Posted on the 5th

I hate April 1st with its great big false nose and stupid fake beard. It is a pointless, annoying nuisance of a day. It is one of the few days of the year I actively wish could be kicked around town by people like me; embittered, past-it old hags with no sex life and no desire to join in national fun. If anyone invented this day, they should stand up now and claim the credit. Then I can swing a sign round their neck and boot them into the canal as well.

I know some people will think this is a slight over-reaction to a calendar date, but I am sure there are many more who will agree with me.

For a start I can't read the newspapers because I can never find the sodding funny joke. When it is pointed out to me, I find it so unhilarious it only raises my thirst for vengeance, knowing I wasted seconds of my life looking for it.

Then I can't bear the thought that some large corporate will have felt duty-bound to turn the pointless day into some great PR success. Desperate to get their brand mentioned in Campaign or talked about on the Media pages of the nationals, they'll have been busy for months thinking up a tortured, obscure marketing stunt which they're convinced makes them look cool on the street with the kids, when it only makes them look like idiots.

Stupid enough to have once found employment as an advertising copywriter (don't ask: I was shit) I was unfortunate enough to witness six men in identical suits and ties locked in an office convinced they could think up something funny. These are people who spend 364 days of their life in account handling, product management, and corporate finance. It was agony. The best they could come up with was an in-joke about a car. Yeah, Dave! We could say it's just like the XJ! (Five men roll about laughing.)

Of course April 1 is made a health hazard if you have kids, so don't tell them about the ritual. They will want to do stuff to each other which ranges between pathetic and pointless to stupid and downright dangerous. Kids have no sense of scale or fun when they set about concocting a practical joke. Making an apple pie bed will be in their minds just as funny as pushing grandma under a bus. What's worse is that of course they won't be able to confine the hilarious pranks to a single day. No. The day will merely fuel an ever escalating April-long revenge saga which will leave the house looking like a stage set of Hamlet.

There is only one thing I am grateful for in this enforced march through contrived, painful, national humour, and that is I have such a chronic sense of the calender that I didn't realise it was April until yesterday.