Us is all information professionals, us is

Up to my neck in e-government work; 'phone red-hot with network problems; emails shouting at me to submit reports on projects. In trots T. Aldous.

"I need to provide a copy of the council's constitution for the inspectors," he says. "I rang the Excellence and Expediency Team [the proud authors of "Scoring Points by Ticking Boxes"] to get a copy. They say it's on the web. Can you get it for me?"

I sighed deeply. I'd asked somebody to make sure to keep the idiot well away from me so that I didn't kill him (I may tell you about this some day).

"I need it this afternoon," he says.

So I start the arduous (not) business of getting onto the council web site, going into the Council & Councillors folder, clicking onto the link labelled "Council Constitution" and copying the URL into an email to T. Aldous.

"When can you do it?" he asked.

"I've done it," I said.

"Thinking about it, would it be possible for me to go onto the web site and look for it myself?"

To my dying day, I'll never know how I didn't say: "no."