What does the name Operation Clearflow conjour up in your mind? Cascades of cystal-clear water gushing joyfully from your shower head? A traffic-free, road-rageless city? Curiously untainted tampons? To me, it conjours up the image of a 26-year-old prick with braces, curly hair, specs with brightly-coloured rims, and matching Tweety Pie tie and socks. His job title is "project manager", and he’s let it go to his head. No mean feat, given how far up his own arse it is. His empire consists of a desk in the corner of a grossly-over-air-conditioned glass-and-steel shed next to the M5 in Taunton. The headquarters of Wessex Water. One morning he comes into work, consults his Filofax Time Manager (he still thinks these are cool), and realises he has two days to inform the residents of a certain area in Bath that Their Time Has Come. So he kicks back in his swivel chair - the one he thought he ought to get after hearing so many people telling him to "go swivel" - thumbs his speakerphone, and bellows "Doris! I need you to take a memo!". Doris looks up from her desk opposite him, thinks you really are a prize wanker, aren’t you?, picks up her pad, and says "ready when you are, big boy". This inflates his ego to even more absurd levels, and he breathlessly sputters out a few lines about not being able to park in the area for the next two weeks. "Better tell them that the Somerset & Avon Constabulary will be on their arses if they refuse to comply, Doris", he adds, then nips off to the bog for a tension-relieving wank. The letter arrived yesterday. I am still thinking of a suitably acidic reply. I do not take kindly to being threatened by the Somerset & Avon Constabulary [sic] for parking in my own street. Especially as these days that’s quite a luxury. Ever since the new houses at the end were built the lazy fuckers that live there park on our road. Yet they’ve actually got garages. Operation Clearflow, and their "project manager" in particular, fills me with the uncontrollable urge to vomit. Unfortunate, since we won’t have any water to flush it away.