Small is beautiful

"A little bit of what you fancy does you good," as grandmothers like to say. Therefore I snorted cocaine, insulted my boss and cut the finger off that intern I fancied (I always feel guilty about finding any intern attractive, although at their age of 20 it is hardly a criminal offence - except in certain countries where it is a criminal offence regardless of age). Perhaps certain advice should not be interpreted too literally.

Similarly, "less is more" is a good piece of advice in many areas: Powerpoint presentations should be brief (my first act as grand dictator of the world would be to introduce legislation restricting them to one page); one piece of chocolate, suitably relished with toe-curling intensity really is as good as, say, fifty gobbled down with lightning pace; and people should speak less, apart from me, since I have powerful wisdom to convey. Disney has clearly taken this message to heart by releasing a film (WALL-E) in which people hardly speak at all - clearly they have heard the prayers silently wailed by many a viewer of a Disney film, "please, please, please speak less". (WALL-E is very, very good.)

Those who doubt the impact of brevity should consider PostSecret - a site where users post their secrets from shameful, to sad, to bizarre. "I don't smile anymore," someone says, a secret which speaks of despair and sadness and regret more completely than I can imagine. Or One Sentence, which does something similar: "It happened in a closet," one story says darkly, and "I saw two monks bowling in Seoul," says another, more bewildered. On Thursday I went out with work colleagues. A bit of beer here, a bit of conversation there. Hardly an unusual event. I don't think I've done that for, oh ... two years? So maybe not an event to toast, perhaps not Tony Blair making winsome speeches on a historic achievement, but still ... a connection. And all the things I've missed without realising it: drunk conversations of alarming frankness; the I-really-should-stop-but-I'm-not-going-to feeling as I accept another bottle of beer, dancing to hypnotic, important-feeling music and the strange eyes-closed intensity I have to dancing. You see, it's the little things. It's always the little things.