Two items that made me laugh: here they are in reverse order.

Item 1: big briefing in the big meeting room from the big bosses who are, I hasten to add, mostly plain-speaking. The more senior fella does his bit -- reasonably short & sweet - then hands over to the ever so slightly less senior fella.

All is well until he starts talking about the Intranet and uses the phrase "single truth", whereupon there isn't just tittering in the room but outright laughter, causing him to stop mid-sentence. What's so funny?, he enquires.

See, most of our office had experienced the buzzword brilliance of the "valuable one-truth front door" a week or so back, esp. after an employee who cannot be named printed out the phrase on an A3 sheet and stuck it on the wall. It was hastily removed a few days later after word got back to the originator at the other office.

One of the laughing crew, perhaps unwisely, attempted to explain the reason for his outburst: when you're in a hole, stop digging. Much merriment for us drones.

Item 2: later that day, watching a South Bank Show show on the implausibly named Armando Ianucci, him what did On The Hour, Alan Partridge, etc. A clip from his own self-presented show had a man leaving his house:

Alec is 42 this morning and therefore has nothing further to contribute to society. So today's the day Alec goes into a home for middle-aged men.

Cut to the home itself, and the men, slumped in easy chairs, are being addressed by a matronly figure:

From now on more and more of what you do in your life will be a waste of time. [pause] The past is a distant yacht. [pause] What you haven't done now, you'll never get done. [pause] Possibility is a private party to which you are no longer invited. [pause] There is not now a single man in this room who will ever be an astronaut.

In seven weeks, I will be 40.