pornographic comic book style illustrations he's done and pinned around his desk, giving it the look of teenage-boy-meets-Hyde-Park-flasher.

As a case study of a Londoner, he's an interesting specimen. He sounds like someone who just stepped off the set of a Guy Ritchie film and would probably lay claim to knowing some of the genuine geezer-types Ritchie loves to bring to life on the screen. He is a proud son of East London, speaks with the classic inflections and drops "innit" onto the end of every second sentence. He turns up to work wearing silky tracksuit pants which announce his arrival long before he appears, the psht-psht noise acting more effectively than an air raid siren to clear whatever space he is approaching. Because once you get trapped by him, there is no escape. Snoopy, as one former colleague dubbed him, knows all the goings on in the office and has few greater pleasures than sharing them with victims - er, an audience. That his stories aren't always true is irrelevant to him. It wasn't so irrelevant to the person who got back from leave last year to find an inbox full of condolences about being made redundant; he hadn't been, but the panic attack almost made him go to the directors and resign instead.

When he's not discussing what may or may not be going on at work, he tells detailed stories about his home life. Mind you, none of us actually know the names of his wife and daughter, even if we do know an infinite number of other details. He always just describes them as "mar wahfe" or "m'dor-er". Read them out loud, it will help you figure it out. Dor-er is about 6, an intelligent pretty little girl who in no way takes after her father; I figure she'll outgrow him by age 10. Wahfe is a quiet Vietnamese woman, arguably married by mail order (or sold into slavery, depending on which version you listen to), who works hard keeping her family together. the only time she has ever been known to speak up was when Snoopy appeared to be straying with Screechy, the man-eating, drug addled office psychopath. Wahfe cornered Screechy and warned her in no uncertain terms to keep away from Snoopy. Unfortunately, the person she should have been talking to was her husband. Not that he would have listened to her, women being, in his mind at least, there for cooking, cleaning and serving.

The time he's been happiest was during and of the redundancy periods. He would loiter by the stairs going into the boardroom, where the meetings were held with the unfortunate ones, and then race to email the latest name around the office. The behaviour was enough to get him a warning from the board, but somehow he's clung to his job. We're all wondering what dirt he has on them, because so many people were let got when he stayed. Of course, the new streamlined office has given him fewer places to hide. Where once the only place you wouldn't find him was at his desk, now he has no excuse for wandering; there's nobody left for him to visit.

This is the man I now sit next to. I think I'll ask if I can go back to being a leper in the back room. The company was better out there.