"Can you hear that?" The French Analyst stands in my office. "From here? Do you hear him?"

My office is small, almost too tiny to fit two people, yet I average about four on busy days. On slow bank holidays and Fridays I average one. I have hung stills from Fellini films, three record albums and the sexy priests on the walls. It makes it homey in here. Like decorating a shoebox with postage stamps. All the offices are close together and the walls are thin. Sometimes I hear an office team running relays above my head. Most of the time the French Analyst, the Peruvian and I shout messages back and forth to each other. It usually beats standing up.

I look at her, attune my ears to detect sounds other than the relentless white noise produced by the air conditioning and listen. "I don't hear anything."

"Cans." She replies. "Kovsky is crushing cans." She pauses. "In his office."

"Our cans?" I ask, "Or did he bring his own here?"

"I don't know."

Defacing the Hot Priests of Rome

During a trip several of my friends took to Venice last year, they returned with a "Hot Priests of Rome" calendar. You see, I was the only bred Catholic they knew...

On the whole, the priests are rather good-looking in an Italianate sense. However, there are others (particularly Padre January and Padre February) that must be related to one of the calendar producers. I simply cannot face the often boorish faces of these young religious men, so I have decided to de-face them. For every day of every month, I shall draw one more feature in black ink upon his visage. Today marked the advent of Padre Domenico's sinister moustache.

Just another hatch mark on the list of little things that will ultimately damn me to Hell.