At the Channel 4 Pub on 48th Street they make a nice French dip. I’m in the mode of ordering it each time we go there from work for a semi-inebriated lunch. An echo of the career NBC men who probably did or maybe still do come here every single fucking day and order the exact same fucking sandwich from whichever Irish waitress is floating in from JFK that month plus three scotches on the rockses. It’s a no-fucking-around type place, workmanlike, with Arsenal and Aston Villa on the tube. When you order a bottle of wine, you don’t order the bottle but the varietal. Today we had the cab.

On the walk back John noted that a woman was trying to cross the street coming our way. A box-blocking cabbie deterred her and she turned on her heels and walked straight up Sixth Avenue in the opposite direction. Her life will now be completely transformed.

A pang of paranoia shot through my former team today as reports surfaced in the UK that one of their online chat bots was propositioning one and all for oral sex. All a lexical mistake, of course. Glitch in the code. But it had the project manager in question fearful for his job. He absented himself today with a quizzical e-mail to the entire floor. But the sky’s not really falling on anyone’s head, not yet, at least. I think.