Once upon a time I was a boy, toying with my world and my heart and my mind. My diary was a giant moth in a blender- a shock of violent metaphor and beauty and nothing and emotion and everything, damn the details and damn the big picture, inhumane war prison of ice or burned plastic which imprisoned lost souls and launched charity missions and EU rescue teams.

It was not really poetry
Not really prose
It ignited my spirit like dust up my nose
and occasionally lapsed into something quite pretty

And as the years wore through the writing (revealing grammatical errors, teenage angst and the odd pacing issue) it slowly uncovered a story, like a slew of varnished skittles in a drained wishing well. Things happened. There were mob bosses, trinities, deaths and romances,

first loves, first kisses, first kills and first dances.

There was a girl, a writer. She was very kind to me. I abstracted, but we couldn’t collaborate.
There was a girl, an artist. She was very kind to me. I coloured, but we clashed.
There was a girl, a physicist. She was very kind to me. I forced, but we couldn’t form a solution.
There was a girl, a photograph. She was very kind to me. I just looked at her…

Then some time ago I came back from the void, and avoiding eye contact since then I began to explore my horizons and butter my toast… but I guess my horizons are wider than most. I’ve been high and I’ve been low. I’ve been to Venus and Africa, the other side of Liam James or Elia Alariel or Assythment and all over whatever and whoever I’ve been, and I’ve been all over. But now that’s all over.

And every time there’s a something or a someone or a one or a zero, my circuits short and a bullet or a music box triggers. My heartbeat slows and my circuit shows, and I inject a little something creative to make things interesting. And synthetic. A little rhythmic bubble-clunk of silvered crystal.

I write a lot… Music, stories, poetry. I get bored. But the journal is an emotional polaroid- a scrapbook of bad things and good things and beauty and love.

And I’m here with my pretty camera, shaking, clutching onto my remaining polaroids and wishing magic back. I’m hauling the sun across the sky and trying to make every day perfect, writing “world peace” on the marketing priorities board and bringing back dragons. I’m waging war on war and humidity and mind games and 9pm on weeknights where there’s nothing to do but climb.

And I’m here with my pretty camera, shaking, reading back journals from seven, eight years ago when I believed in a time where there would be dragons and world peace and writers and artists and physicists and photographs. Back when I had an army. Back when I played mind games.

Back when I was a boy, and my world and my heart and my mind were just toys.

Being back in the office means I’ve recently had a crash-course in the office rumour mill. Despite only ever leaving my desk to wink at HGFW or escape to the pub, I appear to have become a reluctant node in a massive, bizarre network of scandal.

It’s quite new to me.

Luckily, I have the ideal personality type to resist such gossip: I am a highly-trained ninja rockstar sociopath who views the world with a mixture of amusement and disbelief. Most of the time when people talk to me I’m just dreaming of cookies, or wondering what they’d look like with a moustache. On the few occasions when I actually listen to what they’re saying, historically it has left me bored, disappointed and slightly thirsty.

But that’s not to say that they have no right to talk to me about silly things I don’t care about. Gossip is a beautiful, defiant middle finger in the name of free speech, and if I tried to say that you have no right to talk about things that are none of your business, I would be opening a massive can of worms. Celebrity culture is built entirely on the premise of talking about things that are none of your business. So is marketing… my job.

So clearly, we have to accept that gossip and rumours will never go away, and we need to find a way to live with it. The obvious solution would be to remind ourselves of the ground rules.

That’s absolutely universal fact right there, cast in pearly ancient metal that arrived from space long before any of us got here. You are allowed an opinion on absolutely anything and everything, no matter whether or not you’ve seen, experienced or even heard of the thing in question.

Example: Liam’s opinion on Twilight, a book/film series he has neither read nor watched, and knows almost nothing about.

Listen. If you want a highschool romance involving vampires who sparkle instead of die in sunlight, then how about making it an ultra-camp musical called “We Suck”? You could make some really awesome puns about disco balls, and you could have a huge scene where the main vampire kid was hiding in a closet during the day, with everyone else singing something like-

“come out, come out of the closet..
…show us who you really are..
come out, come out of the closet…
sparkle like a star”

Come on, I’m making this up on the spot and giving it away for free, and you guys are getting paid for this. Grab your balls, put some 80s power ballads on and get some work done.

The problem with having a camp idea is that if you don’t take it all the way to the extreme, then it just comes across as sleepy, watery bile. I believe that there are werewolves in the “Twilight Saga”, and I imagine that they wear rainbow lycra costumes. This is a great start, but they should be called “bears”, and Brian Blessed should do all the voices. This is schoolboy stuff.

This is free speech. If you have an opinion on anything, anything, then you’re allowed to talk about it. With anyone.

That’s a dangerous thought. If someone has an opinion about you, your secrets or the way that you behave, then it’s up to them how they relay it. That’s clearly within the rules. It means that as soon as you have shared a secret, you have to accept that you have absolutely no control over it.

It also means that you have to come to terms with the fact that people can talk about how you act, and pass their own judgement based on whatever tiny amount of information they have. The only control you have over your own reputation is what ammunition you give them- other people will aim and call the shots.

Luckily, people are allowed to have opinions on people that have opinions. Office gossips quickly get a reputation as such. People who regularly voice opinions on people and situations they know nothing about are often regarded as scum by the rest of mankind, and grow old alone in gutters covered with grey cat hair. Twilight fans will think that I’m arrogant and opinionated for judging a book/film saga that I’ve never read/watched, and they might have all kinds of opinions on my other opinions, my upbringing, my education or even my mother’s weight.

It’s fine. That’s the universe’s way of making things even again. Hiding behind free speech and just saying what you think all the time has the very unsubtle side effect of making you look like a dick. Most people prefer to talk to someone with a little more tact.

I’m generally very honest about what I do and what I’ve said to people, and I’ve never been bothered by the idea that people have opinions about me, or opinions about my opinions. I’m often wrong about things of course, but I don’t lie, I’ve never cheated on anyone, I don’t bitch or gossip and I don’t tend to have any secrets. I’m quite comfortable with the idea that if my whole life was on TV, all my friends would still be talking to me.

That’s generally the rule I live by, and it’s one that I’d recommend. But that’s just my opinion.

I approach the car, entering like a thief. My shadow stays in Manchester… but I’m leaving. I have work to do. It’s Saturday night, 2am.

Prostitutes and stumbling men flutter like moths or fairies around broken streetlights, and they blindly bat against my windows as I weave past. The broken glass in the road glitters like ice crystal, confetti, lighting my path and guiding my journey past the bold young warriors, harpies, princesses and haggard old men of the city. Their eyes open like windows as I drive by, and their stories storm me with heart-headed javelins, sputnik shields.. vodka-scented warcries, perfume curses and journals, drunken rants and midnight texts of insecurity.

Sacha is a girl in a blood red mini-dress, late twenties, no ring. Sits on her own by the side of the road, her two escorts arguing. Taxi, taxi, God she’s cold. Bad night. Where was he? He said he’d be there, wasn’t answering his phone. Perhaps he forgot. Perhaps he didn’t care. Perhaps he was with someone else. She glances upwards into the flash of headlights. Not her taxi, not her man, just a man… with black eyes and a blond shock of hair driving past. Taxi, taxi, taxi…

I hit a left turn through a red light and strafe through an empty lane. Long road out of the city, from one world into another. The love crumbles and the dark beetle inside stretches into Salford, chattering and scratching. Hobgoblins, lanky at the bus stop, stopped by the doppleganger of some… princess of the metropolis, her plastic crown illuminated with flashes of Blackpool-green, Blackpool-pink. She’s making some kind of address to the State of Salford, her hips and single finger set and her mouth contorted with authority. I smile.

Andy is a casualty of Deansgate. He sits alone on a wall with his head in his hands, trying to hold on. He’d been in a taxi, perhaps, but he just had to get out. God knows where he is now. Can’t be sick anymore. God. Need to get home. Was that a taxi? No…

I’m through Salford, the window down and my head lolls to the side. The wind blows smoke and chalk from my hair and the smile from my face. Prestwich. A young girl in white like a priest passes judgement on me as I pass her, stone eyes met by the abyss in mine.

I can’t get past you. I’ll have to find another way. Another night.

Taxi…

There was a strange something in the glint, like danger danger and that constant threat of magic-assisted suicide. The glitch in the smile shot malice, bone-chipping mustard-breathing fire-talking peppermint-popping fizz. A madness.

The brain didn’t work cleanly anymore- there was a dark smear on the inside of the skull where the oily mechanic had wiped his brow, forgetting the pristine leather and polished bone china. All of these carefully-considered apostrophes and hidden gems, memories and mammal-instincts were just hiding behind the mask ready to unlatch and catch on every thought, every action, every word.

She heard.

There was a sudden unspeakable silence as the glint caught the shape, and the glitch caught the match that caught flame. A cigarette. Someone hunched in the dark, in the new light.

Bilboa shook nervously in the cold as she met Liam’s eye. You’ve got company, she said, her ridiculous fluffy white coat ludicrous against her tiny scribbled face and wept wild black hair. Don’t make any sudden movements. The emotion, the God, is coming. Vac the vacuum. The vacuous. He’s here.

And with that the mantle cracked, split with a snap and tearing of chunked rock, spitting and scattering hot stones. Mosquitos poured into the cavern and danced, oblivious, thousands of them circling and spiralling around in the black.

Their form became human.

The blood in their stomachs became the blood in his veins.

Vac stirred- his rainbow halo stuttering and starting as the dull white light in his eyes spluttered to life. A sad, cold, weary fire.

Vac looked immediately bored. He looked from Bilboa to sky panda ninja and back again before sighing deeply. His soft little voice barely reached them when he finally spoke.

“Pub, anyone?”

It highly amuses me when people complain about their jobs online. It’s just like bitching to your friends, but with the added hilarious risk that it’s all there in undeniable written proof, right in front of your coworkers. It’s a bit like cheating on your boyfriend and then writing about it in the diary you leave lying around, or signing a confession to the recent ice truck killings and carrying it around in my coat pocket (the long black cotton one I wear to work sometimes).

Anyway. If your employer ever finds that rant, then you’re going to be in big trouble. I love your style. You’re gutsy. You’ve got spunk.

Or have you found and added your own boss on Facebook? That is the best idea ever. Hey, how about updating your status with “still pissed, lol” at 10am on Monday morning, so when he gets home he’ll realise why he couldn’t get any sense out of you all day? It helps him to get a rounded view of you as a person, and understand how you tick. That’s important for a working relationship.

It’s always nice when your friend sends you a public message asking how the interview went, too. And if your boss isn’t totally cool with the fact that you’re using your holidays (or sick days) to look around, then he surely wasn’t worth working for anyway.

Pro tip: Try to get your boss’s mobile number so you can text him jokes when you’re drunk. All your mates know that you’re so much funnier when you’re drunk.

There are many methods of textual discourse that don’t involve sickening everyone you know. Some people might say that SMS text messaging, email, and private messages are a good choice. Some people might say that the fact that Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal and basically every other online social networking platform allows you to send private or direct messages makes the softcore porn on my friendfeed absolutely inexcusable. But what you have to remember is that these people are prudes, and they are wrong.

I feel so privileged that people choose to let me behind those closed doors, and the candid saucy x-rated snippets that get flashed at me every day serve as a constant happy reminder of how progressive and modern today’s society is. The updates I cherish most from my friends and vague acquaintances are the ones that sound like “OMG, Lee is SOO HUGE!!” or “Jonny, I’ve been thinking about rubbing against you all day xxx“, because they help me to visualise an almost-offensively graphic orgy that I can recall every time I speak to or think about that person.

It helps to put me at ease.

It’s beautiful enough when you don’t really see the people involved on a day to day basis, but when you work with the culprit it becomes especially enlightening. Wait, he sent that at… 5pm. Wasn’t I in a meeting with him until 5pm?

That means he was thinking about sex with his girlfriend when I was talking to him! How adorable.

Pro tip: You can upload photos and video to social networks. Come on, don’t be shy.

The best bit about social networks is that, not only do I know that a guy I haven’t seen since primary school has a girlfriend, but also that she is a “dirty slag” (his words) who slept with three of his mates during their brief but turbulent 3-month relationship. I know this, because the two of them recently had a prolonged and hilarious public argument about it on Facebook.

Then another girl got involved to say that she’d been sleeping with the guy because she felt sorry about how badly slag-girl was treating him… and then I have to admit that I stopped following the drama because it was a bit like watching a car-crash. A car-crash where dignity didn’t have an airbag and died on impact, and everyone else comes out ugly and scarred and has to suck respect out of a straw for the rest of their lives.

But I appreciate the gesture- they didn’t have to share that with me and I feel better as a person for reading it.

Eventually the original couple made up and had lots of sex, which they spattered in gay abandon over their walls and status updates. And their friends’ walls. And their co-workers’ and employers’ walls. Before long every single wall they could reach was dripping with their love. Apparently the incident brought the two together and this arching, sticky release of sweet, sweet status updates helped them to build trust where there was previously only suspicion. How cute.

Now if I ever classed these people as close friends then I would have probably lost all respect for them a long time ago, and I would be keeping them at arm’s length in the genuine fear that if I ever spoke to them my life would immediately turn into Hollyoaks. But luckily, I don’t know anything about the guy apart from his name, the size of his penis (inadequate, apparently) and the fact that he has a quick temper and a foul mouth. So I totally support everything he’s doing for my entertainment.

A good rule of thumb is this: if there is anything that you wouldn’t tell your boss, your mother or a complete stranger, spread it ALL OVER your social networks. It’s basically just a matter of time before you end up on failbooking.com or Jeremy Kyle anyway, so you might as well speed up the process.

Pro tip: Tell all of your darkest secrets to someone, and then humiliate them online in front of all their friends. That’s the secret recipe for fun.

If you join an exquisitely hilarious group, page or mailing list, then congratulations. You should be really proud of yourself, and other people should be proud of you too. You should tell them. Especially if that group relies on a pyramid-scheme-style growth dynamic which requires as many of your friends to join as possible, which many of Facebook’s exquisitely hilarious groups do. It’s just a little click to access their events page. And another little click to reject your kind invitation. And another couple of little clicks to delete the email notification. I mean, if they can’t be bothered to do that a couple of times a day then they shouldn’t have accepted your friend invitation, should they?

Yeah, they should think about that.

Pro tip: To date, Guinness have not accepted “Facebook page with the most followers” as a valid world record category. But that doesn’t mean that they won’t… and if you get in there early, then you have EVERY chance of being number 1 when they do!

Editor’s Disclaimer: Liam cannot be held responsible for the consequences of taking any of his advice. Ever.