Onna Jigoku Mori Wa Nureta

Instead of the usual tightening of the screw as we move towards Christmas Eve, my new job brings quite the reverse: a slackening of tension (not that there ever was any tension). People are abandoning the office in droves (not that there ever were any droves). I am left to tinker with my staff profile on the intranet. It's all true (except for the bit about teaching fish to sing) and finishes up resoundingly with the words: 'I live in a bungalow'.

It seems as good a note as any to end on.

So here I am, winding down for Christmas instead of working all night, as the Daily Mail tells us is currently common practice in retail ('Land of the Midnight Shops'). Time to seek out presents, to drink, to watch Japanese pornography... Now I know how normal people live.

Japanese pornography? No, not really! Oh well, yes then: really. But at the BFI, and that makes it culture. The advance information combined the phrases 'rare chance to see' and 'jaw-droppingly extreme'. How could I resist?

Not that my jaw actually dropped, but then it never does when you're expecting it to. The director, Tatsumi Kumashiro, has apparently made quite a few films, 'many of which featured the word "wet" somewhere in the title'. Translated here as Woods Are Wet, this is no exception. It's a version of de Sade's Justine, but it's more than just an orgy of flagellation. Though not much more.

Hovering black shapes eclipsed the characters' private parts, which was not censorship, as a guy speaking beforehand explained, but a kind of parody of censorship on the part of the director. A couple behind me, whose main interest in the film seemed to centre around the question of whether it would prevent them from catching 'the 10:48', muttered impatiently throughout. It was like they were somehow obliged to be there, like Prince Charles at a Royal Variety Performance. Their own performance climaxed during a sequence when the crack of the whip was the only thing on the soundtrack, at which point one of them blew their nose loudly. It was unmistakably pointed (not the nose), virtually a review in fact.

Though not a just one.

I was reminded of when I saw British horror film The Children recently. I have to say I found this frightening, but maybe that's because I'm not so keen on children. In fact, there's a scene in the trailer for Four Christmases in which Reece Witherspoon is trapped in a mini-bouncy castle with some hyperactive toddlers which scared the shit out of me. Anyway the whole schtick with The Children, obviously, is that kids turn evil and have to be killed, which is a difficult thing to do, especially if they are your kids. This ambiguity did not trouble one member of the audience who, as one character was hesitating over whether to stab an apparently sweet little four-year old girl to death, suddenly shouted - and bear in mind that this was in an almost-deserted cinema - 'Do 'er!' A parent?, I wondered.

By the way, I am not going to recommend The Children to Mat.

health and safety

We were encouraged to e-mail the new director with our comments on the restructure. Although this seemed as wise as poking a sleeping bear with a stick, we went ahead, and were rewarded with a dismissive growl - then we were encouraged to do it again. This time the response was slightly more positive, but I can't help feeling that I will, if I get the job, be known as a 'distribution assistant' in spite of our objections. 'Administration assistant', the current title, is hardly glamorous but 'distribution assistant' just sounds like someone trying to big up their paper round.

I had 'fire training'. There was a video from what looked like the late 80's: 'If only Eddie hadn't taken the toaster into the office that day', intoned the voiceover, ominously. We were warned that fires need oxygen to thrive, and yet apparently the workplace is full of it! Why hasn't something been done about this?

We had our annual Christmas meal (non-work-related) at an all-you-can-eat Oriental buffet. It wasn't very Christmassy, but there were crackers, which yielded, in my case, a plastic tooth, a paper hat, and a motto, whose most amusing content was the phrase (printed just beneath the health and safety warnings): 'Please retain this information for future reference.'

wigging out

I was in Birthdays buying a 'blonde babe wig' and a rather sinister plastic pig mask. 'Just a quiet night in', I was going to say, if the woman at the counter happened to ask. She didn't ask.

The wig was for a wig party, Vicki's thirtieth. The mask was more of a whim. Nevertheless, I wondered if it might work with the wig. In order to test this, I donned both and stood silently in the shadowed hallway at home waiting for Dave to turn around and notice me. The effect (he all but dropped dead of fright) was not one which I cared to reproduce on the grand scale. Not quite yet.

In the wig alone I apparently bore a resemblance to: Rowan Atkinson in the first Blackadder, Andy Warhol, the villain in a film called Ninja Terminator, and - most bewilderingly - Charles Hawtrey. But it was good finally to be able to toss my hair, and not just into the bin.

Other people's wigs practically took root on their heads and demanded the same rights as their natural hair: Phil's mullet made it seem as though he'd never left his birthplace, Canvey Island. Last to arrive was Chad, and of course he outdid everyone by sporting the largest afro in history. He looked like an approaching thunderstorm as he loomed through the mists of dry ice.

Matandamanda went as Andy and Lou from Little Britain, and in doing so not only expressed something of the nature of their relationship but also lent this over-familiar routine a much-needed new direction. It's worryingly easy to imagine Mat saying: 'Are you sure you want a baby? It's a bit of a kerfuffle.' But I do hope Amanda's eventual reaction is more positive than: 'I don't like it.'