Be careful what you say around reporters...

5:36pm Wednesday 1st October 2008

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By Claire Hack »

My colleagues have failed to learn that if they say something is "definitely not for the blog", I take that to mean "definitely for the blog".

This is not a universal rule - I'd never publish anything defamatory or anything that might get me into trouble (!) - but when rare moments of amusement arrive, I feel it's necessary to share them with the world at large.

Case in point - the other day, EOE (that's Esteemed Online Editor. I thought it was time for a new nickname) said he "nearly fell off his chair" when I happened to take off my glasses for a moment. To find out whether that was in fact true, I took them off again, at which point he nearly fell off his chair. It was probably just a bit of overzealous miming but a cautionary tale, I think. I'll keep my glasses on in future.

Meanwhile, we're still running our Streets of Shame campaign and I'm beginning to wonder whether Waltham Forest might be heading the way of Naples. Angry Neopolitans rioted at the end of September as the Italian government released proposals to dump huge amounts of uncollected waste in the city's suburbs and I couldn't help noticing echoes of Waltham Forest's plight.

The notoriously filthy Italian city has already seen riots this year after mountains of garbage were left for weeks on end and the story has more than a whiff of the familiar - no pun intended of course. Granted their problems are probably a little bit more serious - according to news reports back in January, their rubbish collection has been taken over by organised criminal gangs - but I'm starting to think the levels of fury here in bonny Blighty might not be far behind those in Italy.

At any rate, readers will be able to make up their own minds as I'm reliably informed we're running a two-page spread on the situation this week.

In other news, I was given a free ticket to the National Theatre this week (in return for a review, of course) which, initially, I was pleased about. Lovely, thinks I, a night at the theatre, without spending a penny and all I have to do is review the performance. Little did I know that watching The Walworth Farce (the play in question) would be the most thoroughly unsettling and upsetting two hours I'd spent since foolishly watching Requiem for a Dream on my own. That's not to say it wasn't well written or well performed - simply that it's possibly one of the most disturbing pieces of theatre of the last decade.

Finally, it's been suggested (with a certain degree of hope as people in this office are apparently genuinely afraid I'll tell the world just how mad they really are) that I might not have time to write this blog in future. No such luck, I'm afraid. I will make time.