CAPTAIN HILARIOUS

Captain Hilarious has moved in next door…

Well, it certainly sounds as if he has.

At least, I assume he must be Captain Hilarious, given the amount of raucous laughter he seems to inspire in all of the "lay-dees" who sound as if they are constantly rubbing up against him and hanging upon his every word which results in all of the utter hilarity, tittering and peels of coy laughter and cackling that seem to greet each and every one of his muffled utterances.

Well, you have to laugh, don't you…?

Well, er… No...

The sounds are muffled, by the way, because of the intervening wall, and alas not because they have him tied to a chair with a sack over his head and his pinstripe pants around his ankles as they tickle his nethers with a sharpened complementary biro embossed with his company's logo.

Well, you have to hope, don't you…?

Sadly, that wall isn't intervening enough, and certainly doesn't contain anything like enough sound-proofing for my poor bludgeoned earholes, which means that we can hear every wretched bloody noise that's made in their new office space, although not quite clearly enough that we can share the joke. Unfortunately, this also means that they can hear every word of ours, too, which will no doubt lead to internecine wars breaking out almost as soon as they've finished moving in and the bleak cynicism of a trio of world-weary artists comes into direct conflict with the servants of mammon.

Most probably over the mysteriously diminishing milk supply.

Meanwhile, at the moment it's like listening to the worst ITV sitcom which was recorded in front of a "live studio audience" made up of sixth generation inbred morons stuffed to the gills on "Sunny D" being played a full volume, whilst you've got a drawerful of socks rammed into your ears in a pitiful attempt to keep out the banality and simultaneously try in vain  to block the spontaneous bleeding from your brain as it tries to shut out this torturous ordeal by half-witticism by crawling out of the nearest available orifice and trying to find a dark corner to curl up and die in.

In case you hadn't yet guessed, this is a work thing, by the way…

Two things I learned from a conversation I had in the kitchen with a former colleague of the Captain (who is obviously quite smitten) who wanted to inform us (in case we hadn't already noticed) that we had a new neighbour:

One, he has a "loud laugh" apparently… "He's well-known for it…"

No shit, Sherlock...

And two, they work in "Financial Management"…

Oh… Double joy…

This naturally means that they are obviously hellspawn who will probably be constantly wrestling in the corridors for the business of their direct competitors across the corridor whilst guffawing maniacally (and probably demonically) all of the day long as they dupe yet another poor working stiff or gullible grandparent out of their life savings and afterwards flick idly through the boating catalogues picking out their next yacht.

My God, they're noisy…

Sometimes it all goes very quiet and you think that they've finally got down to business, rather than the "getting down to business" that had sounded so imminent when the groupies were in full "gush" mode. Then you realise that it's gone quiet because it's lunchtime and he's taken them all off to the pub to loosen them up with yet more hilarious tales from the world of high finance.

All-too-soon, they return from whatever watering hole and/or motel they've just defiled and it begins all over again. First there's a small joke just to get the titter muscles started and, after starting slowly with a bit of tentative but unsubtle foreplay, we are once again exposed to the full horror as they work their way back up to the total "Captain Hilarious" experience…

Sometimes it seems as if he's like the Ken Dodd of Financial Management ("Buy shares, Missus…!") - although I seem to recall that that's possibly not the best analogy to make...

This is all accompanied by the sort of strange noises that you might hear through the walls of a cheap hotel as the neighbours do their best to let everyone else in the place know that they're testing the bed springs to destruction, and they're obviously wanting the world to know that having a far better time doing so than you could possibly imagine, even though by this stage there's precious little actually left for the imagination to have to work with.

These sounds are probably, of course, merely because they are shifting furniture although, from the amount of parcel tape which appeared to be being used, on occasion it did sound like there was a serial killer in there attaching his victims to the brand new office chairs…

The Rice Krispie Killer…? The Wheated Shredder…? The Fruit'n'Fibre Massacre…?

Either that or even the "lay-dees" had finally had enough and that "sack over the head/trousers around the ankles" scenario I thought about earlier had finally come to pass and made one of my dreams come true at least.

Still, doesn't time fly when you're having fun…?

Again, no… Especially if it's someone else's idea of "fun" that you're being forced to listen to whether you want to or not.

Or maybe those noises were just a puppet show of some kind…? Perhaps the "Financial Management" description was just a ruse and we are now to have our days accompanied by the swazzling toots of a "Mr Punch" training school or maybe something even more peaceful like some sort of Brass Band Academy…?

We can only hope...

Sigh… Maybe it'll settle down as they knuckle down to the hard graft of earning this year's bonuses during one slightly extended tea-break, but I doubt it. After all, it's always great to know that everyone else's job is far more fun than you're could ever be, and, judging by the sound of it, "Financial Management" really must be the most fun that you could possibly have in the whole wide world.

Meanwhile, back in our own little grey box, we decided that we probably needed to have our own "Happy Hour" every day in retaliation, although I have to admit that I may struggle with this, given that I rarely manage to conjure up a Happy Minute during the average decade…

Still, I was prepared to have a go and I tried (and failed) to add to our own air of hilarity, only for my every utterance to be greeted by the kind of silence which follows at the unexpected assassination of a "much-loved"public figure.

Mind you, with my constant repetition of "Have they found that plane yet…?" being the nearest thing I can get to a witticism nowadays, I'm hardly surprised… Incidentally, I'm kind of wondering whether I could claim to have worked out where the missing aircraft actually is and then get funding for an expedition in an "Indiana Jones" style-y way in order to escape the cackling madness of "Captain Hilarious"… because, on a more serious note, whilst you want them to find the plane, in many ways you also don't want them to find it either… and sometimes the only way people find of coping with things as traumatic as this is to look for the humour inside it.

The problem is the other "Captains Hilarious" around the world forget that the people on board were real people living real lives with real friends and family who are sick with fear and terror at what might have happened to the people they care about, and that's really no bloody joke at all...