My hovercraft is full of eels...

As a consultant, I'm used to navigating through minefields of vacuous phrases and management-speak. However, the programme on which I work at the moment has over its lifetime invented a whole new language.

Thus:

Things that need to be done are grouped into workstreams, each of which has a range of solution options. Groupings of solution options (one per workstream) form programme portfolios. TWAs (three word acronyms) intractable to anyone but those entrenched in the programme abound, but no phrasebook has yet been developed for the uninitiated. This programme is certainly no paragon of plain english, but this much seems to be par for the course large programmes which have festered for a few years, and being a consultant, I adopt a flexible approach to my understanding of such phrases - one man's solution option is another man's work package. If these things are defined in context, and their meaning is understood, I will use them.

However, one chap with whom I currently work has developed a range of vacuous and unfathomable metaphors which are particularly worthy of comment. Following a watershed moment last week in which it was evident that a large chunk of work performed to date has been of dubious quality, he described the situation in the following terms:

On Monday, as a train whose wheels had come off, was now in a siding, not quite yet at Clapham, had been shunted down the line a bit but wasn't a total wreck.

Yesterday, we discovered that we had a "ravine problem". This is one in which we were 80% of the way to building a bridge across a ravine (or as I would put it, finding some solutions to the problem that the programme is meant to be fixing), but that 80% is totally useless until you've got the final 20%.

Today, we apparently find ourselves in trucks heading to the front line, and not being able to be part of the battle because we hadn't yet reached the bridge.

Confused? So am I. Utter meaningless rubbish, isn't it? So, today's Monty Python Hungarian Phrase Book* prize for clear communications goes to this rather charming and imaginative chap at work.

This reminds me, Pixie has very kindly nominated me (and many others) for a bright pink Rockin' Girl Blogger award. Despite never knowingly rockin', I accept. I shall not be making future nominations, not because you don't rock (or aren't girls) but because being a classical violinist by training, I feel somewhat under qualified to pass comment. Instead, I shall at some point over the coming weeks bore you all silly with the saga of my new violin.

*A sketch in which the phrase "My hovercraft is full of eels" is provided as the translation for "I would like to buy some matches", and "My nipples explode with delight" is a suggested response to being dragged away by a policeman.